The Vegan Butcher | Zacchary Bird
The Vegan Butcher: The Ultimate Guide to Plant-Based Meat.
By Zacchary Bird
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Intro: Welcome to the number one cookbook podcast, Cookery by the Book, with Suzy Chase. She's just a home cook in New York City, sitting at her dining room table, talking to cookbook authors.
Zacchary Bird: I'm Zacchary Bird and my latest cookbook is The Vegan Butcher.
Suzy Chase: Before diving into this book, I'd like to thank my new sponsor Bloomist. Bloomist creates and curates simple, sustainable products that inspire you to design a calm, natural refuge at home. I'm excited to announce they've just introduced a new tabletop and kitchen collection that's truly stunning. Visit bloomist.com and use the code Cookery20 to get 20% off your first purchase, or click the link in the show notes. Now on with the show.
Suzy Chase: Happy World Vegan Day. I think you're one of the most exciting people in the vegan space right now. So here's the million dollar question. Why would a vegan want to eat something that tastes and looks like meat? What's the thinking behind mock meat?
Zacchary Bird: Well, the simplest and probably most obnoxious answer to that question is because meat is delicious stuff. Most vegans, pretty much everyone that I've ever met, didn't go vegan because they didn't like the texture or taste of meat. It's always sort of a greater issue. And the food isn't what people are trying to avoid. It's the greater implications of participating in that industry. So I think when you think about it, it's really obvious that vegans would want to find a substitute for the food that they grew up eating and might miss and doesn't come with all of the things that they're trying to avoid by participating with a vegan lifestyle.
Suzy Chase: So I went on your Twitter. Back to your second tweet on Twitter. That's hard to say. You wrote, "I don't know who needs to hear this right now, but plants have protein." Do you think this is the biggest vegan misconception?
Zacchary Bird: Well, I love that you found that so early on in my Twitter, because I think that the misconception has evolved. So I've been quite publicly vegan for about six or seven years, and I think towards the start of it, that was sort of our biggest marketing issue. That people just thought we were limp-wristed, withering away at all times, pale little vegans. And now I think vegan has hit this mainstream energy where that's not really the case and people just need to know more about how to be vegan. Whereas they know that people aren't are dying of protein deficiency from veganism or else there'd be a lot more news articles about it, I'm sure.
Suzy Chase: People have the idea that you went vegan because you didn't like the taste of meat or KFC turned you off. But that was your favorite meal of all time. You said the meat industry doesn't have the monopoly on taste or a texture. I would love for you to talk about that.
Zacchary Bird: I would love to talk about that. And I think a lot of my views on this come from my first viral recipe, which was about six years ago. And it was called at the time, cruelty free chicken drumsticks. And it's this jackfruit flesh molded onto a cauliflower bone. And then it's crumbed and deep fried just like KFC. And that was my first recipe that really went mainstream and generated a lot of buzz. And it was the buzz that really shocked me because there were vegans who were demanding an answer as to why I would've made food to look like KFC.
But then there were the non-vegans who were so confused as to what the hell I was doing. And something that really stood out to me, there was this comment that said, this is the black face of veganism. But it really made me think that, I mean, food is cultural and eating meat is something that is across so many cultures. But the actual active eating meat, isn't a culture that can be appropriated. Which means there's this weird idea that because I'm a vegan, I'm not allowed to idealize this food that I grew up eating.
I grew up eating shapeless, blobs of deep fried savory goodness that turned out to be chicken from KFC. But that's not what I loved about it. I loved all the breading and the frying and that's something that I can still keep in my life as a vegan. So just kind of separating the idea of what vegan food should and could be.
Suzy Chase: And you also talk about veganism at its core isn't a diet, it's a lifestyle.
Zacchary Bird: 100%. And when I first went vegan and food, wasn't really a big part of my life and my personality really at the time. But when I first went vegan, there was this really sort of homogenous look to everyone that was vegan online. And it was smoothie bowls and bliss balls and Buddha bowls and things that I'm sure delicious at times, but they don't look like what my diet looks like. And it doesn't look like what excites me. And so it was separating the idea that there's so many different ways to do veganism. And I know junk food vegans, I know raw vegans. I know every sort of vegan under the sun, and it's sort of empowering people to realize that just because there's a vegan or there's vegan food that you might not be completely interested in, that's not the entire representation of what you can create with plants to put on the menu.
