The environmentally-conscious omnivore has been subject to a barrage of unsettling, even horrifying, news surrounding the meat industry. Animal welfare is the lowest of priorities for large producers. Labor standards in meat packing plants are appalling. The greenhouse gas emissions from cattle alone rival those of the transportation and construction sectors. Animal products are causing disproportionate harm in our profoundly volatile global community, but goddamn if they aren’t delicious.
But this is not a guide to becoming a vegan or a vegetarian. For some, going cold turkey on meat is an unsustainable plan, sure to be abandoned the first time they eat at a new restaurant or go to a dinner party. This is a manifesto of pantry reform, an opportunity to shift daily habits towards delicious (mostly) plant-based staples that satiate meat cravings while doing less harm to the environment. Quitting meat might feel impossible, but since personal actions can only go so far toward tackling climate change, here is a more tangible alternative: Eating meat should be a special occasion. Treat it like air travel or an interstate road trip. It’s an opportunity to treat yourself with something that brings you joy but sucks for the planet. You can make the systemic change to bike commuting and then let yourself enjoy renting a gas guzzler while on vacation.
When I cook, I feel uninspired by meat substitutes. I love tofu when it’s allowed to star in a dish, stained red in mapo tofu or quivering in sundubu-jjigae, but I abhor it as a catchall replacement in any dish that calls for meat. Filling a diet with plant-based proteins that aren’t pretending to be something else means a whole lot of legumes. When I want a pantry meal that satiates me without being terrible for the planet, I opt for a rich delicacy like white beans cooked in puttanesca. Always a pasta aficionado, I grew up begging for bolognese every weekend and learned to make the unctuous Marcella Hazan-style meat sauce by the time I was twelve or thirteen. As my palate started to shift towards a love of cured goods, however, puttanesca became a staple. Making the dish, I pull out all the stops – smashing whole olives with the flat side of a knife to pit them, toasting chilis in a dry pan before frying them with garlic, and then sliding the pan into the oven so the sauce deepens and caramelizes for hours without requiring constant stirring. As I try to fill out my diet with legumes, I have been overjoyed to discover just how well pasta sauces cling to rich, buttery white beans in lieu of actual pasta. The deep umami of the sauce paired with hearty beans fills me up like I’ve eaten a rich meat meal.
This guide gives some basics for that systemic change. You can make meals at home that fill you up and don’t leave you missing meat. For my palate, the best approach is to steer clear of meat substitutes and lean towards hearty vegetables and starches which are enhanced by plant-based umami sources.
Alliums
Alliums (garlic, onion, and their relatives) are core to most good cooking. In the context of plant based cooking, however, the charge becomes a bit more specific. Onions should be used as an aromatic base to other vegetables to bring both caramelized, brown sweetness and slightly bitter savory-ness. Since they readily soak up a substantial percentage of their own weight in whatever fat they’re cooking in, they’re also a valuable way to infuse dishes with fat-soluble flavor compounds early in the cooking process. Build rich aromatic bases for your dishes by sauteing onions in a healthy splash of oil over medium heat. Salt them immediately to draw out and evaporate their moisture more efficiently. Toss in aromatics more in danger of burning than onions like garlic, ginger, whole spices, and anything dried. Right before adding whatever starch, proteins, or vegetables you’re cooking, sprinkle in any ground aromatic components. This order builds a heavily infused oil that will most effectively flavor the onions and the rest of the dish without burning anything
Beans
This manifesto exists mostly to convince you to eat more beans. Beans, lentils, and other legumes are the fundamental way to bring hearty, meaty protein to meatless meals. Bake them, saute them, and roast them. Embark on experiments outside of your comfort zone like sprouting garbanzo beans or embracing unpopular options like lima beans. The goal is to maximize ways to consume legumes until you forget that meat is even an option.
Humans, plants, and animals are healthiest when human agriculture centers around legumes. According to a team of researchers at the University of Leeds, the reasons for this are multifold (Foyer 2016). Legumes have a symbiotic relationship with bacteria which fix nitrogen into the soil. This provides an essential nutrient for plants and mitigates the need for synthetic nitrogen fertilizers. Intercropping legumes with cereals and other cash crops boosts yields, prevents diseases, and allows farmers to use less fertilizer–along with nitrogen-fixing, legumes can help plants access other nutrients like phosphorus (ibid). The limiting factor on most vegetable and cereal growth is nitrogen, an essential nutrient that exists bountifully in the earth’s atmosphere, but prior to the industrial era, existed in agriculture simply because of the bacteria that “fixed” it into the soil.
