Meat with Vegan Problems: Fried Chicken

This week on dishes that I can’t use egg or milk on but I definitely cannot just search for a “vegan” substitute is…

Fried Chicken!

A little bit different from the breaded porkchops that used panko/bread crumbs, this time I’m breading with flour. I don’t have a deep fryer so instead of doing the true Southern deep-fried, bone in, skin on chicken; I got chicken breasts that were so large they were possibly from a chicken/dinosaur hybrid and I cut them down into manageable pieces to make a fried chicken cutlet situation.

My trials were based off two recipes: one Simple Fried Chicken Breasts that used nothing to bind the flour to the chicken. You just mix the chicken in flour until it’s well coated and let it refrigerate for a few hours. This seemed to be a rather optimistic endeavor. The other one was Chicken-Fried Chicken that used buttermilk before dredging in flour. I was excited to try this because I have had my eye on some nondairy “buttermilk” at the store.

Let’s just clear the air- neither one of these did great. I blame my frying skills. I have fried things before, definitely. I do live in the South. But it’s not something I’ve done a lot of. If I do fry, it’s usually okra. Or fried green tomatoes. 

What happened this time? It appears that the oil wasn’t hot enough. What was strange was despite turning up the heat, the oil was never hot enough. The burner was clearly hot. The pan was hot. The oil… appeared hot but did not cook the chicken. Even the second batch turned out pale and sad! The oil bubbled and sounded like it was working, but the chicken never approached anywhere in the vicinity of golden brown. But, let’s not be deterred. We can still learn some things from my oil poached, barely coated, chicken breasts.

No filter in the world can save these chicken breasts. 

Left- tossed in flour. Right- buttermilk then dredged in flour.

• Coating with flour and no binder did not add a lot of texture to the outside of the chicken. Not enough flour stuck to really make a breading and honestly the final product, while moist, would definitely not be considered a fried chicken anywhere in the country.
• The vegan buttermilk worked pretty well, and probably would have worked better if my oil was at an appropriate cooking temperature, instead of a tepid bathtub. Even though the color is off, in the photo you can actually see a crinkly, flour coating that stuck all the way around the chicken. Success! Or at least, partial success!
• The ingredients to the nondairy buttermilk are a mix of grain milks and some bacteria. In the future, instead of buying a jug I think I’ll mix up some oat milk and plain nondairy yogurt and use that instead. Cheaper and I’m not left over with extra vegan buttermilk. I guess I should make some… cornbread? Biscuits? Cake? The carton suggests smoothies and sauces. Maybe biscuits and gravy are in my future…

Cookbook Review: Bad Manners

 A note about the name before we get started- as you can see the cookbooks that I own have their previous name “Thug Kitchen” which was apparently an anonymous blog before it was a cookbook. When the world found out that “Thug Kitchen” was actually two white people when the first book came out, well, that wasn’t great. It took a few years (and by a few years I mean they didn't address it until summer 2020 :-/ ), but now they have renamed all of their publications “Bad Manners.”

We’ve actually had the original Thug Kitchen cookbook (renamed Bad Manners: The Official Cookbook) in our pantry for a while and I didn’t even realize it was vegan. I just thought it was very into healthy eating; less fat, less sugar, less processed food. Now that my kid can’t have eggs and milk, the vegan part of the cookbook became a lot more appealing. Generally, the recipes are good, though they can take a long time to make. The enchiladas take over an hour. The chickpea and dumplings (SO DELICIOUS) take a good 90 minutes. I like to cook, but an hour and a half? Chopping, making dumplings, standing by a stove? That is insanity!

And... 5 hours later, you got some enchiladas!

That’s what led me to the second book in the series- Thug Kitchen: 101 (renamed Bad Manners: Fast as F*ck). Supposedly all of the recipes take less than 30 minutes to make. "Supposedly" being the operative word. Some of the recipes are actually very quick. But quite a few of them have in their list of ingredients entire other recipes, and expect all of us to just have the cooked quinoa in our freezers, ready at a moment’s notice (I don’t. You don’t. Nobody does.)

The biggest thing that sets this series apart from other cookbooks? It has cuss words in the titles. In the directions. In the helpful hints. It's a little aggressive.  I think they are trying to make vegan cooking “cool,” but really, how "cool" can you make tofu?

Okay, so are the recipes actually good?

They are good- but they definitely taste healthy. Which, sometimes is great. I like vegetables. I like when dinners have vegetables in them. My kids, on the other hand, don’t love vegetables and have different feelings about these meals. It doesn't use vegan alternatives- like cream cheese or sour cream; it has recipes that let the vegetables shine rather than trying to emulate bad for you (read: delicious) food that uses dairy (yum) and meat (yum).

