- Hi friends, it's Sam, and today I'm gonna share with you
my top 10 tips for vegan cooking for beginners.
Now, I know that when I went vegan, I felt like I had
to relearn all of my cooking techniques and skills
because I didn't really know how to cook vegan food,
and fair enough, I had been cooking the same way
for my entire life until that point.
So I wanted to share with you my top 10 tips for
new vegan cooks so that that way hopefully cooking
becomes an easy, breezy, wonderful and totally scrumptious
experience for you.
I would like to say a big huge thank you to Skillshare
for sponsoring this video.
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Now on to the rest of the video.
My top 10 tips for vegan cooking for beginners.
So tip number one starts at the grocery store.
Now of course, in order to cook you need some food
to cook with, so keep it simple.
Start with things that you already know and love that
are already vegan, such as vegetables, fruit, grains,
legumes, nuts, and seeds.
Then you can start adding in the vegan versions of
things you might be used to.
So try some non-dairy milk, a vegan butter alternative,
you can even try some vegan alternative meats.
Check out the health food aisle, or what I like to call
the hippie aisle, and see what kind of fun
vegan things there are.
But also, there's a lot of things that are in
the other aisles that are gonna be accidentally vegan too.
Almost all dry pasta is vegan, tomato sauces, chips,
crackers, there's all sorts of good stuff, so just check
the ingredients to make sure and maybe some of your
favorite things are already vegan.
Tip number two is cooking tools.
Now the good news is you don't really need anything
different than you probably already have for cooking.
My number one favorite, most important,
essential cooking tool is a good chef's knife.
If you are looking to invest in a good knife, do not worry
about the cooking block full of a million knives.
You really only need like one good chef's knife and you can
do almost everything with this knife.
Now I know this might look intimidating, especially if you
hold it like this.
(Sam making screeching noises)
But a big knife is actually so much easier to work with.
The long blade means it can easily cut through things
like a squash, it's got a lot of weight so it's gonna do
most of the work for you and the wide blade means you can
scoop things up easily, toss them in a pan.
And my other two favorite cooking tools are
a food processor and a blender.
Now you don't need these to get by, but if you're looking
to invest in some nice appliances or your birthday
or Christmas is coming up and you wanna add it
to your wishlist, I'll link all of my favorite kitchen tools
down below in the description.
Tip number three is don't be afraid.
Vegan cooking can actually be really, really easy.
There's many benefits, like you're not gonna poison yourself
if something is undercooked, so you don't have to be scared
of eating your own food, but also vegetables tend to
cook quickly or you can even eat them raw,
so dinner can be done in like 15 minutes if you want.
Keep in mind that you're already eating vegan food
although you might not think of it that way.
Potatoes, pastas, veggies, fruits.
Cook up the things you're already cooking and just make
more of them and enjoy that, so easy.
Vegan cooking is quick and easy to prepare.
I even have a tab on my blog where you can click
30 minute recipes.
It'll pull up all my recipes that take 30 minutes or less
so you can have dinner in no time.
Tip number four is to rethink how you treat your vegetables.
Now I can't tell you how many times people have told me
that vegetables or tofu is boring and bland and flavorless,
and then I look at what they're preparing and they spend
all this time marinating, seasoning, grilling, barbecuing,
all these different treatments to the meat on their plate
and then they like, boil the broccoli or steam the broccoli
and toss it on the plate.
Obviously the broccoli isn't gonna be as exciting
if you treat it that way.
Now if you did all of those same treatments, the seasoning,
the marinading, the barbecuing, the smoking, the grilling,
whatever you do to a vegetable, to broccoli, potatoes, tofu,
beans, any of them, they're gonna taste a lot better.
It's really about how you treat it.
Can you imagine if you just boiled up some chicken
and had no flavorings on it, served it, obviously that would
be really bland and boring and disgusting,
so why do you expect vegetables to do all this work
on their own?
Help 'em out a little.
Give 'em some spice, give 'em some treat.
Treat them how you would cook the meat on your plate
and you're gonna love them so much more.
Number five, veganize your favorites.
Stick with what you know and just make it vegan.
So if you have pizzas on Fridays and tacos on Tuesdays
and pastas on Mondays, do all of that.
Have pastas on Mondays and tacos on Tuesdays
and pizzas on Fridays.
