Veganizing Your Kitchen

The biggest challenge when diving into vegan cooking isn't determining what's in and what's out—we've made that easy with all the guidelines and information in this class. Instead, it's replacing your nonvegan ingredients with nutritious alternatives. That's why we've broken down the vegan diet into categories, with an emphasis on vegetables, grains, legumes, and protein sources.

Eating a wide variety of vegetables means you’re getting a wide variety of nutrients. But health isn’t the only reason to embrace vegetables when you’re eating vegan. When you strip away animal products, you can better appreciate vegetables’ earthy, nuanced flavors—you’ll actually enjoy them, even crave them. We've learned that when cooking vegan, it's important to reimagine how we think about vegetables and their place in a meal.

In vegan cooking, we favor filling, fiber-full, and nutrient-dense dark greens such as kale and Swiss chard over frilly lettuce varieties.

Packed with nutrients, vitamins, minerals, fiber, and protein (not to mention low in fat and affordable), grains are an essential food group in the vegan diet. Grains can be the foundation of a main dish, salad, or bowl. Or they can be added to soups for heft or to burgers for substance. You can learn more about grains in the Hearty Grains course.

There are a lot of dairy alternatives on the market that slide easily into vegan versions of your favorite dishes. You may already have a go-to dairy-free milk or yogurt, but we've found that specific products work better in certain dishes, so it's worth branching out. We love oat milk in many of our baked goods, but its naturally sweet flavor is out of place in many savory dishes. Soy milk is a good neutral base, but it can give mild dishes a soy taste. Almond milk is also neutral and a favorite in savory cooking, but it can make sweet dishes taste a little salty. Coconut milk can straddle sweet and savory recipes, but it tends to be a bit bland. We don't use rice milk; we found it starchy and watery.