Suzy Chase: And also I love that you're not afraid to share your wins and fails on Instagram in our Instagram perfect world.
Zacchary Bird: Not every recipe works off the bat. And not every day is a big winning day and kind of showing that reality is like, okay. I've made a couple of awful drumstick before I popped out that recipe in trying. So don't feel just hardened if you haven't recreated an entire chicken from scratch on your first go. That's a little bit tricky and it might take you a couple of shots.
Suzy Chase: So when I say you are exciting, I mean, this cookbook tackles everything normally off the menu for vegans. Can you give me some examples?
Zacchary Bird: 100%. There's so many things that I grew up eating that I've not seen a version of. And we're now we're getting so many more plant based options in supermarkets, but they are looking a little similar to each other. By that I mean, God, every vegan can find a burger patty within a 10 meter radius of them at any point, at least where I am. But there's so many other sort of meals that could be veganized. And so the vegan butcher's goal was to really tackle all of those last bastions of non-vegan food that you wouldn't associate, or you couldn't even think of a replacement for, and just kind of go through each and every category and make sure that there's an option that someone can get on board with.
Suzy Chase: I think one classically vegan unfriendly dish that you have in your cookbook is bacon. And you don't just offer one version of bacon. You have six versions and that's what's so clever about you.
Zacchary Bird: Well, thank you. Well, I mean, I haven't come up with the concept for each and every one of those. But it's really exciting because what I was lucky enough to be able to do was to explain in that to people, because I see so many wonderful vegan cookbooks that say here's rice paper bacon. Or here's carrot bacon. And that might not mean to everyone's taste. And the reality is there's bloody 20 plus ways to make bacon. And one of those is going to be your ideal way to substitute bacon. So I really wanted to have the opportunity to explain that in full in a book setting so that you didn't have to go research and go, "Oh, well I actually like daikon, and I might try that," or "I'm looking for a crispier version," because there's so many alternatives now. It's hard to find out that there's just so many on the table to try at this moment.
Suzy Chase: The cover of this cookbook is brilliant. You wanted to parody the infamous butcher style cross sections. Could you tell me about that?
Zacchary Bird: Yeah, this one really comes back to that, removing the idea that meat is a culture that can be appropriated and that vegans can't enter that space of plant-based meat and these traditional, those masculine ideas of butchery and carving and grilling and fire and knives and all of that fun stuff. One of the most iconic images that I think of when I think of a butcher is that cross section of the silhouette of a cow and it's broken down into ramp and flank in all the different body parts.
And really, I thought that this was the most effective way, and Evi O. Studio who designed the cover really put my vision into such a wonderful reality. But I think that this was one of the most effective ways to explain that, hey, vegetables and other ingredients can also be viewed in this same sort of, in this same traditional butchery view. And I think it's done a really good job of telling the viewer that just by looking at the cover.
Suzy Chase: You've been on the product design team for 10 plus commercial plant-based meat lines. What is your favorite plant-based meat in terms of the most versatile meat?
Zacchary Bird: That's such a great one. I mean, before COVID began, my full-time job was as a plant-based meat developer and that was working in the commercial setting. So that looks really different from what the average home cook has access to and wants to screw around within their kitchen. The good thing is I was able to explain some of those emerging technologies in the vegan butcher, which will become a part of the next 10 years of making plant-based meat at home. It's just not as accessible now. But when designing for products in supermarkets, you're using things like methyl cellulose, TVPs, starches, and proteins, and you're really breaking down the art of what meat is and what our best science is currently available to replicate that.
Whereas the average home cook doesn't really have those ingredients accessible. And so we need to be a little bit more creative and that's when you start to look at an eggplant or a lion's mane mushroom a little bit differently. I'm really in part to the lion's mane mushroom as something that has such untapped versatility, because it's on the cover. You can see, it's a beef steak, it's meat balled, and it's also a fried fish all in one with just one ingredient. Well, this is a juicy question and it really is the crux of creating realistic plant-based meat because umami is the savory flavor and what's really prevalent in meat products and can be a little bit tricky to find on a vegan diet.
