Vegan Dishes You Wouldn’t Believe

When most people hear the term “vegan,” they immediately think of hippies eating nothing but tasteless raw vegetables. That is not the case when it comes to Vietnamese vegan foods at all or—do an chay.

Most Vietnamese who are vegans, whether completely or just on special days, are so for religious reasons. Before continuing on, there may be a need to establish the difference between vegetarianism and vegan.

Vegetarians are people who simply don’t eat meat. They avoid anything that has ever been alive walking, crawling, swimming or flying. Vegans are a little stricter than that. Not only do vegans not eat meat, they also don’t eat any animal byproducts such as eggs. Though eggs that are laid for human consumption have nearly no chance of hatching (because the roosters are kept away from the hens), vegans believe that since there is no way of being sure of this, eggs are to be avoided altogether.

Many may believe that, as a vegan, all one eats is bland bread and grass. Don’t be fooled, if you are gifted cook or if you know where to look, you can find Vietnamese vegan foods that taste just like the original inspiration, maybe even better because it is even less fattening.

Not everything is bland—we have soy sauce! Yes, soy sauce, made from soy beans is completely vegan, so that is a great flavoring there. Of course, there are some dishes where soy sauce just won’t do and must be enjoyed with Vietnamese’s famous fish sauce. Fish sauce comes from, obviously, fish, so as a vegan, the original is off limits and you must make your own.

Making one’s own fish sauce out of something other than fish and tasting like it should sounds completely impossible, but trust me, it can be done! Fish sauce, depending on what you eat it with may be prepared different ways. All Vietnamese know that fish sauce comes very thick in a large bottle with an extremely strong smell. If it’s for dipping unseasoned meats, it is most likely very thick and strong. If it’s for topping into a bowl of noodles, you’d put a bit more in, so the sauce would be thinned out, so it wouldn’t be so strong.

If you’re eating noodles with crunchy deep fried tofu and “duck,” you’ll need a watered down, sweetened vegan fish sauce. (Notice “duck” is in quotation marks, I’ll tell you how to make vegan “duck” later on.) You’ll need the following ingredients: ½ c. sugar, ¾ c. coconut juice, 1 ½ tsp salt, thai chilies, chopped garlic, soy sauce and lime juice. From the ingredient list alone, you can probably see where the flavor’s going to come from—from the coconut juice and soy sauce, and trust me, it’s even better.

Simply mix the ½ cup of sugar, ¾ cup of coconut juice, 1 ½ tsp of chili and some lime juice together. You should, whenever you’re making fish sauce, taste it to make sure it’s just right. When the flavor is just right, just add a few drops of soy sauce and stir it in to give it the color of fish sauce and add to it chopped garlic to add a little more flavor to it. This vegan fish sauce should taste exactly like the real thing. Remember to use either warm water or warm coconut juice to ensure that the sugar completely disintegrates and mixes well into the sauce so it doesn’t leave a viscous puddle at the bottom.

Roasted duck is a dish every Vietnamese has had at least once. The flavor of it is moist and uncanny and nothing can ever come close to it, right? Believe it or not, we’ve found a way for vegans to enjoy the oh-so-delicious thit vit quay, without the meat… and the extra fat. Guess what is the main ingredient in thit vit quay chay—tofu!

All one needs to make this delicious, usually fatty, dish is store-bought firm tofu, a can of coconut flavored soda, soy sauce, salt, coffee vegetarian oyster sauce and fresh chili pepper. Coconut flavored soda may be found in any Vietnamese supermarket. All the ingredients listed sound simple enough, but some may wonder what coffee vegetarian oyster sauce is—it’s just like what it sounds like. Regular oyster sauce obviously may not be used because it is not vegan; you can buy vegan oyster sauce in a regular Vietnamese grocery store. Vegan oyster sauce’s main ingredient is coffee.

First, soak the tofu in warm water—not too long, though, or it will become too soft. After draining the tofu and lightly padding it dry, fill a deep pan full of vegetable oil and fry slices of tofu that have been cut about an eighth of an inch thick, until it barely becomes a golden color. Beware: do not fry it for too long, or you’ll come up with another well-known tofu dish. Ideally, as soon as you see the first hint of golden brown, take it out. Leave the tofu to the side to let cool while you prepare the sauce that will make the tofu-duck taste like actual duck—or thit vit quay.

Banh beo is literally translated into English as “water fern cake.” It is one of the famous dishes of the city of Hue in Vietnam. Hue is the ancient royal capital of Vietnam and is known for its large vegan population because the majority of the ancient population, and even now, is strictly Buddhist. Banh beo are individually steamed cakes usually topped with vegetable oil, green onions, chopped dried shrimp and decorated with deep fried pork skin. Obviously, if we’re going to make vegan banh beo, we’ll have to use some substitutions. The flour is mixed with warm water and tapioca flavoring in a pot and is very thin and soupy with a white color, resembling coconut milk. After stirring the flour with the water and warming it so it would mix well, turn the stove off to let it cool. Ladle the thin soupy mix into small dishes and carefully place the small dishes into a steamer. Steamers, like the one shown, are large metal containers stacked on top of one another. The bottom level is filled with boiling water and the next level is has small holes punched all over the bottom of it to let the warm from the hot water come through. In this level, foods that are steamed are usually placed on top of each other, usually wrapped in banana leaves, such as banh nam or banh bot loc. However, with banh beo, the soupy dough is carefully placed in its small plates. Since they are not stackable, we add another level to the steamer and place some more plates of banh beo on top of that. Of course, there is not enough steam from the hot water to reach up to twenty levels of banh beo—usually, there are only two levels, with a cover to cover over the top level. This entire steamer is placed on the stove and we simply light the stove until the water boils and turn it off. Leave the plates in the steamer for a little over an hour and check the banh beo. Cooking time may vary, but you will know when the banh beo is done when it becomes thick and no longer runny.

The shrimp that will top the vegan banh beo is made of carrots. After peeling carrots, skim down the carrots with a  peeler and put the thin slices into a food processor to quickly chop up into tiny pieces to resemble shrimp. Put it to the side.

Prepare a little rice porridge. Simply take cooked rice, add water to it and cook on low heat until it mixes well. Take a small bit of thick rice porridge and mix it with the chopped carrot. It should be so well mixed that you wouldn’t even notice there was rice porridge in the mix. This simply thickens the carrot to make it look more shrimp-like.

Atop the steamed cakes, add a little vegetable with chopped green onions before topping it with a table spoon or two of “shrimp.” As for the pork skin that is usually served with this dish, use, instead, small pieces of dried bread, resembling croutons—that are unseasoned. The vegetarian fish sauce served with this should be moderately mixed with water with just a little sugar.

There are so many delicious healthy alternatives to Vietnamese foods usually made with different types of meat. Of course, there are some who are attached to the original meat version of certain dishes, but give the vegan alternative a chance. You’ll find that some of the dishes are just as delicious, or even moreso, and all are healthier, made completely without any sort of meat or animal byproducts.

Photo Sources:
The photo of the vegan duck is my own.
Banh beo: www.biggestmenu.com
Steamer: http://www.wingyipstore.co.uk/pictures/content1341/metal+steamer.jpg