Vegan Chinese Recipes

Unusually so, once you know the three things to avoid. Dairy barely exists in Chinese cooking, so you never hit the butter-and-cheese wall that makes other cuisines difficult, and the core sauces — soy, fermented bean, chili, vinegar, sesame — are all plant-based. The three things that catch people are egg (very common in Chinese vegetarian cooking), oyster sauce, and seafood-derived seasonings like fish sauce, dried shrimp, dried scallop and XO sauce. Swap those and most of the cuisine opens up.

Often, but not always, so it's worth checking the package. Many round dumpling wrappers are just wheat flour, water and salt, which is vegan. Wonton wrappers are more likely to contain egg, and some fresh noodles do too. Dried wheat noodles and all rice noodles and rice paper are reliably safe. If the ingredient list is short and doesn't mention egg, you're fine.

Usually nothing — you pick dishes that never had it rather than trying to replace it. Egg fried rice becomes a vegetable fried rice with extra aromatics and crumbled firm tofu for body; egg drop soup doesn't really have a vegan version worth making, but hot and sour soup with tofu and mushrooms scratches a similar itch. Where egg acts as a binder in a dumpling filling, a tablespoon of cornstarch does the same job. Crumbled firm tofu seasoned with a little turmeric and black salt is the closest thing to scrambled egg in dishes like tomato and egg.

Not remotely, and this is where Chinese food has an advantage over most cuisines. Beyond tofu there's fried tofu puffs, which soak up sauce like sponges; pressed and smoked tofu, which is firm and slice-able; tofu skin and bean curd sticks, which have a chew nothing in a Western pantry replicates; and wheat gluten (seitan), which was invented in Chinese monasteries. Add dried shiitake and wood ear for meaty texture, and peanuts and cashews for richness, and you have a much wider palette than tofu alone.