Vegan/Vegetarian Recipes.

[*GrumpButt*]

Bacon grease keeps excellently in the fridge.

Cold-pressed are fine, but any refined oil such as canola (and pretty much everything sold as "vegetable oil") is bad bad bad. It tends to rob the body of vitamin e, and is around 5% trans-fatty-acids. The myth of "saturated" fats being bad for you has been pretty thoroughly debunked; butter, lard, coconut oil, chicken fat are all healthy oils compared to processed vegetable oil. I mean, you don't want to eat a fuckton of lard, either, but it's better for you than refined vegetable oil.

Yeah, but bacon grease tastes downright funky in chocolate cake if you try it instead of vegetable oil...

Butter.

Keep in mind that vegetable oil didn't exist when cake was invented.

Will try it next time.

Melt it first.

You won't believe the difference in flavor and mouthfeel when you bake with butter or lard instead of vegetable oil. It's like 1000 times better. People go nuts over my cakes, but I don't do anything fancy, I just use unsalted butter instead of vegetable oil.

So instead of 1 cup of oil, use one cup of butter then? That shit sounds sooo good. xD

[East Coast Hustle]

you gotta make sure it's unsalted butter, though. Most of what you buy in the supermarket is salted butter.

[Freeky]

Nonsense, you just have to make sure you GRAB the unsalted butter.  It's lower down in the freezer than the salted butter.

[Nadezhda]

Wine + plastic wineglass = dinner, dessert, and a fushing snack tooo.

[LMNO]

In addition to bacon fat, I've also been collecting schmaltz (chicken fat).  Every Sunday, we roast a whole chicken and use the leftover for lunches that week.  When the bird comes out, it's rendered quite a lot of fat.  I pour it off, and use it when sweating a mirepoix or trinity (which I do for damn near every meal I make). 

Then I use the bones for stock.  For $1.50 a pound, you get quite a lot out of that bird.

[Dysfunctional Cunt]

I have a lot of recipes that use rendered pork fat.  I get it from the butcher at the little Mexican grocery I go to.  I've tried using other oils and fats for some of the things I cook instead of the pork and it really has a big impact on the flavor. 

I do use peanut oil for frying, but for the most part, I'm with y'all on the bacon grease and chicken fat.  It just adds a depth of flavor you can't find in other oils.

I have a braised baby lettuce recipe I do with toasted pumkin seeds and bacon that I do in bacon grease.  I've tried using vegetable oil and it just sucked...

Eh my two cents where they probably weren't needed

[Suu]

I can't has a lot of fats, so cooking with rendered pork or chicken fat would probably make me pretty sick...I hate my damn GIT. 

-Suu
Misses the tasties.

[East Coast Hustle]

Nonsense, you just have to make sure you GRAB the unsalted butter.  It's lower down in the freezer than the salted butter.

Well yeah. I didn't say that most of what they HAD in the supermarket was salted butter, just that that's usually what you buy.

Also...


I don't like cooking with rendered chicken fat. It imparts a weird flavor to everything.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Nigel, do you have any reccommendations for when a person needs an oil with a very high smoke point?  Animal fats and olive oil smoke way too early for some of the searing and flash frying I do, which means the oil will break down and add a bitter flavor. 

Peanut oil.

Beat me to it. Also, IIRC, grapeseed oil has a very high smoke point, though you'd obviously want to make sure it was flavor-compatible with what you're cooking.

Grapeseed oil is FABULOUS. It's really great on salads when you don't want the flavor of olive oil, which I don't always care for.

I don't always like cooking with chicken fat... it depends a lot on what I'm making. But I am in the habit of mentioning it whenever I talk about cooking with lard because I know a lot of Jews. You can also render beef tallow from suet, which is cheap at the butcher, but I don't like tallow as well as I like lard. I think lard has a more neutral flavor.

(Lard in cake tastes just fine, BTW. If anyone was wondering. And, it's KING for pastries and pie crusts!)

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

In addition to bacon fat, I've also been collecting schmaltz (chicken fat).  Every Sunday, we roast a whole chicken and use the leftover for lunches that week.  When the bird comes out, it's rendered quite a lot of fat.  I pour it off, and use it when sweating a mirepoix or trinity (which I do for damn near every meal I make). 

Then I use the bones for stock.  For $1.50 a pound, you get quite a lot out of that bird.

Yes yes yes!

It's amazing how many meals you can make out of a $5 roaster.

[Felix]

Pointing this out cause I say it mentioned.
Tofu will not make you more feminine. That's a myth. The estrogens in tofu are not actually estrogens, they are phytoestrogens that only act as a estrogen stabilizer, in other words, they will only increase your estrogen levels if your body says your natural levels are too low.
The myth gets around because people like to depict vegetarians as weak.

[Slyph]

Yeah well how much can you bench brah?

[Luna]

Pointing this out cause I say it mentioned.
Tofu will not make you more feminine. That's a myth. The estrogens in tofu are not actually estrogens, they are phytoestrogens that only act as a estrogen stabilizer, in other words, they will only increase your estrogen levels if your body says your natural levels are too low.
The myth gets around because people like to depict vegetarians as weak.

ProTip:  Equating "feminine" and "weak" around here WILL get you a boot up your arse.

[Kai]

There's a whole lot of conflicting evidence about non-fermented soy at the moment which may turn out to be due to it having absolutely no effect, but for the moment the best bet is to limit intake.

Felix: Unless you have some links to the particular journal articles you are referencing, I suggest you just keep your mouth shut. And mysogyny is frowned upon around here. But I'm sure Nigel will enjoy riding your ass about it, literally.

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

I didn't see any threads like this. What are some good vegan/vegetarian recipes? I'm not sure how exactly you would make a recipe a Discordian one...I suppose you would just call it so and it would be.

Would you prefer a recipe using ground vegans or cut?