What are the best (and cheapest) vegan and vegetarian alternatives to common ingredients?

puzzlecat

If you have a high speed blender you can make your own cheese sauce with standard vegan store cupboard ingredients. It's much more tasty & nutritious & lots cheaper than melting vegan cheese blocks or those tubs of cheese sauce mix you get near the gravy. All you need to do is soak about 1/4 a cup of cashew nuts (cheapest in Aldi) for a few hours then add to the blender with the juice of a lemon (or lime), nutritional yeast, soy sauce, onion powder, a teaspoon of mustard, a clove of garlic and a couple of splashes of warm water. Add more water to thin as needed. I use it on pasta, veggie bakes, caesar salads.. all sorts. It's delicious! 

DylanGregory

In my kitchen, Indian vegetarian dishes work very well! I definitely recommend

Greenglockenspiel

My rule of thumb is swap mince for lentils (red or green but green hold their texture better for things like cottage pie, whereas I tend to use red for Bolognese where the pasta has more texture) and chicken for chickpeas. I usually do a three bean chilli rather than lentils though. You can also make your own houmous and falafels from chickpeas. 

The cheapest way to buy beans and lentils is dry. The only tinned ones I buy are kidney beans because I’m a bit wary of toxins but the rest I cook in my Instant Pot (electric pressure cooker) which means you don’t need to remember to soak them beforehand.
I don’t like quorn and find meat substitutes are usually quite expensive. The only one I buy is the Linda McCartney sausages and the cheapest place to get them is Lidl where they are something like £1.70 as opposed to £2.20 everywhere else, although you can sometimes get good deals on Ocado.
Many margarines are vegan - I think the cheapest one is probably Tesco’s Stockwell one. 

Most vegan cheeses are quite expensive and not worth it. The only nice ones are the Applewood one and Mozzarisella.
All supermarkets sell own brand soya milk nowadays but you can also make your own oat milk cheaply.
Specifically vegan products seem to attract a premium so look out for ‘accidentally vegan’ products e.g. red Bisto or Tesco dark chocolate digestives.

Mnoee

I had my first go at making seitan last week - it's quite a lot of effort, but if you want a meaty texture without buying quorn etc, then its well worth it. The recipe I used had tahini and butter beans as well as vital wheat gluten, stock, and flavourings. It wouldn't fool a meat eater, but it's quite lovely in a sandwich with some lettuce. (And much much cheaper than quorn!) 

Raspberry_Queen

Lifelong vegetarian and vegan for 15 years here! It is the cheapest way to eat as long as you don't go for the processed stuff. Processed animal products = cheap, wholesome animal products = expensive, but the situation is entirely reversed for plant-centered diets. 

I would say:

1) Eat foods that are naturally vegan/vegetarian. Meals centered on carbs, beans and vegetables are usually very cheap.

Meat replacements range from average to a bit on the high end, vegan cheeses can be cheapish, but the good ones (made of nuts) are expensive. Cheap plant milks and ice=-creams are usually quite decent. 

2) Focus on adding foods in, rather than cutting foods out. 

3) Learn to read ingredients lists and allergy labelling: quite often there are cheap miscellaneous things like crisps, those pre-made salad meals in pots, sweets, or whatever, that are not explicitly labelled as or marketed towards vegans, but are clearly vegetarian, and then you can look at the allergy labels for milk and eggs. Then if you're vegan, the only things left to think about are insect products like cochineal (red food colouring) and honey, and with an average amount of food knowledge it becomes clear what types of foods those might be in. 

4) The Farmfoods vegan range is pretty cheap if replacement products are wanted. 

5) The cheapest "butter" of all are the cheap brands of spread, with or without a small % of dairy. They are significantly cheaper than "real" butter. In my opinion, vegan spreads tend to taste like low-salt butter. I also sometimes have a little bit of olive oil on my bread and toast (if appropriate to what I'm eating the bread with).

Raspberry_Queen

Greenglockenspiel said:

My rule of thumb is swap mince for lentils (red or green but green hold their texture better for things like cottage pie, whereas I tend to use red for Bolognese where the pasta has more texture) and chicken for chickpeas. I usually do a three bean chilli rather than lentils though. You can also make your own houmous and falafels from chickpeas. 

The cheapest way to buy beans and lentils is dry. The only tinned ones I buy are kidney beans because I’m a bit wary of toxins but the rest I cook in my Instant Pot (electric pressure cooker) which means you don’t need to remember to soak them beforehand.
I don’t like quorn and find meat substitutes are usually quite expensive. The only one I buy is the Linda McCartney sausages and the cheapest place to get them is Lidl where they are something like £1.70 as opposed to £2.20 everywhere else, although you can sometimes get good deals on Ocado.
Many margarines are vegan - I think the cheapest one is probably Tesco’s Stockwell one. 

Most vegan cheeses are quite expensive and not worth it. The only nice ones are the Applewood one and Mozzarisella.
All supermarkets sell own brand soya milk nowadays but you can also make your own oat milk cheaply.
Specifically vegan products seem to attract a premium so look out for ‘accidentally vegan’ products e.g. red Bisto or Tesco dark chocolate digestives.

