Knowledge Base > Barton Seaver - Holiday Tips & Tricks

Holiday Tips & Tricks

Barton Seaver - Holiday Tips & Tricks

This event was on Thursday, November 16, 2023 at 11:00 am Pacific, 2:00 pm Eastern

Join us for an exciting live event hosted by renowned chef and author, Barton Seaver, as he shares his invaluable holiday cooking tips and tricks. In this interactive culinary experi… Read More.

Recorded

Question:

Can you share some holiday meal preparation tips?

Answer:

All right, so my tip is actually a pretty practical one for if you're having a plant-based guest over for a holiday. Now, a lot of people, if you don't usually eat plant-based might kind of freak out a little bit hosting, and you're actually having somebody that eats a hundred percent plant-based over now it's actually just a couple little switches to your normal meal, can actually make a, a, a wonderful difference for any of your plant-based guests. First of all, remember that a lot of plant-based people are used to eating a lot of side dishes for the holidays, which is okay, but you do need to remember to be able to make a lot of your side dishes plant-based as well. So you, you can still do, you know, your mashed potatoes, but maybe not add cream or uh, butter to them. Instead, using a plant-based butter might be a better option for that. Um, you can do other things on those sides too, like the roasting vegetables with thyme, maybe a green bean casserole, but instead of using like the cream of mushroom, you can do a vegan cream and mushroom instead, which would be great. Um, those green bean casserole are always a favorite, so just making a little tweak to that's fantastic as well. Now if you really want to go to impress, you should actually just up the game a little bit by making a, a Maine dish that's a plant-based dish to be able to go along with any other thing that you're serving too. Now, that could be anything from, uh, a vegan shepherd's pie to a lentil loaf. Lasagnas are always popular as well. Doing a pot pie might be a wonderful thing to do. One of my favorites that I personally do is a mushroom Wellington, which will actually give you the link to right here, um, which is, it's a showstopper. So a lot of these can be dressed up to just look fantastic and really get tons of flavor added to every single meal. And you will find that anybody who might not be plant-based is going to enjoy those dishes just as much as the people that are coming as plant-based. So when you do have people coming over that are plant-based for your meal, just remember not to be scared. Just kind of keep in the regular lanes that you're used to. Just make tiny alterations to the dishes to be able to make them plant-based for everybody so everybody can come together for the holidays and enjoy them.
Dan Marek

Dan Marek

Director of Plant-Based Culinary & Dev

rouxbe.com