How to implement vegan food in your eco-friendly accommodation? Here are some tips and recipes to introduce herbivorous dishes in your menùs. Changing your shopping list you can have a positive impact on the environment.
The easiest way to make a positive impact on the environment begins with your shopping list. Much cheaper and easier than for example an electric car or solar panels on your roof.
Select the best vegan food
With a little research, you can find the best meat, dairy and fish substitutes. There are a lot of vegan products and recipes out there and some are really good, but a lot don’t taste, smell or look very nice. And some taste nice but not as what it is supposed to replace. All of these things can put people off of buying vegan products.
When there are new products on the market we try them, if they are good enough we use them otherwise, nice, but maybe for someone else. For example, we bought maybe eight different kinds of vegan cheese, but only two taste nice, with one being really good. The best is for our breakfast, but one of the lesser vegan cheese is really good for melting, so different products can be used for different processes.
Suggestions for your vegan menus
Because we are quite remote some of our guests ask if they can eat here. For those, we offer a starter, main and dessert. Not very complicated but nice and filling meals (people who stay here often travel by bike).
Here are some examples of our vegan recipes:
Starters
• Oven-baked chicory
Chicory sliced in half, flat sides down, some slices of good melting cheese and a slice of a nice ham or bacon on top. Put this in the oven till it is nicely cooked and melted. (we use the best product for different purposes).
• Chicken satay skewers
Get the best Vegan chicken chunks (like our famous Vegetarian butcher chicken), marinade them as you are used to (I use sweet and salty soy sauce and a mix of spices and herbs). Put them on skewers (I make two skewers p.p.)
The longer you let it sit in the marinade the better the taste, the same as “real” chicken. Then put them in a baking or grilling pan. Bake until “tender”…. This is the other nice benefit of vegan meat, the cooking time is shorter and the risk of salmonella and other bacteria is much smaller than with “normal meat”.
• Vegan parmigiana di melanzane
Tomato sauce, eggplant, vegan cheese, layered in a small oven dish. You can also make vegan parmesan with cashews and nutritional yeast.
Main Dishes
For the main dishes, I usually make a one-pot dish, preferably something “local” like mashed potatoes and greens, vegan bacon and sausage. But chili risotto or spaghetti “Bolognese” is also always good. Make it with Vegan minced meat and or some nice vegan cheese. I try to use suitable meat substitutes and traditional seasoning. Most seasoning is vegan anyway and gives a nice flavor to your dishes. Also most of the ingredients always I have in stock and/ or have a late expiration date.
Desserts
• Sweet vanilla custard with whipped cream
• Mini apple pie with whipped cream
• Tiramisu
• Avocado chocolate mousse with whipped crème
The ingredients of these vegan recipes have an extra-long expiration date. For that reason, you always can prepare quickly and easily this vegan food.
The key is to try and make something that looks and tastes like what people are used to eating at home, only without the massive impact it has on the environment.
Vegan Breakfast
And last but not least our signature vegan dish is the Full English breakfast, that comes with fried (vegan) egg, bacon, sausages, baked mushrooms/tomato’s, baked beans, toast, plant-based butter, English marmalade, and Earl Grey tea.
Have you already introduced vegan food in your B&B breakfast or on your hotel menu? Do you have recipes and secrets to share? Do it by commenting on the article!
Cover image: Photo by Maddi Bazzocco on Unsplash
