Make Your Own Vegan Deep South Recipes

Learning to cook your own food is a very empowering way to release yourself from having to buy expensive plastic-wrapped ready-meals and takeaways, often made with inferior ingredients. Choose your favourite cuisine, and master it yourself at home. Then every night is restaurant night!

Gumbo (Ela Vegan) is a popular dish in the Deep South state of Louisiana. Very filling, this Creole dish uses the ‘holy trinity’ of celery, onions and bell pepper, with lentils and beans, serve with bread or rice.

Never eat rice after 24 hours (a food poison hazard). Before cooking, read up on food safety for people & pets (many foods like onion, garlic, spices and fresh dough are unsafe near animal friends). 

Bin allium scraps (onion, garlic, leeks, shallots, chives) as acids may harm compost creatures (same with tomato/citrus/rhubarb scraps).

 

Here at England, Naturally – we strongly believe that cooking your own food with affordable easy-to-find ingredients, is one of the most empowering ways to take back our society from big business. There are lots of wonderful recipe books around, but not that many which are both plant-based and simple.

These four are! If you like world cuisine, all these books are super-easy to follow, and use real ingredients that you can find from any store. Most of us eat the same nine or so meals for most of the time. So between them, you are to discover and perfect a dozen or more tasty dishes, then you are no longer slave to the big supermarket plastic-packed and over-priced ready meal industry!

Before cooking, read our post on food safety and pets (many ingredients like garlic, onion, spices and fresh corn cobs are unsafe near animal friends. Also just bin allium scraps (onion, garlic, shallots, leeks, chives) and tomato/citrus/rhubarb scraps, as acids could harm compost creatures. 

These books are quite expensive (around £20). But if you think about it, learning how to cook your own food, means that within a week or two, the books will have paid for themselves, as you will be using cheap ingredients (like vegetables, rice, beans etc).

Ingredients in Plant-Based Southern Cooking

It’s good to use local ingredients, but cans of beans are not a sin! They are cheap, packed with protein and calcium. Once opened, empty remaining beans into a an airtight tub, and keep in the fridge, recycling the cans.

If you cook dry beans with a modern pressure cooker or slow cooker, know that kidney beans need boiling first, to remove a toxin. For this reason, most people simply use canned.

• Rice is used in many Deep South dishes. Only cook as much as you need, as cooked rice is a food poisoning hazard, is left for more than 24 hours.
• Okra (an Ethiopian vegetable) is used in a lot of Deep South stews. If you prefer to local, just sub with green beans.
• Sweet potatoes are used both for savoury dishes and sweet potato pie. Often flavoured with nutmeg (keep away from pets). Sweet potatoes have more nutrition than white potatoes, and a lower glycemic index.

Vegan Macaroni Cheese

This vegan macaroni cheese is from Madeleine Olivia’s book Make It Vegan. It’s made with cashews and cheesy-tasting nutritional yeast, and only takes 10 minutes to prep.

Vegan Cornbread

Vegan cornbread (Rainbow Plant Life) is a classic staple in the Deep South. Also try this recipe for vegan buttermilk biscuits.

Vegan Crab Cakes

Vegan crab cakes (A Couple Cooks) are worth mastering, for a tasty snack. Serve with vegan tartare sauce.

Canned hearts of palm should only be bought multi-stemmed for sustainability. Having said that, it’s far easier and better to just sub with canned artichoke hearts.

Fresh Peach Cobbler

You can’t get more Deep South than this peach cobbler (Wholehearted Eats). Also try this recipe for a berry cobbler (The First Mess).

American-style Vegan Pumpkin Pie Recipe

This vegan pumpkin pie

This homemade vegan pumpkin cheesecake (Rainbow Nourishments) makes for a lovely autumn dessert, on cold nights. It’s made with a ginger biscuit base, and the filling is a blend of coconut cream and vegan cream cheese. Flavoured with pumpkin puree and pumpkin pie spice.

Before cooking, read up on food safety for people and pets (nutmeg/mace spices are toxic to pets).

Pumpkins do grow in England, but for some reason they are not as popular as in New England (where pumpkin pie is the traditional Thanksgiving dessert).

You now find pumpkin puree in many grocery stores (and Steenbergs offer a nice pumpkin pie spice in a glass jar). Or make your own pumpkin puree (and pumpkin pie spice).

Again despite not being a local food, cheesecake (invented in New York) is very popular in England. Look around the web, there are oodles of plant-based alternatives. Simple ones (like this) use vegan cream cheese (found in any supermarket).

The more advanced and ‘natural’ vegan cheesecakes are mostly based around soaked cashew nuts, for the same buttery flavour. They are simple to make (as long as you remember the soak the nuts a few hours before making the recipe!)

A Refreshing Glass of Iced Tea, Y’all!

Peach iced tea (Minimalist Baker) is a lovely recipe inspired by the Deep South. The peach tea is mixed with orange juice, then ‘marbled’ in glasses with a mix of raspberries, almond milk, vanilla and lemon, sweetened with maple syrup.

It’s surprising why iced tea is not more popular outside the Deep South (‘can I offer you some sweet iced tea, y’all?!