I find that really exploitative. It's like they know that many vegans are so committed that there is a chance we will splash out extra, as will new or attempting-to-be vegans who don't know any better. There is also the element that we're still not always catered for well, so finding a vegan item will attract excited customers, even if they wouldn't normally spend that much. 

Going on a rant here, but vitamin and mineral companies also behave in exploitative ways. 1/3 of all supplements are bought by vegetarians/vegans, and that's because companies (and certain industries) spend a huge effort in convincing us that our diet is really difficult and we will drop dead of malnourishment if we're not careful - and of course buy their products.

There is an inordinate focus on the fact that vegans are more likely to be deficient in vitamin B12, but there is never any focus on the many nutrients that meat eaters are more likely to be deficient in than us. For example, entire countries have supplemented their flour with folic acid, to stop babies being born with neural tube defects. This is normalised and not marketed as an inherent defect in meat-eating diets (which is a good thing, I'm not saying they should do that).

Supplement manufacturers routinely flout this section of the law when advertising and marketing towards vegans:

"(4) No person shall sell any food supplement which is ready for delivery to the ultimate consumer or to a catering establishment if the labelling, presentation or advertising of that food supplement includes any mention, express or implied, that a balanced and varied diet cannot provide appropriate quantities of nutrients in general"

They get away with it because a plant based diet, officially, cannot provide sufficient B12. But they extend this to many nutrients. This also ignores that common vegan foods are supplemented with B12, and so vegan charities recommend consuming either B12-fortified foods (marmite, plant milk etc), or take a supplement. Therefore, vegans (excluding those with health conditions that require such products) do not actually have to buy any supplements, if they choose to get it through their diet instead.

Worst of all, they market all manner of nutritional supplements towards vegans in this matter, even those that we are at no particular risk of deficiency, or even at a lowered risk. For example, in their "newsletters" or "articles", they will write: "This micronutrient is essential for your immune system, gut health, heart, lungs, liver, pineal gland, skin, lungs, and eyes. Without it, you will ultimately die. Vegans may be lower in this nutrient because X, Y and Z animal-products are a source of it, and look what you're missing out on. These supplements are top quality, get 5% off with this code!".

(Plant-based sources will be ignored or opined as inferior).

Sorry for this long rant. To make it relevant: there is no automatic need, if one is vegetarian or vegan, to spend hundreds of £££ on supplements. If you choose to get B12 by supplements, it can be done very cheaply by taking a sublingual megadose monthly. 

Please nobody come at me with anti-vegan "iT's NoT nAtUrAL!! arguing: B12 comes from bacteria. It is found in lake and river water, among other places. Livestock feed is supplemented with it. 

pumpkin89

The extra cost of "vegan" products is because of all the additional checks, segregated production facilities etc. to ensure that products aren't contaminated.  In the same way that most foods don't contain nuts, but quite a small number actually make a claim of being "nut free".

The products with "accidentally vegan" recipes are fine for people happy with a plant-based diet, but not necessarily for others who are more ideological about veganism.

kandk456

From my view, for the vegetarian, the best vegetable is the carrot and the onion, for every dishes we use these veggies, even though onion and carrot can be used with salads, and also with burgers etc. 

MrsStepford

MSE_Becca said:

Hello Forumites,

We need your help! We know it’s becoming more and more popular to switch to veggie alternatives, and with so many options out there now, it can be a bit confusing at times.

Whether you are a lifelong vegetarian that’s looking for inspiration, or somebody who’s doing Meatless Mondays to give it a try, we want to know the best and cheapest veggie alternatives.

Thanks in advance!

MSE Becca 

As a former vegetarian, I understand that some people may not want to eat animals, birds , fish and crustaceans and that's fair enough.

If you're eating vegan or vegetarian food because you think it's healthier or because you think it will save the planet, that isn't true.

Look at the ingredients of a vegan margarine or a vegan burger or even frozen chips. Firstly there are additives beyond the pesticides used (and most of this stuff isn't organic) and secondly, look at the amount of processing. That's not carbon neutral in most instances and there are food miles involved. People like Bill Gates (biggest agricultural landowner in USA) are pushing this stuff because it makes them big profits. They'll tell you that it's not healthy to eat a steak from a farm, and flog you processed stuff they make a big profit on. 

Processed food is unhealthy, regardless of the label on the front of the box. Frozen chips.. just potatoes, right ? We went to Aldi and couldn't find a single bag of frozen chips which just contained potatoes. My husband has to be gluten free and there wasn't a bag of chips without wheat flour added. 

Mnoee

It's not necessarily true that vegan food is healthy, as my deep fried beer battered mushroom recipe will attest to. It's definitely true that super processed chicken nuggets and super processed quorn nuggets are fairly similar in terms of health. If you make a salad and chuck beans on it instead of grilled chicken, it's also fairly similar. Either can be healthy or unhealthy. 

Same goes for food miles. You can buy lamb from the UK, you can buy lamb from New Zealand. You can buy local fruit and veg or stuff from around the world. 

Dusting with flour stops chips sticking together. The vast majority of people can cope with flour with no issues. Aunt Bessie's chips are gluten free, as are many other ones with more prominent labeling. If you want chips that are just potatoes, you always have the option of cutting up the potatoes yourself.