Vegetize It! - Beef and Broccoli
I’ve been a vegetarian for 9 years and my husband has been for around 15. We love to cook and are no strangers to substitutions. We use a variety of strategies, so in the Vegetize It! series, I’ll be exploring different ways to approach making food that is vegetarian or even vegan without sacrificing flavor.
We had some extra broccoli in fridge (one of our go-to ingredients), so in thinking of ways to utilize it, I came up with the idea of beef and broccoli. It’s a simple dish using ingredients we typically have on hand like ramen noodles, soy sauce, sesame oil, garlic, ginger, etc. But what to do about the beef?
Strategy #1: Vegan meat substitutes
Meat substitutes have come a long way since the black bean burgers of old. Plant-based protein is big business and there are many companies and brands with a variety of products. The biggest question about using a meat substitute is: what aspect of the meat are you trying to replicate? Is it the size? The texture? The shape? The cooking method?
In this example, the beef in beef and broccoli is often in thin strips that tear apart easily when you bite it. It holds the sauce and gets a little sticky. What we chose is the PAOW Philly “Steak” Strips, which are a little thinner than typical beef and broccoli strips, but otherwise seemed sufficient.
The next question is how to adjust the recipe to use a substitute? In this instance, there weren’t a lot of changes to make. We used this recipe from Seonkyoung Longest and made the follow adjustments:
We didn’t need to trim or slice the meat, because it comes pre-sliced
We cooked the meat for less time since it was thinner, but we still followed the indicators in the recipe
That was it.
The end result was still sticky and tender, and since most of the flavor was coming from ingredients other than the meat (ginger, garlic, soy sauce, etc), the meat substitute does not distract from the overall dish. We will admit that the thinner slices of the Philly strips did end up with the meat sort of melting into the noodles rather than being distinct chunks. So if you are looking for more chunky pieces of meat, we would recommend Gardein beefless tips and perhaps cutting them to bite-sized pieces, but otherwise making no additional changes.
Stay tuned for more tips and tricks on how to adapt recipes to be more plant-based!
