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Making Mexican Food Vegetarian Or Vegan: Options For You

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When you have adopted a vegetarian or vegan diet, you may find yourself worried that entire categories of food that you once loved will now be entirely off-limits to you now. However, this does not have to be the case. If you enjoy Mexican food but are unsure of how you can continue to partake when you are a vegetarian or vegan, get to know a few of the different ways that you can make your favorite Mexican dishes suit your dietary needs.

Make Mushrooms In Mole Sauce (Or Your Other Favorite Sauce)

Most traditional Mexican dishes do include meat and/or lard. However, you can make a few small changes to these recipes and you will have delicious vegan recipes in your arsenal. Mole sauce is one of the most popular and interesting sauces in Mexican cuisine. 

Of course, the traditional mole sauce recipe calls for lard and may also include chicken broth. To make this a vegan or vegetarian option, you can simply do away with the lard entirely or substitute vegan vegetable shortening in the sauce for lard. Chicken broth can be replaced with vegetable stock or water.

Similar substitutions can be made for other popular Mexican sauces including the tomato-based enchilada sauces and green chile sauces. Because these sauces are often used on meat, you will want to use a meat-substitute that is similarly dense like large mushrooms. Tofu is also always a viable option for vegan or vegetarian Mexican recipes.

Make Your Own Tortillas

Again, when it comes to traditional tortilla recipes, lard is often one of the ingredients to help hold the mixture together and bind the ingredients. Other times shortening may be used as well and some shortenings are not vegan or entirely vegetarian. It can be difficult to ensure that the tortillas you buy in stores are vegetarian or vegan and sometimes those with the vegan label are far more expensive than other tortillas.

Making your own tortillas is the surest way to keep everything vegetarian and vegan. Use a vegan shortening to bind your ingredients and you will be good to go to make flour or corn tortillas from scratch. As an added bonus, homemade tortillas are often softer and taste better than their store-bought counterparts.

Now that you know a few of the ways that you can make your Mexican food suitable for a vegetarian and/or vegan diet, you can buy your ingredients and start cooking your own delicious Mexican food.


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