From telegraph.co.uk/food-and-drink
By Xanthe Clay
Our expert reveals the best vegetarian centrepieces on supermarket shelves and the ones to steer clear of
Got a vegan coming for Christmas? While on any other day you might get away with giving everyone a nice Ottolenghi roast vegetable tumble with a clever take on hummus, that’s just not going to cut it on The Day When Everyone Expects Turkey. Equally, neither is expecting non meat-eaters to be grateful to be offered just the veg everyone else is eating.
My son’s girlfriend has been vegetarian since childhood and her mum’s Christmas nut roast is world class. I roped her in to try these dishes, along with my husband, my daughter and son to give a range of palates. But what would the veggie make of the ready-made offerings?
Firstly, the whole table agreed that it needs to feel festive. We all enjoyed the flavour of the Asda Hasselback Halloumi Roast, and it was deemed good enough to be a small-plates restaurant dish. But for Christmas dinner, it got the thumbs down. “Just not enough of a centrepiece”. As for some of the others, especially the less successful “fake meat”, the veggie rolled her eyes, muttering gloomily, “the kind of thing where everyone round the table points at the vegan and laughs, ‘you loser.’”
There’s another issue with “fake meat” too: weird ingredients. Many of the products on offer are full of the kind of additions that you wouldn’t be easily able to buy – modified starch, bamboo fibre, emulsifiers and the like – which mark them out as ultra processed. Not that festive, even if occasional indulging is unlikely to cause any harm.
To be fair, some of them are good. We tasted without knowing the ingredients, and one of our winners (including a meatless sausage) was so good that everyone, meat eaters included, dived in for second helpings. Which is another important point: the chances are that all the family will be curious about what the vegan’s eating, so do make extra – especially of the vegetable-based dishes, like the mushroom tart which comes in a pack of two. Bake both even if only one veggie is coming, and cut up the second to share around.
Don’t feel guilty about buying in: what’s important is that it’s served up with good grace. As food writer Nicola Miller told me on the social media site BlueSky (Twitter/X is so 2015), “a feast should never make people feel a nuisance” The cook’s role is to make everyone – vegans and vegetarians included – feel spoiled.
How we tested
We tasted the dishes over two evenings, cooking each according to the packet directions. Each one was marked with a letter and a short description so we knew what it was but not which retailer it came from.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/food-and-drink/features/vegetarian-christmas-dinner-taste-test/
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