How to Become a Vegetarian Chef

A well-balanced vegetarian diet can be a healthy and safe alternative to a traditional omnivorous diet. Learning to cook vegetarian meals is certainly different from cooking with meat, but it doesn't have to be difficult. Meat can be replaced with similar-tasting meat substitutes, soy products, or tofu, or you can learn to cook recipes that don't require any of these. Becoming familiar with new foods, vegetarian diet needs, cooking materials and your local health food store will help you to cook tasty, fun and healthy vegetarian meals. Add this to my Recipe Box.

Instructions

1

Decide what kind of vegetarian cooking you prefer. Vegans eat no animal products, including eggs, dairy products, and honey (and some choose not to eat yeast or Jell-O either). Lacto-vegetarians include milk products in their diet. Lacto-ovo-vegetarians include milk products and eggs in their diet. Pesco-vegetarians eat fish products, and pollo-vegetarians eat poultry (including chicken, duck, and turkey).

2

Familiarize yourself with your meat-alternative options. Soy milk, rice milk, and almond milk can replace cow's milk. Olive oil, water, vegetable oil, fat-free cooking spray, and canola oil will work in place of butter. Soy cheese or yeast flakes can be used to replace cheese. You can replace eggs with a commercial egg replacer or by combining 1/4 cup whipped tofu with 3 tablespoons of water.

3

Know the foods that help fill in the gaps left by removing meat from the diet. Whole grains are an important part of carbohydrate intake. Nuts, oils, and avocado provide healthy fats. Nuts and nut products, soy products, beans, and lentils are good sources of protein. Iron can be found in fortified cereals and spinach, and calcium can be found in milk products (if you choose to consume them) and many calcium-fortified products. Vitamins B12 and D must be found in fortified foods or supplemented with a daily vitamin.

4

Learn the vegetarian "lingo." Tofu is a concentrated soy food. Soybean is a vegetable that contains complete proteins. Tempeh is a soy food with a smoky or nutty flavor that can be used as a meat substitute. Miso is a fermented soybean paste. Tamari is a soy-sauce replacement without wheat products. Gomasio is a condiment made by combining sesame seeds and sea salt. Seitan is a meat substitute made from wheat flour. Agar is made from a sea vegetable is a tasteless replacement for gelatin. Wakame is a sea vegetable that is high in protein.

5

Visit your local health food store. Practice your new vocabulary knowledge by trying to find some of the products listed in step 4. Ask questions of the store associates about anything that confuses you. Learn where things are located.

6

Find some recipes to try out. Start simple. You can find recipes in a vegetarian cookbook at your local bookstore, or you can find them online by typing "simple vegetarian recipes" into a search engine. Practice makes perfect!