The other thing that gets me is that they have a lot of soups, salads, and sides and less full meals. Which if you are really trying to convince people to eat vegan, seems like something you would want to address. Most people who are skeptical of a vegan diet are skeptical because they find it hard to imagine a meal that’s not centered around a meat. So, if you have a vegan cookbook of a bunch of sides, but don’t tell people what goes in the center of the plate, I’m not sure who you are going to convert.

So, is it good for people with allergies?

It’s great if you are allergic to eggs, milk, fish, or shellfish!

If you are allergic to other things, though, it’s not great. Some of my other cookbooks at least mention alternatives for common allergies, but this one is unconcerned. If you take out all animal protein, you’ve got to find some protein somewhere- so there’s a lot of soy, there’s a lot of peanuts and tree nuts, and there’s a fair amount of sesame. And, while some recipes have rice or corn, there is also a lot of wheat. If you have multiple food allergies, you are going to have to make some substitutions.

 

If you want a cookbook that swears at you to try to make vegetables cool, then this series is for you! If you don't want to offend your grandma, you might want to hide it in the back of the pantry.

Meat with Vegan Problems: Beef Stroganoff

First of all, let me just say that I am not a stroganoff expert or even a stroganoff lover. I mean it’s good, it’s creamy, but it's not something I actively searched for. Plus, I had never even made it before I went looking for ways to use up my vegan sour cream. But it does raise a good question- how do you make your sauce creamy if you can’t use real dairy? I’ve tried some vegan “mac and cheese” and “alfredo” recipes that use nutritional yeast, pureed vegetables, and/or pureed tree nuts to make the sauce and while they are edible, they don’t really taste like the real thing. They just don’t taste super cheesy. If you gave me a plate of vegan mac and cheez and said “This is mac and cheese,” I would be disappointed. If you gave me a plate of vegan mac and cheez and said “Here’s some pasta with a sauce on it,” things would go a little better.

BUT vegan sour cream, on the other hand, is much easier to sub into sauces. The first time I made stroganoff I thought the sauce might break or turn lumpy or separate; turns out, it was no problem to replace the real stuff with the fake stuff. I’m not sure if a straight spoonful of vegan sour cream would taste like the real thing, but if you mix it into a sauce, plop it on a taco, put it on a bowl of chili (aka hide it with other food) it is a nice, refreshing, creamy bite.

Vegan AND soy free?! Yes, thank you, I think I will follow my heart.

The brand we get it the same as our favorite cream cheese. And why do we get that brand? Because it’s the only one at our grocery store. I have made it from scratch from tofu and while it tasted okay… my wife politely asked me to look for something store bought. Pureed silken tofu and vinegar is definitely an acquired taste.

So, what other changes did I make to the Stroganoff recipe I found online?

• I used regular pasta instead of egg noodles. (More specifically, the only brand of pasta that isn’t processed on the same line as eggs.)
• I took out the Worchester sauce because garlic is in everything and subbed in soy aminos. Allergic to soy? You could use coconut aminos.
• Instead of strips of beef, I used ground beef. My toddler prefers it. It's easy. Why not? (Actually this time, I used ground turkey because it was on sale.)
• I added peas. Because peas are delicious and my toddler will actually (sometimes) eat them.

Yummy! It's not stroganoff, but it's like... stroganoff adjacent?

Without further ado, here’s my

Toddler Friendly

Egg Free

Dairy Free

(still has wheat, but you could make it over rice I guess)

Stroganoff Inspired

BEEF STROGANOFF

Serves: 6-8

Cooking time: 40 minutes

Top 9 allergens: wheat

Ingredients

• 1 lb of pasta
• 1 cup frozen peas
• 1 lb ground beef 93%
• 2 tb vegan butter
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 1 lb mushrooms, sliced
• 1/3 cup dry white wine
• 1 can beef stock
• 1 tsp aminos
• 3 tb flour
• ½ cup vegan sour cream
• Salt and pepper
• Parsley

Instructions

1. Cook pasta, add peas at the last 5 minutes.
2. Brown ground beef and remove from pan.
3. Melt butter. Saute onions 3 minutes. Add mushrooms, saute 5-7 minutes. Deglaze pan with wine, cook 3 minutes.
4. Whisk stock, aminos, and flour together. Pour into pan, stir, simmer for 5 minutes. Stir in sour cream and beef. Add salt and pepper as needed. Serve over noodles with parsley.

 

What do you do with the rest of the tub of vegan sour cream when you've only used 1/2 cup of it?

