{"id":75682,"date":"2016-05-10T23:53:07","date_gmt":"2016-05-11T03:53:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=75682"},"modified":"2016-05-10T23:53:07","modified_gmt":"2016-05-11T03:53:07","slug":"wheres-beef-vegans-find-ways-indulge-lookalike-junk-food-like-burgers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2016\/05\/10\/wheres-beef-vegans-find-ways-indulge-lookalike-junk-food-like-burgers\/","title":{"rendered":"Where\u2019s the beef? Vegans find ways to indulge in lookalike junk food like burgers"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"(Photo:<\/a>
(Photo: Stephen Holdaway<\/a>\/Flickr)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

TORONTO \u2013 Just because you follow a vegan diet doesn\u2019t mean you don\u2019t want to indulge in a burger.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople don\u2019t just go vegan to be healthy. For a lot of people it\u2019s an animal issue, but they still want burgers and bacon and everything else so they\u2019re looking for those really satisfying substitutes for that,\u201d says Candice Hutchings, who shows viewers how to repurpose traditional food offerings on her Edgy Veg YouTube channel.<\/p>\n

Her most popular recipes include a vegan take on the McDonald\u2019s Big Mac and Buffalo \u201cchicken\u201d wings \u2013 with the meat being a dough made of vital wheat gluten, nutritional yeast and spices.<\/p>\n

Hutchings started making vegan recipe and lifestyle videos several years ago and then quit her advertising job last October to devote herself full time to the project.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I went vegan six years ago my biggest issue and what was making me fall off the wagon constantly was there wasn\u2019t food I wanted to eat. Everything was brown and oatmealy. The comfort food was really missing and I couldn\u2019t find it anywhere at the time,\u201d says Hutchings, who first abstained from dairy products to clear up skin problems.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere weren\u2019t any restaurants that served it. There weren\u2019t really any online recipes that I could find. I started kind of experimenting because there was such a void in that market.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vegans and vegetarians don\u2019t eat meat. But while vegetarians will eat dairy products and eggs, vegans generally won\u2019t and also avoid honey or any food derived from animals.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce you get into a lifestyle you tend to learn a bit more about animal agriculture and kind of what\u2019s going on in the industry and all the horrible things that are happening and after seeing that I couldn\u2019t look back. You can never unsee,\u201d Hutchings says.<\/p>\n

Restaurants specializing in plant-based foods have been springing up the last few years, but one that\u2019s attracted a lot of social media attention in the last few weeks is Doomie\u2019s Toronto, a partnership between the owners of the popular Hollywood restaurant and Ecorazzi, an online vegan magazine that hosted last year\u2019s Toronto Vegan Food and Drink Festival.<\/p>\n

\u201cDoomie\u2019s is trying to break a number of vegan stereotypes that exist out there today, one of which is all vegans are just super health conscious and only eat grain and rice bowls and kind of steer away from eating anything unhealthy. And I guess we\u2019re just trying to showcase the fact that vegans are just like anyone else,\u201d says Cara Galloway, communications and event manager for Doomie\u2019s Toronto.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey sometimes have cravings for things and they don\u2019t necessarily only eat salads and fruits and veggies.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Queen Street West restaurant has seen people lining up to try vegan burgers and pulled pork sandwiches and fries prepared a dozen different ways, including toppings of vegan cheese, bacon and chili, pesto, Sriracha, mushrooms, jalapenos or garlic.<\/p>\n

Patrons must ask their server for the \u201csecret\u201d $16 Vegan Mac Daddy. The mock Big Mac comes with fries and features house-made toppings of vegan mayo for the special sauce and a soy-based \u201ccheese.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hutchings waited for two hours last week to get a table at Doomie\u2019s and said it was worth it. She found the food resembles what she makes on Edgy Veg.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s Hogtown Vegan in Toronto, but they\u2019re more on the comfort food side whereas I found this was like junk food. It gets that junk food craving out of your system.\u201d<\/p>\n

Much of the food at Doomie\u2019s is based on soy-and wheat-based products.<\/p>\n

Hutchings thinks one reason people fail when creating vegan lookalikes is they try to adapt other vegan recipes.<\/p>\n

\u201cI look up the original recipe so if I\u2019m trying to make, let\u2019s say a Philly cheesesteak sandwich or chicken wings, I look to see what spices they\u2019re actually using in the wings and what they\u2019re using in the batter and then I use vegan substitutes.\u201d<\/p>\n

For meat, she may use mushrooms, which have a meaty taste and texture. Or she prepares seitan \u2013 also called wheat meat \u2013 from vital wheat gluten. She uses soy or almond milk instead of cows milk.<\/p>\n

A favourite indulgence is cauliflower \u201cwings,\u201d which she coats with a spiced breaded mixture, then double deep-fries and tosses in hot sauce.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that is the closest thing to wings I\u2019ve had yet. It\u2019s the same kind of texture. The cauliflower doesn\u2019t have a real cauliflower flavour. It has that meaty pulled pork flavour… It was satisfying and anyone I\u2019ve served it to, it blows their mind.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TORONTO \u2013 Just because you follow a vegan diet doesn\u2019t mean you don\u2019t want to indulge in a burger. \u201cPeople …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":75683,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[10665,10664],"class_list":["post-75682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-food","tag-lookalike-junk-food","tag-vegans","mauthors-lois-abraham","mauthors-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75682\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}