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When approached by an evening that involves cooking for a vegan, even the most seasoned chefs can face a struggle in deciding what and how to cook for the main course and side dishes that constitute an evening meal. The following are a few useful rules of thumb to help you in the process of preparing meals for your vegan guests and relatives: So, First Question - What Does Vegan Mean? Many people get confused between vegan and vegetarianism. While a vegetarian usually avoids all meat products, vegans shun all meat and fish AND animal by-products also. Meat by-products include most cheese and dairy items. Any item that is derived from an animal must be avoided when creating a vegan meal. Plan Ahead Whether cooking one meal or ten, cooking meals for vegans requires great preparation. It is essential for every meal to be full of flavour and nutritionally correct, which can be difficult for the chef who is accustomed to using meat and animal based ingredients in meals. The meal or meals should be specced-out completely in advance, considering how best to introduce protein, fiber, iron, and flavor to the vegan meal. Planning ahead is less problematic if you can discover a good on-line recipe collection with plenty of vegan recipes. Nevertheless, you should check each of these recipes item by item before utilizing them. Sadly, some recipes described as vegan are actually not even close. To make life difficult, some individuals have very opposite opinions of what 'vegan' actually means. Nonetheless, if you try hard many of these vegan recipes are exceedingly flavorsome and extremely healthy. Some may need unusual ingredients, but again, the net can be a major help in tracking these down. You might actually be able to find online sellers of vegan food ingredients, which, as they are usually 'experts' in the veganism, might even be able to offer advice on substitute ingredients for your vegan dinner. Introducing Variety In vegan cooking, it is tempting to create unexciting meals that are not very different from one another. This can, and shouild be avoided. In fact, vegan meals can be as interesting as those cooked in non-vegan cooking. With the large number of TVP style alternatives to animal based ingredients, substitutions can be easily found for ingredients from cheddar cheese to mince, which really helps to add a great deal of flavor and diversity to the meal. Watch Out for Hidden Dangers As the host or hostess at a vegan meal, your first duty is to be 100% certain you are abiding by your vegan guests' choice of lifestyle. It would be all too easy, as well as a lot quicker, to merely assume that all non-meat ingredients are safe for vegans and prepare a dinner based on that. However, a good chef will remember to read through the list of ingredients of all bought items needed for the meal in order to be absolutely sure the food is acceptble to vegans. You may discover some unexpected places that meat and assocaited by-products crop up, e.g.: • Sugar: About 50 percent of the sugar processing factories in the US use carbon from animal sources to process the sugar. As a result, quite a few vegans won't eat processed sugar. • Gelatin: Most chefs do not know that gelatin is made from fish or animal sources. • Soups: Some tinned vegatable soups are have stock made from chicken in their ingredients. • Pastries: Even those that are not made with milk or eggs may contain animal-derived lard. • Worcestershire Sauce: This sauce is made using anchovies, look out for vegan alternatives - they are out there If you follow these guidelines, anyone can cook a dinner that is suitable for meat-eaters and vegans alike, and your vegan friends will without doubt thank you for care and attention to detail. R.Wakefield is an author who offers nutritionary support and cookery articles for Recipes 4U (http://www.recipes-4u.co.uk), one of the greatest free recipe collections on the net. Recipes 4U has over 40K recipes with specific recipe sections for vegetarian recipes, chicken recipes and seafood recipes.
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