March 29, 2024

Vegan Seafood Taste Tips

By Nazlı Develi of Gurme Vegan

Are you aware of most of the foods we like are not about meat? In fact they are all about the spices and flavors we add to them. In making vegan “fish” dishes, it’s important to get that taste that reminds you of the sea.

Before going vegan, I was used to eating sea foods. In fact, sea foods were the only animal food that I’d eaten. Now, I don’t miss any kind of animal food. But, I think, it would be useful to many people to offer them delicious ‘sea’ tastes – especially for those people who are still trying to be vegan.

Yesterday, I decided to veganize some seafood dishes. Luckily for me, veganizing old favorite recipes is my specialty. It didn’t take long to figure out how to have those flavors of the sea, without the fish. If you have been missing seafood, you can have those tastes back again, and leave the fish in the sea where they belong.

Graphic by Gurme Vegan

When you decide to veganize any dish, it’s very important to use the right ingredient that will stand in for the animal product you’re leaving out. In this article, I’ll try to make these ingredients clear to you.

If you want to create a chewy texture, use tempeh. It is perfect for a crispy vegan fish, octopus or crab.

If you need a softer texture, such as for vegan tuna salad, chickpeas are good.

If you need to get a smoother but solid texture, then pressed tofu works well.

For vegan shrimp, you can use oyster mushrooms, artichokes, jack fruit or palm heart.

Do you know that most restaurants use old bay seasoning in fish? This means, in fact, there is little taste in fish without seasoning.

You can add seaweed, which really gives you the taste of the ocean, by adding kelp flakes, dulce flakes, or crumbled up pieces of seaweed. Lemon juice and nutritional yeast, whether in the recipe or added at the end, is also reminiscent of many seafood dishes. Besides these, other spices such as dill and mustard seed, artichoke flakes, and celery seed are also often used in recipes.

Also visit her interview with Pacific Roots magazine here.

Visit Gurme Vegan online at https://www.gurmevegan.com/

Podcast V: Biocyclic Vegan Agriculture

Editor’s Note

Welcome! Launched in Summer 2019, Pacific Roots Magazine is a platform devoted to issues of veganic agriculture, sustainability, plant based food & more. We welcome you along for the journey as we explore, learn & develop further awareness about this home we call Earth. 

International Biocyclic Vegan Network