Thailand is currently celebrating the Vegetarian Festival – more formally known as the Nine Emperor Gods Festival.
It’s a Taoist celebration that comes with colourful festivities and rituals – including piercing body parts and walking across hot coals. As well as this, the celebration – running from October 16 to October 25 – calls for participants to go vegan (despite being named the ‘Vegetarian Festival’).
It’s all in a bid to cleanse the body. Luckily, a lot of Thai dishes are already plant-based, or can be made vegan with a few small tweaks. These are some of the tastiest Thai vegan dishes you should try…
1. Pad Thai
With sticky stir-fried noodles, crunchy bean sprouts and a medley of vegetables, you can’t go wrong with a classic pad Thai. The dish is easily made plant-based by subbing out any meat or fish for crispy tofu, and leaving egg off the plate. Make up for any egg-based loss with plenty of crushed peanuts and lime, and you won’t miss a thing.
2. Pineapple fried rice
Most variations of this dish are already vegan, as it’s made up of stir-fried rice with pineapple, veg like pepper and peas, and spices like curry powder. As with a lot of Thai dishes, watch out for the addition of fish sauce – if you’re making it at home, you can easily sub in vegan fish sauce instead. Whatever you put in it, just make sure you serve the meal in a hollowed-out pineapple for extra impact.
3. Coconut noodle soup
As the days get shorter and the weather chillier, few dishes are as perfect as a spicy and warming coconut noodle soup. The creamy broth base has a kick thanks to the addition of Thai red curry paste, and the lime gives it a spicy-but-sour tang. Again, watch out for fish sauce and curry pastes including dried shrimp – you can easily replace with them with vegan versions.
4. Tofu satay
Who doesn’t love a good satay sauce? Let’s face it – whatever you have with it is basically just a carrier for all the spicy peanut sauce you want to eat. That’s why you’re not missing out too much if you sub out meat skewers for a vegan version, like crispy grilled tofu. Just make sure you’ve made enough satay to go with it…
5. Thai green curry
One of Thailand’s signature dishes, all you need to do to make this plant-based is swap out the chicken for tofu. With plenty of veg, a spicy coconut sauce and fluffy rice to soak it all up, you won’t regret adding a green curry into your repertoire.
6. Green papaya salad
If you can get your hands on green papaya, this spicy and fresh salad is the perfect accompaniment to a curry or warming soup. The unripe papaya is thinly shredded with other veg like carrots, cherry tomatoes and green beans, tossed through a lime and chilli sauce and with peanuts sprinkled on top. As with almost all of these dishes fish sauce is traditionally added, but it can be subbed out. If you don’t have a vegetarian version of the sauce, add a bit more salt to the dish instead.
7. Massaman curry
This is one of Thailand’s defining curries, with a mild level of heat and plenty of flavour thanks to the addition of spices like cinnamon, cardamom and cloves. Once again, replace any meat with tofu, or you could even experiment with other meat replacements like seitan or soy. The curry still has characteristic Thai flavours of coconut, lemongrass and lime, but is more fragrant than you might expect thanks to the other spices.
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