A Meat Lover’s Guide to a Vegan Braa
With Heritage Day being celebrated as Braai Day across South Africa, you might be asking yourself what a meat-free braai would even look like.
Although we live in a seriously meat-loving country, there’s a very good chance that you have at least one friend who is trying out the ‘vegan’ thing, or at least trying to cut back on meat for health, environmental or ethical reasons.
With so many compelling reasons to shift towards more plant-based food, there’s a good chance you might even be considering giving it a go.
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But, with Heritage Day being celebrated as Braai Day across South Africa, you might be asking yourself what a meat-free braai would even look like.
To help answer this question, and to throw a lifeline to the braai hosts who have no idea what to offer their plant-based guests, we spoke to the most qualified person we could find; a self-described meat lover who has been vegan of over 7 years, and whose full-time job is literally to make it easier for South Africans to cut back on meat.
Donovan Will is the director of local plant-based food awareness organisation ProVeg South Africa, and you are unlikely to find anyone who has hosted more meat-free braais for non-vegans.
“I was a typical meat and potatoes kind of guy, so when I first thought about ditching meat, my biggest concern was ‘what on earth am I going to do when I’m invited to a braai’, but these days there’s nothing I look forward to more!”
To Will, the key to a great braai is loading the menu with the familiar favourites that many of us grew up with; burgers, chicken kebabs, schnitzels, boeries, and drumsticks.
Served with potato salad, coleslaw, braaibroodjies and mielies. Followed by a generous spread of desserts; milk tart, malva pudding, ice-cream and peppermint crisp tart. “And don’t forget the roasted marshmallows!”
At this point you may be thinking that this sounds like an ‘ordinary’, non-vegan braai. Will explains that while there are still some animal products that don’t have great vegan alternatives, advances in plant-based food options in the last decade have been so revolutionary that he believes even the most serious meat connoisseur would battle to tell that some of these vegan products are meat-free.
Will does issue a warning though; there are a lot of products on the market, and some are less likely to hit the spot than others. To give you the best chance of impressing your plant-based guests, and maybe even inspire you to try a fully plant-based braai, we asked him to guide us through his top tips and menu choices for a vegan braai that even the meat lovers are sure to enjoy.
Meat replacement tips:
– If you’d usually marinate your meat, do the same with your meat replacements.
– Meat replacements generally do not need to be cooked for as long as meat, and many can be cooked frozen, so be careful not to overcook them.
– Most of the alternatives have a long freezer life, so don’t be caught off-guard- always keep a pack of burgers in the freezer to throw on the fire.