Just make vegan versions of them.
You don't have to suddenly fall in love with Buddha bowls
and green smoothies and energy balls.
Stick with what you know, stick in your comfort zone,
and just like, little, little inches out towards veganism
and you're gonna enjoy it a lot more.
You can try veganizing them yourself.
I have a video on how to swap this for that
to make it vegan.
I'll link it down below or I have a boatload of recipes
on my site and in my cookbook, where I veganize everything
for you already.
Number six, don't be afraid to try new things.
Now you might come across some vegan recipes or dishes
and think it's kinda weird, it's different,
it's not what you're used to.
Try it, maybe you'll like it anyways.
Some people think vegan meat alternatives are weird
and gross and creepy, and here I am thinking eating
dead animals is weird and gross and creepy
and I would rather just eat the things that are made
out of plants.
I find that a lot less creepier.
So keep an open mind, try new things, and maybe you'll
like some and maybe you won't like others but then you'll
learn what you like and you can find your way.
And give it several tries before you really give up on it.
I know when I first tried nutritional yeast, I didn't even
like it and now it's one of my favorite things.
I sprinkle it over popcorn almost every night.
Love, I love that stuff.
Nutritional yeast, and it was only because I tried it
more than one time and my taste buds adapted to it.
Apparently it takes about 10 tastes for your taste buds
to adapt to a new flavor, so give it a try,
keep trying new things, and maybe you'll find
your new favorite.
Tip number seven, spices.
When people tell me that vegan food is bland,
I point out to them that their entire
spice cabinet is vegan.
Check out my spice drawer.
I know it's a really big huge mess, but this gives you
an idea of all of the flavors I can infuse into my food.
There are endless possibilities of combinations and adding
some spice to your beans or your tofu can take it from
totally bland and boring to next level delicious.
If you don't have many spices now, that's something you can
really start building up.
Every time you try a new recipe with a new spice,
pick it up, slowly build up your collection, and you'll see
what you love and before you know it, you might have
a terrible looking drawer like I do.
Tip number eight is about vegan baking.
So when it comes to vegan baking, it's very easy to follow
your same recipes except replace the dairy
with non-dairy milk, with vegan butter, vegan yogurt,
any of that kind of stuff.
Now to replace the eggs, it can be a little bit trickier
for things like muffins, cookies, and cakes.
You can use a store bought egg replacer.
You can use chia seeds or flax seeds and water.
You can use banana, you can use applesauce.
There's lots of different options, thought all give
slightly different results.
If you don't want to experiment when it comes
to vegan baking, you don't have to.
I've done it and a lot of other people have already made
a vegan baked version of basically about everything
there exists in the world already.
Whether it be muffins or cakes, cookies, pies,
we've done it all.
We've veganized it, so just Google up a vegan recipe,
search my blog, check out my cookbook,
ton of good stuff for you.
Easy peasy, done.
Tip number nine is my favorite tip, and that's to eat more.
Yeah, love it.
Other than oil, meat and cheese tend to be the most
calorie dense foods, so when you take the meat or cheese
out of your diet and replace it with low calorie vegetables,
you are eating a lot less calories, so feel free to have
bigger portions, eat more, go back for seconds,
even thirds if you want.
If you are feeling tired or weak or hungry, it just means
you're not eating enough food, so go back and eat some more.
And lastly, number 10, practice makes perfect.
If you find vegan cooking a little bit of a struggle
in the beginning, don't worry.
It'll get easier over time.
You've probably been cooking the same way your entire life,
so to make a shift can be a little bit challenging
in the beginning, but it's just about breaking old habits
and forming new ones.
Once you get the hang of vegan cooking, it'll just be
really easy and natural to you and you won't have to stress
or think about it at all.
I hope you enjoyed this video, and if you do, let me know
by leaving a like.
If there are other tips and tricks that you find helpful
for your vegan cooking, let me know down in the comments.
I love to hear your ideas.
Don't forget to subscribe for a brand new fuss-free
vegan video every single Wednesday
and I'll see you next week.
Bon appetegan! (chicken clucking)
Say hi to the camera, Chickpea.
You're such a good girl, Chickpea.
The cutest dog ever, aren't you?
Look at that tail go.
Give me a hug? Cutie.