Vegan

Though I’m all for high-quality prepared sauces and such to use as shortcuts, I’ve never found a bottled vegan barbecue sauce I really like. But this nearly instant sauce is so easy that I’ve ended the search. It’s especially good with tofu, tempeh, and seitan.

Make this salad ahead of time to allow the flavors to become bolder. This is delicious in a bowl as a refreshing summer meal. Or serve this on top of a plate of assorted greens or bowl of cooked grains, rolled up in a tortilla, or as a topping for baked potatoes.

Salade Niçoise is a beautifully composed salad of French origin that looks fancy but is incredibly easy to make. The traditional version is often made with tuna, but here the fish is replaced with baked tofu, which makes a great stand-in. And the array of ingredients—white beans or chickpeas, slender green beans, tomatoes, and olives—makes it a splendid main dish salad for a summer meal, either on busy weeknights or festive occasions.

Packaged baked tofu is tasty and not all that expensive, but homemade baked tofu is even better. The trick to this chewy, savory transformation of bland white tofu is to make sure it’s well pressed and to let it marinate for plenty of time.

Crushing and smashing green beans and cucumbers creates nooks and crannies to soak up as much umami-rich miso sauce as possible. And this is a dressing you'll want a lot of.

This isn’t the thick harissa that resembles a paste. Treat it like your favorite barbecue sauce and smother grilled steak and chicken with it.

Serve this light snack warm, room temp, or cold; just make sure you give it a generous dose of acid and salt.

Giving the tomatillo some time to drain and cool after it’s been grilled makes for a creamier and more flavorful sauce. Serve alongside grilled bone-in rib eye.

Start by roasting your bananas in coconut oil, sugar, and salt until they caramelize. Then, make your vegan ice cream mixture using sugar, cocoa butter, coconut oil, coconut milk, and cashew milk. Combine it with your roasted bananas and add to your ice cream maker. The soft serve delight will be well worth the effort. 

Recipe Adapted From: 'How to Eataly: A Guide to Cooking, Buying, and Eating Italian Food' by Oscar Farinetti

These pickles are extra salty and crunchy. They’re best paired with fatty cuts of meat but also good to munch on by themselves. This recipe is from Gunpowder, an Indian restaurant in London.

Haiga mai has become a middle-of-the-road alternative for many health-conscious Japanese households. The appearance and taste is close to that of fully polished rice, but haiga, the nutrient-rich germ, is left intact (though the hull has been removed).

The two flavors, miso and mustard, make an unlikely but incredibly delicious pair.

The smoky and sweet pineapple flesh can be scooped out and added to salsas, spooned over shortcakes or ice cream, or served alongside grilled pork, chicken, or fish. This recipe is from Lord Stanley in San Francisco, CA.

This compote would be quite fine on toast.

This irresistibly smoky-spicy condiment lasts for a month and perks up everything from scrambled eggs to lamb chops.

If you can’t find coconut vinegar for this collard greens recipe, use 2 Tbsp. apple cider vinegar instead.

You can do the first fry ahead of time, then soak the plantains in garlic water, dry, and hold at room temperature until closer to mealtime.

For a salsa that won’t send smoke shooting from your ears, be thorough about removing the seeds from the chiles—and even scraping out the ribs, the hottest part.

Green mangoes would be ideal, but slightly unripe mangoes are an imperfect but successful substitute.