So you’ve seen the movie, PlantPure Nation. You’re totally on board with the message, and hey, it’s a new year: what better time to embark on a new lifestyle and ultimately, a new you?
Except there’s just one teeny tiny problem: Cooking just isn’t your thing. And you’re worried that it’s going to be nearly impossible to stay plant-based without spending at least some quality time in the kitchen, and probably not in front of the microwave.
Never fear; you’re not alone. Not by a long shot! In fact, we realized we had several non-cooks on our staff. Some of us (yes, I’m one of the non-cooks) can cook, but we don’t like to. We’re busy with life and might not have been paying terribly close attention when our parents were trying to impart that particular basic life skill. Now we’re finding ourselves a bit clueless and more than a little intimidated when we hear our fellow plant-based foodies start talking about miso and spiralizers and stick blenders. We have no idea what to do with a mezzaluna and are utterly mystified by the differences between a pressure cooker and a slow cooker. (Wait, you mean they’re not the same thing? Who knew!)
So for all you non-cooks, newbie cooks, and special-occasion-only cooks, we have a blog series just for you: Plant-based Cooking 101. Our director of culinary education, Kim Campbell — author of The PlantPure Nation Cookbook — will be unveiling the mysteries of the plant-based kitchen in weekly blog posts. Kim has lots of cooking experience and especially teaching experience, and she’s going to break things down so that even the most befuddled among us can follow along.
We’ll cover basic kitchen utensils to more advanced, specific ones (what they are and how they’re used); cooking techniques and tips; useful kitchen appliances small and large, and what to do with them; those weird vegan ingredients you keep hearing about, like nutritional yeast and miso and edamame; planning meals and shopping for ingredients; cooking without oil; knife skills; one-pot meals; plant-based substitutions for eggs, cream, and oil; and lots of other topics.
If there’s a particular cooking conundrum you’d like us to examine, let us know. We’ll pick up with our first Plant-based Cooking 101 post next week. So shake the dust off those aprons and join us!