The energy-intensive alternative to these nitrogen-fixing bacteria is bad for the planet for multiple reasons. The Haber-Bosch process, a century-old method for synthetic nitrogen-fixing, is responsible for about 2% of global carbon emissions, more than the entire airline industry (Menegat 2022). Because of their minimal land use, promotion of healthy soil, and efficient growth, legumes produce less than half the greenhouse gasses per serving as grain and 1/34th the greenhouse gas per serving as beef (Zhang 2023). On top of the carbon impact, the toxic algal blooms and subsequent low oxygen environments created by runoff of synthetic fertilizers are devastating to lakes, rivers, wetlands, and the ecosystems that reside within them.
While there are already a variety of legumes available to consumers in the developed world, diversification of beans in agriculture may help build more resilient food systems. Rather than genetically modify already popular crops, Foyer et al. suggest “Bringing in orphans” for the good of global agricultural resilience. The orphans they refer to are crops with only regional importance which global agribusiness has yet to disseminate across the continents, like high-yield legumes adapted to a specific micro-climate. Many of these orphan crops have adapted to resist drought and other extreme weather events whose occurrence will grow in frequency. While Foyer et al. indicate that these species should be propagated and modified the world over, all the consumer really needs to do is savor their local fresh beans in shell for the brief period they’re available, then purchase from trusted sustainable producers in their dry form for the rest of the year. Perhaps most importantly for the planet, if people are eating legumes instead of meat, the level of energy intensity required to produce their protein is far lower.
Legumes are also excellent for human health. A review for the American Diabetes Institute notes just how nutrient-dense legumes are: high in “fiber, protein, carbohydrate, B vitamins, iron, copper, magnesium, manganese, zinc, and phosphorous” all while containing low calories, carbohydrates, and fat relative to their fiber and protein (Polak 2015). The review explains how switching to a variety of legumes as a regular protein source (one cup per day of cooked legumes) lowers the risk of type-two diabetes, lowers cholesterol, and can help with weight management. Research on human longevity has also found legumes to be a core component of healthy aging all over the globe, with one 2004 study finding that seniors in five cohorts on three continents had a 7-8% lower chance of dying each year than their peers that they ate a high legume diet (Darmadi-Blackberry 2004). The article by Polak et al. does provide some tips to increase one’s intake and enjoyment of legumes, like “Make sure you always have lentils in your pantry. They are the quickest legume to prepare.”, “Bring a legume salad to work for lunch.” and “Add a squeeze of lemon any time you feel that your legume salad or soup needs more flavor.” As flowery and poetic as those tips are, I have a few more ideas.
Caramelization
Gently burning the sugars in vegetables is what makes them taste exceptional. I feel so grateful that I did not grow up in an era where we were subjecting carrots and Brussels sprouts to fifteen minutes of boiling. Broil your broccolini! Singe your cauliflower! Bake your sweet potatoes at 450º until the hot gas escaping them whistles! Delight in the spectrum of flavors that can come from the same food cooked to different temperatures.
Dried goods (kelp, fish, and mushrooms)
Dashi is the broth that instigated the discovery of umami. It is a light, clear, salty broth made with kombu and katsuobushi–kelp and flakes of dried fermented skipjack tuna. Dashi is the base in the broths of miso soup, ramen, and udon. It is densely packed with glutamic acid (see G) and is profoundly delicious. While you absolutely should buy hondashi, the powdered form of the broth, this letter D is dedicated to the broth’s core components, dried kelp, and fish. These, along with dried mushrooms pack complex, meaty flavors. They can be purchased cheaply, and a little goes a long way once they are hydrated. Skipjack tuna–although far less overfished than its more popular cousins–is not the most sustainable option, but Korean cooking relies on dried anchovies and shrimp for the same flavors to wonderful effect. Dried mushrooms, from shiitake to porcini, are also wonderful umami enhancers once hydrated.
