Hey y'all, just in the posting mood today! I was writing another post and thought about my love for good vegan alternatives. I am not personally vegan, but as someone who takes great pride and pleasure as a cook serving other people food, I want to serve my vegan comrades as best as I can, so I try to taste test a lot of vegan stuff. I'm not a carnist who believes that the vegan option can never taste as good, I just have a lot of allergies so I have to be cautious about eating things that aren't meat. However I've tasted and heard from vegans, certain things like cheese simply aren't as good as the non-vegan counter part. I feel like we hear about this stuff way too much though, as there are so many interesting flavors vegans use that carnists don't.
My personal pick for this topic is coconut aminos. Soy sauce is a great way to add umami flavor into almost anything you're making, so I was disheartened at first when I heard that soy sauce wasn't vegan. But one of my vegan friends got me a bottle of coconut aminos to try, and it blew my mind. The extra sweetness in it makes so many things you'd use soy sauce for way better. Teriyaki sauce should always be made with coconut aminos, fried rice gets a slight sweetness that really lends well to the veggies in it, it's so fucking good.
"Better tasting" is highly subjective. For me, I hardly remember what animal flesh and secretions taste like. If I eat a food imitating one that's normally made with flesh, I don't even judge it as an "alternative" anymore. I judge it based on whether or not it tastes good on its own. That's a good enough metric for me, regardless of how close it comes to the "original," and like I said, it's highly subjective. Since I don't interpret animal-derived things as food anymore, I personally have nothing to compare the alternatives to considering the way my mind operates now.
It's also worth noting that these alternatives can be prepared in a wide variety of ways. If you're thinking about particular brands for plant-based alternatives, there are a variety of different ingredients used as bases. One brand of plant-based nuggets may use soy as a base, another may be made of gluten, and some even use pea protein or jackfruit. I generally find soy-based
things very tasty to me, except in the case of non-dairy cheese. I'd rather them be some kind of nut-based, usually cashew-based, and it's great to make these plant-based cheeses at home if you have a blender.
Also, to second @EndMilkInCrisps@hexbear.net, soy sauce is already vegan. The source you got that from probably mixed it up with fish sauce or something of the sort, or they might've been thinking about the fact that soy sauce isn't gluten-free instead, which is a lot more of a common mix-up than one might think.
I respect that a lot, it's personally how I try to enjoy food separate from work. There's just part of me that wants complete parity in what I'm serving. I used to work at a restaurant that served DISGUSTING frozen black bean burgers (nothing wrong with bean burgers, this one just sucked ass) and I genuinely hated sending it out to any vegans who ordered a burger. I just want everybody to get good food, so I put a lot of pressure on myself trying to make sure everything tastes how I want it to now. But knowing that perspective definitely makes me more comfortable with not having perfect parity between the two menus.
I think I wanna give some soy nuggets a try. I've been trying to move away from meat more, but allergies make it really difficult and scary. Especially with a meat like chicken, there's not really much culinary reason not to replace it. Plus I'm even allergic to chicken on random occasions so finding a replacement for that would be good.
I looked into the soy sauce thing, and I think I see where my friend got it. We live in the midwest, where soy sauce selection is scarce. Kikkomen is pretty much the best choice around here, which while it is vegan, it's also just not a very good soy sauce. The other options, I assume weren't vegan, because apparently certain manufacturers just find a way to make it non-vegan, which sucks ass. Speaking of that, I need to check if the soy sauce at work is vegan, I've been working under the assumption that it isn't. I'd rather be overcautious than accidentally serve a vegan something non-vegan yk?