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How to Make Any Recipe Vegetarian

Vegetarian conversion goes wrong in two opposite directions. Some people strip out far too much, pulling the butter and eggs from a dish that never needed it, and end up with an accidental vegan recipe that tastes worse for no reason. Others pull out only the obvious meat and miss the anchovy in the Worcestershire.

The method is narrow and specific: remove animals, keep their products, and replace each removed ingredient based on the job it was doing rather than what it was called.

What comes out, and what stays

Out: meat, poultry, fish, and seafood. In: eggs, milk, butter, cheese, cream, yogurt, and honey. All of those are vegetarian. If you also want them gone, you are converting to vegan, which is a much larger change and deserves its own method.

Replace by role, not by name

This is the whole technique. "What replaces ground beef" has no single answer, because ground beef does different work in different dishes. In a bolognese it is providing texture suspended in a sauce, so lentils work beautifully. In a burger it is providing binding and shape, so lentils fall apart and a plant-based mince is the right call.

The animal ingredients people miss

Keep the protein honest

The quiet failure of vegetarian conversion is nutritional. Swap chicken for mushrooms in a main course and you have removed most of the meal's protein without replacing it. If the meat was the dish's protein rather than a flavouring, choose a substitute that is also a protein: lentils, chickpeas, tofu, tempeh, seitan, or a plant-based mince. Mushrooms and aubergine are texture, not protein, and it is worth being clear with yourself about which one you needed.

Adjust the technique, not just the ingredients

Plant proteins behave differently. Tofu needs pressing and a dry surface to brown at all. Lentils absorb liquid as they sit, so a sauce that looked right in the pan can be stodgy an hour later, and you may want a little extra stock. Tempeh benefits from a 10-minute steam before marinating, which removes its slight bitterness. And nothing plant-based renders fat the way bacon or beef does, so dishes that relied on that need a spoon of oil added back.

Let RecipeFix do it

Skip the manual work · convert the recipe automatically →