Better than Takeout: Frugal Asian Feasts for Vegans to Cook

This is a guest post provided by Elizabeth Baker. Elizabeth is on FrugalDad team, providing insights on frugality and savings. Her area of focus and interest deals with the intersection of food and frugality. She’s always asking the question, “how do I make healthy eating decisions without spending an arm and a leg?”

In this particular article Elizabeth discusses Asian foods and recipes. A word of caution if you deal with high blood pressure. . . Asian dishes can be high in sodium. For example, soy sauce contains 1006 mg of sodium per Tbsp. You may have to do some recipe modifications.

The following is the article provided by Elizabeth.

It’s always tough finding new meals to try as a vegan. Even worse, if you’re looking for food to cook that is both ethnic and vegan-friendly, you may just think you’re out of luck. Before you head to the nearest restaurant, however, remember that there are plenty of meals you can cook in the comfort of your own house for a fraction of the price. If you plan ahead, and look ahead for some online grocery discounts, you can enjoy some of these cheap and delicious Asian feasts to try making yourself.

Vegetable Fried Rice

Rice is a great dish to add to any meal, whether it compliments another food or is itself the main dish. Even better, it costs next to nothing; the United States Department of Agriculture lists vegetable fried rice as only 39 cents per serving. When looking at the recipe, it’s easy to see why. It only requires rice, some vegetables, soy sauce, and vegetable oil, all ingredients that are cheap and easy to find, and it can be prepared in just a few minutes.

Sesame-Ginger Steamed Broccoli

Another fun Asian dish for vegans to try is this delicious way to prepare broccoli. It uses some foreign sauces, like sake and tamari, but nothing too expensive, and can be made in less than 30 minutes. The nutritional information is nothing to shy away from either – each serving contains only 57 calories and 1 gram of sugar, making this dish incredibly healthy in addition to tasty.

Sweet and Sour Tofu

Tofu is a great meat substitute, and those looking for a bit of a change in their normal meals would do well to try this Chinese-restaurant standard. It uses ordinary, easy-to-find ingredients, like brown sugar, ketchup, and cornstarch, as well as some less common fixings, including pineapple, but buying all the ingredients and making the dish yourself is much cheaper than ordering the same meal from takeout.

Fresh Spring Rolls with Peanut Sauce

The great thing about this recipe is that it’s up to you which vegetables to put in the rolls, so you can use whatever you have on hand and potentially save yourself a trip to the store. The main thing to keep in mind when making the spring rolls is to prepare the ingredients beforehand – once this is done, finishing the dish is quick and easy, meaning this is a perfect food to make when you have little time available. However, the end result looks to colorful and tastes so delicious that you’ll forget how little you spent on it.

There are plenty of vegan Asian meals that won’t require you to break the bank. Upscale restaurants can be very pricey, so it’s up to you to make equally delicious food for a fraction of the cost.