Do you think most American vegan recipes are bland, and if so...why are they like that?
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I'm working my way through the 1,000 Vegan Recipes cookbook, one recipe at a time. Pan-seared seitan with artichoke hearts bottoms, black olives, and capers is anything BUT bland!3
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rheddmobile wrote: »I think many Americans have mostly learned to cook using animal fats for flavor, and when that is taken away they don't always replace it with other flavors.
LOL - I never learned to do that. But then again, I have never been that great of a cook, so perhaps, that's why. ^_^rheddmobile wrote: »Other cultures such as India and Japan have native traditions of vegetarian foods, so it's not surprising that they have learned a few things.
It's easy to borrow a few tricks from other cultures to fancy up any recipes you find bland. For example, flavoring a dish with a tadka, or spices heated in oil and then stirred into the dish, is an Indian trick which works with anything. If you choose a typically Indian spice mix, you will end up with food that tastes like Indian food, but you can also use other flavors to get Mexican, Thai, or Japanese inspired dishes. Get a garlic press and a grater and some ginger and have a high old time flavoring up your food. Try different peppers and herbs. You're not going to succeed in making a vegan hamburger and bacon taste more flavorful than real hamburger and bacon, but you can make whatever you do eat taste delicious.
I've seen some of the concepts you mention. Spices heated in oil especially works well.
But the thing is, I don't see these being used in most vegan recipes I see. And I guess that's the question. Not so much how 'I' can find ways to make good, flavorful vegan recipes (although information on that is, of course, appreciated), but why do so many people seem to NOT do that?
So many recipes I come across for vegetable dishes (by vegans, although also by non-vegans, to be honest) are just...not good, bland, not enough seasoning, or it's not added at the right time in the dish to make the most of it, etc....
Is it that America has a much younger vegan culture, so people here are still learning? Or Americans in general are less willing to experiment? Today's vegetables are poor quality? Or something else?
I honestly don't know. And I am not trying to say 'all vegan food is bad' or 'vegans have bad taste' or anything like that. I truly find the majority of recipes I find pretty bland - and I've been really scouring the internet the past couple of years for my son who is vegetarian edging on vegan. But even he finds a lot of these recipes bland. And while I CAN find good recipes here and there, it's much more of a chore than I would have thought, to be able to find the really flavorful ones.
I don't recall having this trouble with a lot of other types of diets, so I really am curious about why this is.
I think it's partly that vegan culture is young, and partly that many Americans never learn the basic principles of how to cook.
If you think about the foods typically considered "American" - hamburgers, steaks, American-style pizza, potatoes in various forms - they are mostly based around the ready availability of inexpensive meats, and starches flavored with dairy and fat - potatoes loaded with cheese or sour cream, even salads loaded with creamy dressings. Ask yourself what flavoring agents are commonly added to these dishes. Ketchup. Sugar. That's pretty much it. Onion is considered "out there," some people don't like it. No spices, no herbs, no aromatics. The flavor profile of "American style cuisine" is entirely umami, salt, and sugar based, with any tartness usually provided by vinegar. It's bland to begin with. Subtract the umami and it's REALLY bland.
And then there's the bad cook issue. I have a friend, God bless her, who posted a recipe here the other day which used onions. She chucked them in a pot with some water. Didn't sweat them or brown them first to increase the flavor. There are many crimes against vegetables perpetrated by people who just boil the crap out of everything. On the carnivore front, stew made in an instant pot without browning the meat first. MFP is a blog with supposedly professional food writers and they keep posting recipes where spices are added at random times in such a way that the flavor would be lost or spoiled, as well as baking recipes in which ingredients are added in the wrong order and mixed incorrectly so that the texture would turn out badly. Cooking is a science, and if no one ever taught the cook the basic principles, of course it's going to turn out badly.6 -
no i do not. my area has lots of delicious vegan food.
and on a rare occassion i cook vegan, it is also good and flavorful0 -
What's an "American" recipe? A lot of things we eat are adapted from other cultures. For example, most people would say that spaghetti with tomato sauce is pretty American, even though it clearly has Italian origins. That dish is also vegan, unless you're adding something like cheese or butter to your sauce.
Most of the time when food is "bland," it isn't seasoned well. When cooking savory vegan food, salt, spices, and/or oil become especially important because you aren't relying on animal fat for the flavor. Last week I made blackeyed peas in my crock pot. I used black and red pepper, vegan chicken flavored broth powder, garlic, onion, smoked paprika, liquid smoke, and salt. I added a lot of spices because I wasn't adding pork, as blackeyed peas are often cooked. They were delicious. We ate them with cornbread and garlic sauteed spinach. All of those things are vegan or easily made vegan. That's also a pretty American meal; it was a meatless take on traditional Southern US New Year's Day food, even though blackeyed peas aren't originally from North America.
