i am a vegetarian who loves cooking. a lot of the time, i run into recipes that call for meat that i would really like to try, but i'm not sure how to make them without meat while maintaining the overall taste and spiritof the dish. the Vegetable Substitution Tables would be a chart or database (if it were online) which would tell you what part of what plant to use to approximate the same impact as the meat the recipe calls for. i have tried this with middling success over the years in everything from soups to pasta dishes. it would be helpful to have an authoritative listing of what will definitely work.
-- rhino, Mar 17 2000

Umami http://www.iijnet.or.jp/srut/index_e.html
This month's Scientific American (April 2000) had a sidebar on umami. It looks like there's a fifth basic taste, to go along with the well-known quartet of sweet, sour, salty and bitter. (Everything else about a food's flavor is really smell, not taste.) Anyway, umami is primarily found in animal protein... meat. This might explain why there's something missing about any attempt to substitute vegetables into a meat dish. (Good news: you can use MSG.) [egnor, Mar 17 2000, last modified Oct 04 2004]

a four item table http://goodkidsclot...arian-dinner-guest/
a start [popbottle, Dec 15 2014]

I'm not a vegetarian but when I eat vegetarian food much prefer making dishes that start out vegetarian (like say, grilled peppers, capers, goat's cheese and olive oil as a pasta sauce) rather than the "We put nuts in this instead of chicken" kind of dish which, to my mind, never really work.

There's no substitute for meat really, especially bacon. Mmmmm!
-- hippo, Mar 17 2000


I have found tofu and hazel nuts stir fried and seasoned with white pepper to be a little reminiscent of a pork roast. Only a little, but given the constraint of the umami factor, I'll take every little bit I can schwing.
-- LoriZ, Sep 06 2001


What is the "umami factor?"
-- snarfyguy, Sep 06 2001


'It tastes like meat'.
-- StarChaser, Sep 08 2001


oh... I kinda hoped this would be the "Vegetarian services tax," a way to tax vegetarians into submission every time they try to evangelize carnivores such as myself.
-- arghblah, Jan 31 2002


Bouillon Cubasis?
What gives meats a good flavour over a barbecue is smoke coming back up after drippings hit hot coals.
-- thumbwax, Jan 31 2002


I thought this was going to stand for "Value Subtracted Tax". I was just thinking to myself, "Grrr! Why do some dumb bastards want EVERYTHING taxed?!" when I saw what this was really about.

Anyways, although I've been a lapsed vegetarian for three years now, I can definitely understand where you're coming from. Enjoy your croissant with your tofu, or whatever.
-- Guncrazy, Jan 31 2002


Incidentally, croissants are (or should be) vegetarian, but anyone know if you can get vegan croissants? Or would that be a ciabatta ( s/butter/olive oil/ )?
-- pottedstu, Jan 31 2002


Gooogle returns no records for "vegan croissant", so I guess not.
-- angel, Jan 31 2002


Making a vegan croissant is as easy as making a croissant, substitute a vegan margarine for butter. The problem is it does't taste as good, croissants are mostly butter held together with flour, and there isn't a margarine made that can do the taste/texture thing that butter can do in a croissant.
-- vegan croissant research institute, May 31 2002


Have you ever tried grilling slices of Haloumi cheese? Its a great 'alternative' to slices of pig.
-- dijit, Jul 01 2002


there are myriad dishes that have equally good vegetarian alternates. i made my usual (vegetarian) lasagna for supper today. my recipe definately would not appeal to vegans, and it's certainly not low-fat. tamales are another dish which actually benefits from the meatless treatment. the best thing you can do is stock up on some good vegetarian cookbooks, or gather recipies off the web.
-- aubergine, Sep 04 2002


Beans on toast?
-- notme, Nov 26 2002



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