Nail Your Vegan Diet With The Right Tools For The Job

So, you’ve decided to go vegan? Marvellous. Eat veggies; don’t hurt animals, that sounds pretty good. That is until you have to decide what to cook for dinner. That’s right, most of us who haven’t been vegan for a significant amount of time find it a bit of a challenge to know where to start.

Firstly, there’s all sorts of ingredients that you hadn’t really considered before – like tofu. What do you do with tofu or nutritional yeast? Then you need to work out how to put them into a meal that will a) fill you up b) give you the nutrients you need and c) taste good.

One of the biggest things that can go wrong when preparing unfamiliar ingredients is over or under-cooking them. Nobody wants to tuck into a soggy piece of asparagus or a too-hard carrot. Do yourself a favour and get hold of two essential pieces of kit to stop this from happening.

The OptiGrill has six automatic programmes that make it nearly impossible to get it wrong (we said nearly!) The LED indicator will let you know the optimum time to stop cooking, which is great for you and any other vegan friends you might be making dinner for too.

While the Veggie Pan may look like a frying pan, it’s so much more. It has a handy spot in the centre that turns green when it’s got to the perfect temperature for cooking your vegetables. As it’s designed specifically for this purpose, it won’t be cross-contaminated with other ingredients if you live with non-vegans.

Now that you’re fully kitted out, it’s time to get cooking…

Who better to turn to for advice on tofu than a blogger that writes The Tofu Diaries?! She has put together the most appetising recipe for tofu you can imagine, with plenty of paprika, garlic and chipotle paste. This finger food will be an immediate hit and a recipe you’re bound to come back to again and again.

That nutritional yeast we were talking about earlier is a great vegan ingredient to have hanging around your cupboard. The key is in the name – nutritional – it’s high in fibre, protein and vitamin B12, which are all important for your diet. Made by Luci is a big fan of it and uses it in her superpowered quinoa vegan risotto recipe.

The burger is a staple and every vegan should have a great recipe for one that they keep going back to. There are lots of different ways that you can go with it, but Mexican is definitely up there with the best. Just like The Little Blog of Vegan, get yourself loads of yummy things to squash inside that bun. She suggests salsa, guacamole, jalapenos, lettuce, tomato and onion and we think she’s not far off the mark.