How to Adapt Meat-Based Recipes
When you make your turkey dressing, cook it separately (which is a good idea for health reasons anyway), and leave out the giblets, sausage, oysters, or any other animal product you add to it. Substitute vegetable stock for turkey broth. Likewise, select side dishes that don't include meat and substitute vegetable broth for meat-based broths. Vegetable broth made from bouillon cubes is generally tastier than the canned variety. If your guest is a total vegetarian, replace the butter in recipes with margarine and the milk with rice or soy milk.
If you find there are meat-based side dishes you can't possibly leave out, just be sure you have enough non-meat selections. When you calculate quantities, remember to prepare enough of your vegetarians to serve your meat-eating guests as side dishes and the vegetarians as a main dish.
Certain traditional ethnic recipes adapt very easily for vegetarian guests. In my Italian family, we always started with a pasta course on Thanksgiving. To accommodate the vegetarians, we simply used a marinara instead of a meat sauce. Many people serve special seafood appetizers on the holidays. Add to that a simple tray of cut up vegetables and hummus dip, which you can easily prepare yourself, or purchase in most supermarkets.
No matter how many or few adaptations you make, guests will appreciate your efforts to please them, and will be thrilled to miss that boring plate of steamed vegetables.
If your turkey dressing, or other side dishes, are too meaty to adapt, try something new this year, and everyone will compliment your creativity. Here are a few sites where you can find interesting vegetarian recipes to add to your Thanksgiving table.
- A Vegetarian Thanksgiving - A little advice on the vegetarian beginnings of Thanksgiving, along with several hearty dishes that will satisfy all of your guests.
- Recipes Around the World - Five substantial recipes your veggie guests will love.
- The Splendid Table - Vegetarian Thanksgiving - A very appealing vegetarian menu from Deborah Madison, with a recipe for Winter Squash Galette.