I also use a lot of low calorie sauces. Most people don't want to eat a plain, unseasoned chunk of protein, whether that protein is tofu or boiled chicken. But if you season that protein, cook it well, and serve it with a complementary sauce, it becomes part of a good meal. That's just as true for meatless proteins as it is for meat.
I absolutely did not have a good understanding of seasoning food before I stopped eating meat. My family almost never used spices. Since then, I've become much more aware of other, lower calorie methods of seasoning besides animal fat.
This reminds me that last week I asked my OH if he wanted to pick the ethnic meal of the week and he said pizza, which lead to a light hearted disagreement over the meaning of ethnic food. He got his pizza on Sunday and I made a Thai-ish stir fry earlier in the week.
(I've since redefined my definition of "ethnic" to mean "includes spices his mother never had in the house.")
I received a good foundation in the versatility of spices when I was responsible for cooking lunch in a tiny yoga retreat center in Costa Rico with a rather limited selection of foods, heavy on the rice and legumes, but lots of spices.2 -
I am a vegan chef, and I'm American. And I can assure you that my food is not in the least bit bland.3
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It's not clear from your OP: Are you relatively new to vegan cooking/eating? (I know you said you've eaten mostly whole foods for quite a while; how long you've been entirely plant-based isn't as clear to me.)
Others have talked about ways to add flavor, and I totally agree, but I also want to comment on the issue of getting a handle on sources of umami ("meaty") flavors in plant-based cooking as one aspect of that. If someone is coming from a diet that includes more meat (etc.), that can be a useful thing.
There are a bunch of ways to add umami to plant-based dishes: Some foods work well (mushrooms immediately come to mind, toasted/roasted nuts (possibly ground so invisible), some seaweeds), cooking methods help (pan-browning/cararmelizing onions/garlic, roasting veggies, long slow-cooking plum tomatoes), and there are lots of amendments that move a dish in a more umami direction (tamari, miso, unsweetened cocoa powder (try it in chili!), nutritional yeast).
I'm not a recipe cook - rarely use non-baking recipes for anything other than new flavor combo ideas - so I don't know about the recipes. (And I'm not vegan: I've been ovo-lacto vegetarian for 44 years, cooking during all of that, so I've done a lot of experimenting with plant-based cooking. Many of my meals are vegan-friendly.)2 -
It's not clear from your OP: Are you relatively new to vegan cooking/eating? (I know you said you've eaten mostly whole foods for quite a while; how long you've been entirely plant-based isn't as clear to me.)
Others have talked about ways to add flavor, and I totally agree, but I also want to comment on the issue of getting a handle on sources of umami ("meaty") flavors in plant-based cooking as one aspect of that. If someone is coming from a diet that includes more meat (etc.), that can be a useful thing.
There are a bunch of ways to add umami to plant-based dishes: Some foods work well (mushrooms immediately come to mind, toasted/roasted nuts (possibly ground so invisible), some seaweeds), cooking methods help (pan-browning/cararmelizing onions/garlic, roasting veggies, long slow-cooking plum tomatoes), and there are lots of amendments that move a dish in a more umami direction (tamari, miso, unsweetened cocoa powder (try it in chili!), nutritional yeast).
I'm not a recipe cook - rarely use non-baking recipes for anything other than new flavor combo ideas - so I don't know about the recipes. (And I'm not vegan: I've been ovo-lacto vegetarian for 44 years, cooking during all of that, so I've done a lot of experimenting with plant-based cooking. Many of my meals are vegan-friendly.)
Trader Joe's has a new mushroom-based seasoning that might be a good source of umami in good in meatless meals: http://www.whatsgoodattraderjoes.com/2019/01/trader-joes-mushroom-company.html. I haven't tried it, but it seems to be getting good reviews. Plus, you can return things to Trader Joe's if you don't like them.3 -
It's not clear from your OP: Are you relatively new to vegan cooking/eating? (I know you said you've eaten mostly whole foods for quite a while; how long you've been entirely plant-based isn't as clear to me.)
Others have talked about ways to add flavor, and I totally agree, but I also want to comment on the issue of getting a handle on sources of umami ("meaty") flavors in plant-based cooking as one aspect of that. If someone is coming from a diet that includes more meat (etc.), that can be a useful thing.
