Making your own recipes is a fun affordable way to use up leftover veggies, or what’s on sale at the farmers’ market. Base meals around cheap staples like pasta or rice (take your own container to the zero waste shop, but eat rice up quickly, as it’s a food poison hazard, if left too long). Eating plant-based recipes is good for animal welfare, the planet and your health. It’s also a good way to replace tasteless and expensive plastic-wrapped ready-meals from the supermarket. Vegetable Lo Mein with Tofu (Short Girl, Tall Order) is a blend of crispy tofu, noodles and fresh veggies, cooked in a simple tasty stir-fry sauce.
Use vegan butters with no palm oil. Use a reusable baking liner or unbleached parchment paper. Keep recipes away from pets, due to toxic ingredients.
Millions of people enjoy Asian food, from the most populated area of the world. Much of Asian food is based on rice or noodles (look for egg-free brands made with rice, udon or ramen). Very easy to cook, this is the quickest meal you can make for dinner, very filling and very tasty too. And no need for take-out packaging or the expensive price! You can add in any leftover veggies.
Millions of trees are chopped down each year, to make wooden chopsticks. Switch to reusable cutlery, many packs of knives and forks, also contain chopsticks made from biodegradable materials like bamboo.
Plant-Based Asian Recipes
Rice Noodles with Crispy Tofu & Mushrooms (Crowded Kitchen) is made with pan-fried tofu and shiitak mushrooms, edamame beans and a spicy umami sesame glaze. A tasty one-pan dinner.
Vegan Lime Coconut Drizzle Cake (Lazy Cat Kitchen). Most Asian desserts use coconut milk, so choose one that is not harvested by monkey slaves.
Plant-Based Asian Recipe Books
Vegan Asian: A Cookbook is by Philippines author Jeeca, who recreates foods from across Thailand, Japan and China. With a bonus chapter to make the basics like teriyaki and vegan fish sauce, recipes include:
- Pad Thai
- Drunken Noodles
- Curry Tofu Cakes
- Green Vegetable Curry
- Korean Bibimbap
- Japanese Yaki Soba
- Indonesian Fried Rice
- Dumplings & Pho
The Korean Vegan Cookbook offers food that is synonymous with fish sauce and BBQ. But it’s also about ingredients like doenjang (fermented soybean paste), gochujang (chili sauce), dashima (seaweed), and more – ingredients that are fully plant-based, unbelievably flavourful, and totally Korean.
In her debut cookbook, Korean Vegan Tiktok star Joanne Lee Molinaro shows how you can make delicious vegan food. With the intimate storytelling and stunning photography she’s become known for on social media, The Korean Vegan Cookbook celebrates how deeply food and family shape our identity.
Asian Green offers an abundance of recipes from nourishing soups to fast and furious meals. Recipes include Wok-Fried Orange-Soy Sticky Sprouts, Wild Rice Salad, Peking Mushroom Pancakes, Smoked Tofu & Broccoli Korean-style Ram-don and Chinese Black Bean Seitan Tacos. The author also shows you how to make your own seitan and tofu.
Jackfruit & Blue Ginger is a book by a young woman from Singapore who missed her Asian food, while studying medicine at University in England. So she got to work on creating plant-based versions including:
- Jackfruit biriyani
- Cauliflower Samosas
- Fluffy Peanut Pancakes
- Creamy Spinach Curry with crispy tofu
- Shiitake Ramen
- Vegan ‘butter chicken’
- Sweet Potato & Onion Pakoras
- Tofu Pad Thai
- Peking Jackfruit Pancakes