Eggs – a lesser evil
So yes, chicken eggs are absolutely an animal product. However, they are responsible for one-tenth of the greenhouse gas emissions of beef products per serving and they are a deeply efficient, decently healthy protein option for weeknight meals (Poore 2018). Eggs are so versatile and exist in essentially every cuisine, so on the nights where you cannot stomach one more bite of tofu or lentils, consider them a halfway decent option.
Fish sauce
My muse. Sauce made from fermenting small fish like anchovies is at least as old as the Romans, who put their garum on everything. I love it in Vietnamese and Thai food of course (I douse every cucumber I can get my hands on in nuoc cham), but fish sauce also does amazing work hiding in the background of other cuisines. I sneak it into tomato sauces to make them taste like they’ve been simmering for hours and use a dash or two to emulate parmesan in risottos. As with tinned and dried fish and eggs, I feel pretty okay about using fish sauce. It’s normally made with krill or anchovies, and in many cases uses just the viscera, bones, and other byproducts while the meat is sold whole elsewhere, meaning the sauce is made from what is essentially a waste product and might as well be put into something.
Glutamic acid (MSG)
The holiest and purest of umami sources: glutamic acid is most available in the form of its sodium salt, monosodium glutamate (MSG). A great deal of ink has been spilled over the racist myths surrounding monosodium glutamate’s negative health effects. These claims are entirely unsubstantiated and have harmed the reputation of Chinese restaurants for more than half of a century. If anything, MSG is bad for people because it is delicious and tricks our brains into thinking that Doritos are giving us vital nutrients. MSG was synthesized in the early twentieth century by a Japanese professor playing with the crystals left behind from kombu (kelp) broth. Having umami in its purest form can be fun, but I certainly don’t think it belongs in everything. In the same way that I think there are more interesting forms of sweetness than white sugar and more complex acids than white vinegar, this guide provides a slew of cool ways to bring meatiness to meatless food and this is simply the easiest. It can make things unbelievably delicious, though. Sprinkle a tiny bit on sauteed vegetables to make them mouthwateringly savory or stir a pinch into an aioli or dip and watch it disappear in seconds.
Hummus
I have a borderline debilitating late-night snacking problem, and hummus has become my go-to balm. It’s extremely filling, relatively healthy, and violently delicious. I mention it here because I think it’s a wonderful model for a balanced, nutrient dense food. It’s got legumes, seeds, fat, acidity, and aromatics. Should you use this model to make a spread with, say, cannellini beans, white balsamic, and rosemary? Yeah, I think you should.
Ice cream substitutes
I really do not know what to do about dairy products. Cheese seems like a lost cause here. What I love the most are funky, complex, nuanced cheeses, and I simply don’t think that anything made from cashew milk is going to cut it. Dairy-free ice cream, on the other hand, has an ever-expanding market with phenomenal milk options from coconut to oat. Since this a guide to being better, not perfect, opt for replacing the dairy products food scientists have already mastered (milk, cream, ice cream (jury’s still out on coconut yogurt)) and keep enjoying the beauties of cheese in moderation.
Koji products
Koji, rice inoculated with the Aspergillus oryzae mold, is most known for its role in the creation of miso. Amazingly, this process of placing mold-filled grains of rice into mushed soy beans also produces tamari–wheatless soy sauce. Miso is deeply versatile across different cuisines and the spectrum from subtle white miso to dark red miso can compliment so many different flavor profiles. Koji brings dark, rich, umami out of soy beans, but if you’re feeling fancy it can be mixed with other cooked, crushed legumes to make miso-like pastes.
Jackfruit
A brief word on jackfruit, the behemoth South Asian fruit, which in its unripe form (generally canned at American groceries), texturally resembles pulled pork: if this is the product that gets you to stop eating pork, then you absolutely should buy cases of it. Like with other meat substitutes, I would suggest at least trying jackfruit in one of its myriad traditional preperations rather than doused in barbecue sauce, but if you’re eating it instead of meat, that’s really all that matters.