There are a bunch of ways to add umami to plant-based dishes: Some foods work well (mushrooms immediately come to mind, toasted/roasted nuts (possibly ground so invisible), some seaweeds), cooking methods help (pan-browning/cararmelizing onions/garlic, roasting veggies, long slow-cooking plum tomatoes), and there are lots of amendments that move a dish in a more umami direction (tamari, miso, unsweetened cocoa powder (try it in chili!), nutritional yeast).
I'm not a recipe cook - rarely use non-baking recipes for anything other than new flavor combo ideas - so I don't know about the recipes. (And I'm not vegan: I've been ovo-lacto vegetarian for 44 years, cooking during all of that, so I've done a lot of experimenting with plant-based cooking. Many of my meals are vegan-friendly.)
Trader Joe's has a new mushroom-based seasoning that might be a good source of umami in good in meatless meals: http://www.whatsgoodattraderjoes.com/2019/01/trader-joes-mushroom-company.html. I haven't tried it, but it seems to be getting good reviews. Plus, you can return things to Trader Joe's if you don't like them.
Good to know! Nearest is about 90mi from me, but I'll put it in my mental file to check out when I'm there.
Someone here suggested food-processor-ground dried mushrooms in a rich tomato sauce (with lentils); that was really good. Thinking the TJ's seasoning might have a similar effect.
Thanks!
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I'm not vegan, but I do enjoy some vegan foods. I've had good vegan food and bad vegan food. Usually the bad food is stuff I attempted to make myself.
There is a nice vegan cafe near me called Fortutea that has delicious food (plus coffee beans and loose-leaf tea). Some of my favorites that they serve are their cashew mac & cheese, apple & cheddar panini, sweet potato hummus with homemade chips, and their vegan oreo cheesecake. They also have "The Impossible Burger," which is surprisingly good and meaty. Even my fiance liked it.0 -
Vegans make their food tasty in the same way as non-vegans, they just use non-animal based products and/or substitutes. The below might help you to figure out what is missing if the food you make is bland.
https://food52.com/blog/20286-daniel-patterson-s-7-dials-of-taste
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I eat a lot of plant based foods now and spices and condiments make things taste great, with little fuss I now use salsa for a lot of things (Aldi has a fresh salsa in their cooler section that's amazing-I use it to top mushroom dishes, asparagus, in salads, on potatoes etc etc). I throw different spices with beans and rice, use different low calorie dressings as marinades for grains and veggies etc. 0
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Thanks for some ideas for good flavors to add. Some I knew, some sound like some great new ones. Wish I could try them all as the majority sound lovely (got some food allergies that interfere with my ability to enjoy them all, sadly).
And for folks who gave some ideas for why vegan food might be bland: thank you. That's kind of what I was looking for.
Interesting point about 'why' people go vegan, and how that might affect the importance of cooking vs. the importance of ethical considerations.
And also good point about Americans and cooking and how little so many Americans, by and large, know about how to cook well without a few key ingredients. Thinking about almost everyone I know, that actually correlates pretty well. I mean, I have a few friends who are good cooks and they typically went out of their way to learn about cooking more than they were taught by their parents (not more practice cooking, but actively sought out methods and tricks of cooking a good meal that were different than what they were taught).
Everyone else I know follows recipes, but doesn't really know a lot about techniques that involve flavor, etc... They may still have good food, don't get me wrong, but take out a few ingredients, and it all falls to pieces.
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cassyblack86 wrote: »I am a vegan chef, and I'm American. And I can assure you that my food is not in the least bit bland.
Any recipes you'd recommend, then?0 -
It's not clear from your OP: Are you relatively new to vegan cooking/eating? (I know you said you've eaten mostly whole foods for quite a while; how long you've been entirely plant-based isn't as clear to me.)
I am not new to vegan cooking/eating in terms of making dishes (maybe 10 years now?) although I am not entirely plant based. Can't be, at the moment. One major hurdle (although there are more than one) is that I'm allergic to soy, and also I cannot have wheat, but have such a high sensitivity to wheat that I cannot have foods that are processed on the same equipment lines and get contaminated. So most grains, most pseudo-grains, and most legumes, nuts, and seeds are all processed on lines that process wheat. There are some brands here and there that are not, but they are typically so costly that I just can't afford to get even close to enough protein to stay healthy. My daughter is in the same boat, although my son is currently vegetarian edging toward vegan.
If I were independently wealthy, and could eat whatever I want, I'd be perfectly happy to be vegan. Don't care one way or the other about meat flavor, although umami is definitely one of the flavors that I find tricky to add to veggie based dishes (especially without soy sauce).There are a bunch of ways to add umami to plant-based dishes...
