Vegan Thai Food (simple recipes & cookbooks)
Vegan Thai Iced Tea (Minimalist Baker)
Learning to cook your own food is empowering, as you no longer have to rely on expensive plastic-wrapped ready-meals and takeaways. Master your favourite cuisines at home. Then every night is restaurant night!
Thailand is home to one of the world’s most popular world cuisines, from rice-based main dishes to fruity desserts. England also has a lot of popular Thai restaurants.
Don’t eat cooked rice after 24 hours.
Before cooking, read up on food safety for people and pets (many foods are unsafe near animal friends). Bin allium scraps (onion, leeks, garlic, shallots, chives) and citrus/tomato/rhubarb scraps, as acids could harm compost creatures. It’s okay to put them in food waste bins (made into biogas).
For tinned foods, fully remove lids (put inside) or pop ring-pulls back over holes (and pinch tops closed) before recycling, to avoid wildlife getting trapped.
The Thai vegan grocery store
- Rice is the main staple food. Biona sells organic rice in plastic-free packaging.
- Coconut milk is used extensively in both savoury and dessert dishes. Choose monkey-friendly brands like Biona or Nature’s Charm.
- Lemongrass is a popular herb, used in soup, curries and salad. As are kaffir lime leaves.
- Most stores sell vegan fish sauce. Or make your own.
Vegan pad Thai
Pad Thai (Full of Plants) is made with rice noodles and bean sprouts in a salty sweet and sour sauce. But this version skips the eggs, shrimp and fish sauce.
Thomas is a French chef. But if you like Thai food, you’ll find plenty of recipes on his site, as his wife is Vietnamese (she runs the site with him) so it’s packed with tasty Asian dishes!
Vegan Thai Green Curry
Again, this is from Full of Plants. It’s full of bold flavours in a spiced coconut sauce, and only takes half an hour to make. Thomas says to check the green curry paste is vegan, as some may contain shrimp.
The difference between red, yellow and green Thai curries is simply the type of pastes used. Green is the hottest, so if it’s too spicy just swirl in some plant-based yoghurt.
Homemade mango smoothie
Mango smoothie (Simple Vegan Blog) makes use of the world’s most popular fruit. Use this 15-second method to easily peel a fresh mango with a glass, if you don’t use frozen chunks.
You can find recipes online for mango sticky rice, but use natural sweeteners (never xylitol, which gives you a funny tummy and dropped leftovers are not safe near pets).
Coconut ice cream
Coconut ice cream (Domestic Gothess) uses full-fat coconut milk, coconut cream and coconut condensed milk, which together make for a mightily coconut flavour dessert!
Good plant-based Thai & Asian recipe books
Vegan Asian offers super-simple recipes by a popular young chef, for recipes that will keep you coming back for more. Recipes include:
- Pad Thai
- Char siu tofu
- Vietnamese mushroom pho
- Singaporean chilli tofu
- Chinese lettuce wraps
- Yang chow fried rice
- Japanese yakisoba
- Spicy Dan Dan noodles
- Satay tofu sticks with peanut sauce
- Korean bulgogi mushrooms
Jeeca Uy is a recipe developer from family of foodies, who learned to cook at an early age, picking up tips from her mother and grandmother.
She finds cooking very therapeutic and hopes you can feel the same, after experimenting with her recipes. She always strives to make her recipes simple with affordable ingredients.
Make It Plant-Based! Filipino (from just over the border) offers 50 recipes for soups, noodles and snacks. Recipes include:
- Filipino-style Tofu Sausage
- Spicy curried taro leaves
- Sizzling mushroom and tofu sisig
- Vegetable Noodle Soup
- Chickpea Lumpia
- Sweet Banana Spring Rolls
- No-Churn Ube (purple yam) Ice Cream
Let’s visit Thailand (and how to help its creatures)
Thailand is one of the world’s biggest countries that borders Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam and India. It has a stunning coastline and a bustling main city of Bangkok, though urban growth and tourism means it suffers from bad air pollution.
Despite its many beautiful animals and endangered species, Thailand does not rank well on the Environmental Performance Index. Poaching for ivory, meat and hides has led many species to be at risk (elephant populations have fallen from 100,000 in 1850 to around 2000 with many mistreated for the tourist trade).
Other animals poached include leopards and critically endangered tigers. A bit like China, some markets even sell live endangered species, with no regards to welfare.
Buddhism is a way of life in Thailand, and many temples serve as sanctuaries for wildlife, though there are many areas where animals need more help.
Animal People Alliance offers compassionate care to neglected street animals in India and Thailand. It trains and employs vulnerable people (and pays living wages) to train them to care for and vaccinate animals. You can donate via the site.
The organisation was co-founded by 80s pop singer Belinda Carlisle who says she is dedicating the rest of her life to addressing animal welfare issues in Asia.
Soi Dog also does wonderful work in Thailand. Although it’s nicer for dogs and cats to be adopted locally, often this is not possible on Thai streets. And if you are a regular traveller, it asks for flight volunteers. You can donate your baggage allowance, and this pays for the flight for animals to fly to their new homes.
Flying is stressful for pets, but in this case it may be their only chance of a new loving home.
