‘Easy Ingredient’ Vegan Steak Recipes

The most realistic vegan steaks are made with seitan. But as this ingredient is not easy to find in shops, you may wish to start with vegetable steaks!

Portobello mushrooms (Veggie Desserts) offers a similar taste and mouth-fee. The marinade is based on soy sauce, with onion, garlic, salt, pepper and liquid smoke (optional but gives a more ‘steaky flavour’).

Before cooking, read up on food safety for people and pets (don’t feed leftovers to pets, garden birds and wildfowl – due to salt, onion, garlic, spices, mushrooms etc).

These portobello steaks (Ela Vegan) use similar marinade ingredients, but adds balsamic vinegar over liquid smoke, for a more Italian style and rich deep flavour.

Celeriac Steak Recipe

Celeriac steak (The Veg Space) uses a vegetable that tastes like nutty celery, made with mustard, soy sauce and maple syrup. As this does not have protein, Kate likes to serve this with butter bean mash.

Why Choose Vegan Steak?

Red meats are hard to digest and very high in saturated fat. Steak and mince are not good foods to eat for anyone with issues like heart disease or high cholesterol. And red meats are also linked to certain cancers.

The benefits of real steak and mince (protein and flavour) can easily be replicated both in recipes and artisan food products. Some say they are ‘not natural’. But neither is steak before it’s been seasoned. So you may as well do the same with plants. Far kinder, healthier and no factory farms involved.

Steak and mince are popular foods, often served as part of dishes like spaghetti bolognese or shepherd’s pie. But in a country of 60 million people, we don’t have enough land for everyone to eat free-range. So even if you eat meat, most of the time it’s going to be factory-farmed, unless stated otherwise.

In fact, cows near the end of their lives are ‘fattened up’ by cramming them into pens so they can’t exercise off any calories. It’s heart-breaking if you’ve ever accidentally come across this, while out walking near a farm.