How to Make Your Own Vegan German 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!
This German Potato Salad (The Simple Veganista) is made with baby potatoes and fresh dill, combined with crunchy cucumber and peppery caraway seeds, in a stone-ground mustard and apple cider vinegar dressing.
Before cooking, read our post on food safety for people and pets (many foods are unsafe near animal friends). It’s best to just bin allium scraps (onion, garlic, leeks, shallots, chives) as like tomato/citrus/rhubarb scraps, acids could harm compost creatures.
For tinned ingredients, pop lids inside cans (or pop ring-pulls back over holes) to avoid wildlife getting trapped).
German food is not one of England’s most well-known international cuisines. Yet that’s a shame, because not does the similar climate lead to similar ingredients (so such meals are easier to replicate with local foods).
But Germany has a very strong tradition of healthy food (naturopaths have the same status as GPs in Germany). And if you thought Germans all ate sausages, not so. It has the highest ratio of vegans on earth (Berlin is the most vegan-friendly city on the planet).
Affordable German Potato Soup
German Potato Soup (Ela Vegan) is warm, cheap and filling. It’s surprising considering how much we love potatoes in England, that it’s not a soup recipe on its own. So learn to make this version instead.
The flavours come from a blend of carrot, leek, parsley and celeriac (if you can’t get hold of the last vegetable, you can sub with celery).
Homemade Vegan Schnitzel Recipe
This homemade schnitzel recipe (Vegan on Board) is a bit more complicated, replacing chicken with celeriac slices. Fried up and served with potato salad and greens.
Plant-Based Black Forest Trifle
Black Forest desserts are inspired by the traditional colours (black and red) of the national dress, in the beautiful German area of Bavaria. Cherry and chocolate also makes a tasty dessert combination!
This homemade black forest trifle (Rainbow Nourishments) is a show-stopping dessert made from layers of vegan chocolate cake, chocolate custard, macerated cherries and whipped dairy-free cream. It’s a lot easier to make, than it looks!
It’s So Easy to Be Vegan in Germany!
With a huge percentage of people in Germany who eat plant-based foods, there is no issue. There are even vegan supermarkets! Most food is made fresh, with popular food brands helping things along.
Billie Green and LikeMeat both offer plant-based sausages and other meat alternatives. While BettahFish and Toni M offer plant-based tuna.
It’s interesting that the media focuses on the demise of plant-based alternative foods in the UK, due to a dwindling market. In fact, this is not because people are giving up vegan food. It’s due to people increasingly making their own food (for health and affordability) from real ingredients.
But also because people are increasingly questioning the ethics of the brands behind the brands (despite the marketing, McDonald’s is losing ground in the UK especially, due to dwindling sales and councils increasingly refusing to give planning permission to new outlets).
But also because many of the UK’s top ‘meatless brands’ are in fact owned by huge companies that exploit animals in other ways. For instance, Richmond vegan sausages are owned by a company that also makes factory-farmed sausages (Moving Mountains sales are increasing, as it’s independently-owned).
The story of German food brand LikeMeat is interesting. It was founded by a young vegan man, whose father owned one of the country’s top meat food brands. His dad decided to indulge his son’s ‘whim’. But sales were so good, they overtook the meat and now it’s a plant-based food brand instead!