Lacto-fermentation
Lacto-fermentation is an ancient preservation process in which lactic acid bacteria turn carbohydrates into lactic acid and carbon dioxide. It generally takes place in low-oxygen environments, like the clay pots kimchi is fermented in, and uses salt to draw out water and kill harmful bacteria. Lacto-fermentation is profoundly beneficial for gut health, but more importantly for my purposes, it creates delicious-tasting foods. Fermentation is generally time–but not labor–intensive, so filling your house with staples can take different forms. I’ve invested time and energy into maintaining a sourdough starter, which provides bold, savory flavors in a variety of baking projects, but the upfront equipment investment of kraut and kimchi-making has been overwhelming to me. If you have access to a vacuum sealer, options like Lacto-fermented blueberries become available. If you’re into sourdough, ginger beer can be made from a “ginger bug”, an almost identical process with what I’d argue are tastier results. Make what you can, but buy as much as you need to keep your fridge full of these products.
Maillard reaction
The Maillard reaction is the browning effect that takes place when the heat from cooking catalyzes a reaction between the amino acids and sugars in food-producing melanoidins. Melanoidins are the delicious compounds found in the crust of a steak, bread crusts, and the exteriors of darker french fries. Browning is key to the most satisfying of meat dishes, but inducing it in high water-content proteins like tofu is next to impossible. One great option for your predominantly plant-based kitchen is the roasted chickpea. Toss fully cooked chickpeas in olive oil and salt, then let them brown and crisp in a 425º-450º oven until their darkened and dried-out skins crack open. Then season them and put them in salads or stir-fry them with veggies. One other amazing way to get the meatiness of the Maillard reaction into meals is with black garlic. If you can’t find it at the store, you can make this at home by wrapping a head of garlic in tin foil and leaving it in the low heat of a rice cooker for two weeks or so, where the enzymes and sugars in garlic slowly react to form a sweet, nutty, and deeply umami substance. Black garlic makes salad dressings and sauces heavenly. I like blending it into a fattoush dressing, but it’s an insanely versatile and unique way to add umami to food.
Nuts and seeds
Great sources of protein and healthy fats. Satisfying as crunchy bites from granola to salads. Nutella. Tahini. What can’t they do?
Oils
Beyond being delicious, oils serve one of their most important roles as conduits for heat. Fats are omnipresent in most meats but are lacking throughout many vegan staples. When you cook a burger, the fat that renders out builds its crust, develops its browning, and helps it cook quickly and evenly. A cauliflower steak is not going to behave the same way. Give yourself permission to cook with more oil than you think you need when sauteing or roasting vegetables. Yes, the richness imparted by oil is part of why the final product tastes good, but it also lets heat energy permeate through food far more efficiently than water due to its lower specific heat capacity (the amount of energy required to heat it).
Preserved lemons
Preserved lemons, lemons that have been packed in salt for weeks on end, give an otherworldly, dark citrus flavor to Middle Eastern and North African cooking. They make chickpea stews delicious and complex and can bring out umami and satiate some meat cravings as substitutes for lemons in places like Caesar dressings. I’m also a huge advocate for Chanh Muối, the salty-sweet Vietnamese drink that uses limes which have undergone the same process, but those are much harder to come by in grocery stores.
Quick pickles
Neon-pink red onion pickles belong on every sandwich. Pickled mustard seeds are exponentially better than and cost 1/1000th of the price of caviar. Enough said.
Rice
It is perhaps the most universal staple food on the planet, so I’m not going to explain anything crazy about rice. I do want to advocate, however, that it is an ideal food for voracious eaters like me who feel that (mostly) plant-based eating is going to leave them hungry all the time. Rice will fill you up. Is it the healthiest vehicle for carbohydrates on the planet? No, and it certainly isn’t when the exterior is removed to create white rice, but it’s about the lowest maintenance whole grain from a cooking perspective. Once you make a habit of making it multiple times a week, it just feels like an obvious starch for most meals.
Smoke
If, from your carnivorous past, you have access to a charcoal grill or some other way to infuse vegetables with smoke, there is something truly special about doing so. Smokiness makes vegetables like eggplants feel like accomplishments when finished. It makes sweet, hearty vegetables like carrots feel savory and intense. Buying a smoker is probably only a good investment if you’re regularly consuming meat, but if you already have a smoker or a grill, there is no reason to get rid of it.