• Make the delicious avocado enchiladas from Go Dairy Free
• Make chicken paprikash from Cook Fast, Cook Slow
• Put it on top of tacos
• Put it on top of Pumpkin Turkey Chili
• Probably throw it away because it's a giant vat and who eats that much sour cream?

Meat with Vegan Problems: Meatloaf

After a short break, we are back to

MEAT WITH VEGAN PROBLEMS:

MEATLOAF

The question? What to bind your meatloaf with if you can’t use milk or egg? Real meat, 100% not vegan, BUT no magic egg! Okay, so the contenders for the egg replacement are: 

• 1 tb cornstarch
• Gelatin blend- 1 packet of gelatin mixed with 2 tb warm water
• Flax egg- 1 tb flaxseed with 3 tb water

Ohh la la look at them egg replacements. Just like the real thing???

I based my recipe on these mini meatloafs, a favorite in our house before food allergies took away my precious eggs. I set up my experiment by making a replacement “egg” out of each of the three options. Then I prepared the meatloaf mix, added in the "eggs," popped them in the oven, and did a taste test.

9 tiny meatloafs, held together with egg replacers, hopes, and dreams!

Turns out they all tasted pretty much the same. I mean, it’s mostly ground beef. What’s not to like?

They also all held together pretty well! Which, also, I mean, it’s mostly ground beef... which generally holds together?

None of them were done by 15 minutes. Well, they were probably edible, but I wasn’t into serving my toddler beef tartar. I’m not sure if it was the egg replacements changing the cooking time or if it was just my oven, but they should have been done early (I made 9 loaves instead of 8!) not late.

The main differences between the egg replacements were: how easy the actual replacement was to prepare and how delicious the meatloaf crust was.

From left to right: cornstarch- looks like meatloaf; gelatin- looks like meatloaf bled some jelly; flax egg- looks like meatloaf bled some water, with 0/9 magazine ready

Cornstarch

• Difficulty to Prepare: Easiest!
• Crust: Most delicious!

What a success! Not only was the cornstarch the easiest to prepare (Spoon out 1 tablespoon of cornstarch. That’s it. That’s the directions.); it also had the most delicious crust, in that the crust actually existed. It wasn’t hard or burnt, it just had a different texture than the mushy interior. Wonderful!

Gelatin

• Difficulty to Prepare: The Worst
• Crust: Medium

This was a solid second place for crust, but not only was it hard to prepare (to get the water hot enough to dissolve the gelatin), I had to do it twice because it congealed before I mixed up the meat on my first try. I thought I was being extremely prepared when I prepared all three egg replacements while the vegetables were cooking, but turns out a gelatin replacement egg should be used immediately. By the time I got around the mixing in the meat, it had turned into a solid, rubbery mass. No great for binding. I had to peel if off the bowl and start all over again. The final product was okay, but you can see how the gelatin melted in the oven and ran on the pan. Cow two ways. Best not to think about it.

Flax Egg

• Difficulty to Prepare: Medium
• Crust: Nonexistent

The flax egg is a really common vegan replacement for eggs in baking and it is what I had tried in the past in this recipe. But it’s just too much water and the top of the meatloaves lost their texture. It’s not hard to prepare, you just have to make it a few minutes early because the flax has to react with the water to thicken. Overall, not the best replacement, particularly in this recipe that already has wet vegetables added to the ground beef.

 

So here’s my take on the mini meatloaf recipe:

Mini Meatloaves (NO eggs)

Serves: 4 (2 mini meatloaves)
Total time: 45 minutes

Top 9 allergens: wheat

Ingredients

• 1 tb olive oil
• ½ c grated carrot
• 1 tsp dried thyme
• ½ medium red onion, finely chopped
• 8 oz mushrooms, finely chopped
• ½ c chicken stock
• ½ tsp salt
• ½ tsp black pepper
• 2 slices of bread
• 1 lb lean ground beef
• 2 tb cornstarch
• Ketchup

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 425^oF. 
2. Heat a large skilled over medium-high heat. Add oil. Add carrot, thyme, onion; saute 3 minutes. Add mushrooms; saute 6 minutes. Add stock, salt, pepper and bring to a boil. Cook 3 minutes or until liquid evaporates, stirring frequently. Cool completely.
3. Place bread in food processor; process until coarse crumb form. Combine breadcrumbs, beef, cornstarch, stir in mushroom mixture. Shape beef mixture into 8 free-form loaves; place on a baking sheet. 
4. Bake at 425^oF for 15-20 minutes or until done. Top with ketchup.