Thanks for the ideas. Many I sadly cannot use (stupid allergy and other issues, again), but my son might be able to utilize, especially the cocoa powder and seaweed. Thanks! Forgot about cocoa in things like mole and such!I'm not a recipe cook - rarely use non-baking recipes for anything other than new flavor combo ideas - so I don't know about the recipes...
i used to be a recipe cook, then stopped for a while because the family had so many allergies pop up that I just couldn't find recipes that fit, and then slowly started trying to use recipes again because I have discovered that I just cannot accurately remember flavors enough to mix them together myself well. If I try something in a recipe that goes together, I can remember that. If I have two flavors I have tried separately, though, I literally do not seem to be able to figure out if they would be good together or not on my own until I try them. If there was such a thing as 'flavor challenged,' that'd be me.
It's one reason this issue is of interest to me, because our ingredients are almost ALWAYS expensive because they have to be free of many allergens. So a recipe that is terrible is a financial blow, and not being able to tell if something will have a lot of flavor, before I make it? Really ends up being a handicap in trying to find good food!1 -
I don’t tend to cook based a lot on recipes (some, but usually only when I want something really special), but the recipes and cookbooks I’ve used have never lacked in flavor. That being said, PARTICULARLY with cooking (versus baking) there’s no hard and fast rule that you have to follow it to the letter. If something you’re making isn’t to your liking, then adjust (one of my favorite go to recipes is far too salty for my taste if I follow it exactly, so I cut the salt way back). This is why it’s good to taste along the way (pro chefs do), and season to taste as you go. Don’t be afraid of salt, especially.0
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I'm not vegan but sometimes eat vegan or vegetarian meals. I don't think the recipes I have used have been bland.
Can you post an example of some American vegan recipes you thought was really bland?
Diet recipes that have very little fat, salt or sugar can be less good tasting but that is not just vegan recipes.0 -
My plant-based dishes except vegetable soup are typically bland because I never learned how to cook (I can cook enough to eat healthy food, but not enough to be confident that I can serve other people my food and they will enjoy it). However I've eaten enough vegan food at restaurants to know that there are many flavorful vegan recipes out there.0
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Depends.
You gotta remember that Americans are the ones that put Raisins on Potato Salads.
Your food may be bland by nature...
hehehehehehe Just kidding.
I find that people who follow recipes to the letter, end up with bland dished, because the ingredients vary in quality, origin and most importantly.... The creator's taste may be different to yours.
They may like the bland taste.
I know that some people find salty, dishes i think are tasteless.
Keep in mind that Walmart iodized salt is different than Himalayan Pink Salt.
Same for Canned beans vs fresh beans. Soaking beans vs raw cooking also changes the flavor profile.
Things like that.
Dark/Black Kale is very bitter, while Cavolo Nero is sweeter. The difference is where they're grown.
So, to summarize. If you follow a recipe and it sucks, try changing some things around.
Adding more salt, adding fresh garlic, Herbs etc.
Take notes and who knows, maybe you'll find your groove.
I find cooking to be a very relaxing process.4 -
You gotta remember that Americans are the ones that put Raisins on Potato Salads.
I have never seen or heard of potato salad with raisins. Gross. Who does that?
I think you are right that everyone has different tastes and when you cook you should adjust seasonings to match your own tastes. If you are used to eating more spice, fat, sugar, salt or fresh herbs, etc and trying out diet vegan recipes it might seem very bland because it is missing something you are used to.2 -
Depends.
You gotta remember that Americans are the ones that put Raisins on Potato Salads.
Your food may be bland by nature...
hehehehehehe Just kidding.
Where is that a thing. I've lived in the US all my life, and never seen it.
That said, although raisins on potato salad sounds disgusting, are raisins supposed to be evidence of bland cooking? I've seen lots of Sicilian recipes that use them in various ways, and my understanding is that that's due to influence from the middle east, where they are used in a variety of dishes.
I don't like plain raisins or raisins in dessert foods, but I will use them, as well as other dried fruits in plenty of quite flavorful savory dishes that tend to have these inspirations (some of my tagine dishes, for example).
Re recipes, I can't ever bring myself to follow them to the letter, and couldn't cook from them regularly. I tend to use them as inspiration. However, I think how good they are depends on source and it may be likely that people who don't really know how to cook or are beginners and feel they must cook from recipes also seek out really easy recipes that happen to be not well vetted and are bland.
I also suspect, as others have said, that lots of people who go 100% plant based are thinking about it from a health perspective (or ethical, but I think the ethical people are more likely to also care about taste) and so find recipes on a site that isn't really about taste, like Forks Over Knives. Also, a lot of those sites are really anti fat (including nuts, olives) and anti salt and I also think may believe that food being bland is positive, as one of their things is that 100% plant based causes weight loss, deals with food addiction (sigh), etc.5
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