Tinned fish
This is a guide to eating better, not perfectly, and the environmental impacts of tinned fish can range wildly. Mackerel, sardines, sprats, and other small fish are generally better for both you and the planet than larger organisms like tuna and salmon. Large, popular fish are generally overfished in the wild, unsustainably cared for when farmed, have greater bioaccumulation of PFAs and mercury, and cost far more. Tinned fish are also an opportunity to have fish at their peak quality. Even at high-end grocers, fresh fish will almost always have been flash-frozen when caught and then thawed. Tinned fish from responsible producers will have been caught at peak season, then preserved shortly after. They’re also a way to imbue foods with phenomenal flavors at a lower cost, sample less conventional and sought-after fish, and get healthy fats and proteins.
Umami
Umami, the elusive fifth flavor, was coined by chemistry professor Kikunae Ikeda in 1907 while sipping a simple bowl of broth. Dashi (also discussed in the dried goods section) is made by steeping dehydrated seafood and kelp in hot water and acts as the backbone for a variety of Japanese dishes. When he attempted to extract a pure molecule out of the dashi, Ikeda was left with crystals of glutamic acid. In their book, Delicious: The Evolution of Flavor and How It Made Us Human, Rob Dunn and Monica Sanchez explain that glutamic acid, an amino acid, alerts our bodies that protein is likely present and indicates that we are consuming enough nitrogen. Although glutamic acid is present in everything from tomatoes to mushrooms, umami flavor is generally most distinct in meat products (Dunn 2023). For me to wean myself away from meats, bringing savory umami into vegetarian dishes is essential.
While this guide overflows with suggestions for ingredients and ways to cook with them, the only recipe I wish to direct the reader to is acclaimed food writer J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s “Ultimate Vegan Ramen with Miso Broth”. While labor intensive, this recipe should inspire. It mimics the rich, unctuous combination of a meaty ramen with an all-hands-on-deck approach. Infused oil carries fat-soluble flavor compounds from mushrooms and alliums. Aromatics like ginger, dried kelp, and charred eggplant emulate the complex flavors of a traditional ramen in both the broth and soy tare (a separate flavoring component). Miso and sesame paste add body, flavor, fat, and mimic the aspic quality of pork broth. Perhaps most importantly, the sweet potato and mushroom topping spotlights delicious vegetables at the center of the dish. This is what I want my plant-based food to taste like: hearty, complex, and deeply satisfying.
Vinegar
Acidity doesn’t help make dishes meaty–per say–but the brightness and tartness of vinegar is so important to cut through fat and help experience flavor more thoroughly. Without acidity, foods taste dull and too rich, and require far more salt to feel properly seasoned. It’s not just for salad dressings and grain bowls either; stews, soups, and sauces all benefit from vinegar specifically to lighten them up. Much like salt, vinegar should be added right up to the line where one starts to be able to taste it.
Whole grains
Don’t let that bag of dry farro in your cupboard sit unwanted for years before being tossed in a box on the way to the food bank or thrown into the trash during a kitchen cleanout. Bring your bulgur or farro or whatever home and immediately cook it. Then freeze some of it, throw the rest in the fridge, and start incorporating it into plenty of bowls. Whole grains are so healthy and affordable, but deeply unsexy if not heavily dressed (see: vinegar) and generously garnished. I really love using whole grains as a lukewarm base upon which beautiful seasonal vegetables can shine, but there’s nothing wrong with a veggie chili.
XYZ
There’s so much about being a consumer in the developed world that I just don’t know how to grapple with. I feel immense guilt, gratitude, and overwhelmedness at my privilege in relation to food, and, despite my best efforts, I just don’t know how to fully commit to veganism. I believe some of this is about veganism’s optics and aesthetics. The plant-based culture in America has a long journey to take toward humility, inclusivity, and understanding. Some of it is about convenience. I’m on a meal plan and have a limited budget for supplementary groceries, so my capacity to eat delicious, plant-based food at every meal is seriously impaired. But I know that most of it is just my insatiable drive to eat every single thing on the planet. I love food so deeply. I love cooking food that makes me drool at two in the morning and crafting elaborate dinner parties and compiling simple ingredients from the farmers market and shaking weird cocktails and pouring after-dinner coffee and savoring flavors for the first time. Writing any food off feels truly painful. But I also know the way I want my actions to impact the planet, and this predominantly plant-based eating is the best way I can imagine living out my values around food. Tastes develop and change with time, and I’m sure that this pantry will shift, but for an eater as voracious as me, it’s a good place to start.
Sources Cited
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