By Hey_ink in Recipes — 12 Apr 2026

Veg/tiny fish-etarianism, the very non-dogmatic fundamentals of our home cooking

Eating is personal and something we have to make choices around every day. I'm not dogmatically vegetarian and am not trying to be. I mostly want to play a small part of making our planet a livable place for everyone while still having a good time.

Many cultures are vegetarian and many people live their lives easily without thinking twice about not consuming MEAT. That's not me! My household likes to eat Southeast Asian/East Asian food because cultural habits are what they are. South Asian too because... we like it? Also tiny fish, we keep them in our lives.

Our house has been playing around over the last five years of making our favorite meat-based mains more plant-based, resulting in dishes that are not unlike their inspirations but also, not quite the same! And that's the key to accept, tofu grapow does not and will not taste like pork grapow!!! But the essence is there and with a crispy, fried egg, it's still a reasonably good time.

Before we go any further, I wanted to highlight this podcast about vegetarianism, purity and Whiteness. Vegetarianism is very cool until used as a method of oppression. And I mean actual oppression, not MAHA's contrived war against protein. Vegetarianism and veganism is often presented hand-in-hand with morality, purity, health and the overall high horse without consideration of intersectionality. That's not what we're trying to do here (neigh).

As we've experimented over the years, it's been cool to see different cultures and individuals make alternative food choices out of a politics of care, without sacrificing meaningful cultural ties and reproducing systems of harm, and of course, keeping flavor at the forefront! And that's my food politics baybeee.

I hope by sharing how we flex recipes, it inspires you to choose something different.

Our very non-dogmatic fundamentals

Things that I keep in mind to have a good vegetarian version of whatever I'm cooking:

Texture
Umami
Fat
Protein

Tricks for every meal-prep I do:

Choose recipes that has flavor layered in and don't depend on meat for that flavor. Sauces, spices, herbs. We're talking about eating good not eating boring here
Prep the vegetarian protein. If it's tofu, boil/crumble/air fry. (Boil you say?? Yes, listen to Wendy the Food Scientist!) If it's beans, soak/pressure cook/maybe air fry/maybe stew
Mushrooms are magical (not like that) and they help with texture and umami criteria. Shiitake and oyster are part of our weekly rotation
Taking from Samin Nosrat, these veg recipes need fat. A pat of butter, extra oil rounds things out

And then, the tiny fish hack:

Dried shrimp
Anchovies
Fish sauce
Mollusks, mostly oyster sauce (not tiny fish, yes)

We use them to make broth (dried shrimp + ginger, anchovies + dashi) and to add that thing that the dish feels like it's missing. We're veg/tiny fish-etarian at home after all. I think of it as a layering of salt, another Samin reference.

I'll post some of our favorite tofu iterations of recipes later. More to come!

Our very non-dogmatic fundamentals

Media I digested as part of this post

Subscribe to Food and...