So there's different sources of umami. You've got basic umami, you've got secondary umami and mushroom can give us both. So we are looking for things that are fermented or dried like seaweed or sun dried tomatoes are a great way to you kind of harness the umami army and add a lot of savory flavor to your vegan kitchen.
Suzy Chase: Equal parts science and magic, the vegan butcher explores the vast world of plant-based meat possibilities. You really advocate for us to make our own vegan ingredients like seitan, soy milk and tofu we would normally buy at the store. How come?
Zacchary Bird: I think it is such an important part of finding out where your food comes from to just try this once. There's a lot of talk about farm to table and really understanding your food and something that I found really interesting is when I'd put up a tofu based recipe, I'd get these comments where people would say, oh, it's too processed for me. And when I'm making tofu and I am using two ingredients being soy and a myriad of coagulants that you can use, I'm astounded that someone could think that. And it's because we're so far removed from the process from some of these ingredients we take for granted.
So I think making something like tofu for yourself helps you understand what you're eating, but it also helps you appreciate how to cook it better. For example, when the Korean vegan was on your podcast, just recently, she touched on the freezing of tofu, which is really fascinating. How freezing the water expands it and creates those larger pockets for water to come back in. And when you make your own tofu, you start to realize that firm tofu and medium tofu are the exact same thing and they've just been pressed for longer. And in the end, tofu is just about how much water or air has been left in the tofu at the end is what's changing the texture. And I think you can only really understand that by giving it a go yourself.
Suzy Chase: Okay. And I quote you, "My personal meditation comes in the form of an afternoon, sitting next to a smoker with a beer and absolutely nothing else to do except wait for the most incredible mock meats of my life." Can you talk a little bit about liquid smoke and a smoker box and smoking in general?
Zacchary Bird: Definitely. And this is something that has been off the menu for vegans for so long, just because traditionally we're used to vegetables that really don't hold up to, or a lot of them don't hold up to those sort of long cooking times. And we really go our whole... I've been vegetarian since I was 11 years old. And there would be a point where I would look at a grill and I wouldn't even know which end was the top, just because it's not a part of my reality. And so the vegan butcher reintroduces that to a lot of long term vegetarians and vegans who are trying to expand their repertoire. Because something like smoke really tricks you into thinking that this is an animal product, because it's something we associate so heavily with cooked meats. So there's a couple of ways to add that to your cooking.
You've got liquid smoke, which is literally just smoke passed through water. And it's just concentrated liquid. You can keep it in your kitchen. A lot of non-vegan use it to really amplify their briskets and their barbecue meats, but it's just a secret hack to tricking your friends into thinking you've been slow cooking the food for hours, but really you've just added a drop or two of liquid smoke. But at the same time, if you've got a grill, you can get a very cheap smoker box instead of investing in big smokers, which can be a big step for someone who's never tried them before. A $20 smoker box can start introducing real smoke to your barbecue plant-based meats and really amplify what you're tasting from your home produced food.
Suzy Chase: I thought this was so interesting. The star of your not so poultry chapter is the humble soybean.
Zacchary Bird: 100%. The soybean has been demonized for so long. People have really taken their time to demonize soy milk and tofu and all of the wonderful things that come from soybeans. And so there is a star dish in that chapter, which is my ode to the soybean. It's my love letter to the humble soy. And it's the faux duck in the very last recipe in that chapter. It's a turduckin made vegan, but it's got three different levels of gluten-free and vegan meat. And they're all made from soybeans. And it's a way to show off that this one bean contributes so much to the plant-based protein world. Because when you're making tofu or soy milk, the skin that forms on the top as you cook it around 80 degrees celsius is called Yuba or bean curd, which you can find in groves at your local Asian supermarket.
And then when you make tofu, all of the, like how you have almond milk pulp, soy bean pulp okara, and it's this wonderful ingredient to crumb things. And there's also a way to turn it into mint in the book. But I think it's a wonderful way for people who want to explore low waste cooking in terms of using all the parts of one ingredient to create three different levels of a faux duck, and really showcases that we need to stop sleeping on how beautiful the soybean is.
Suzy Chase: Climate change and its severe impact on Australia felt through extreme heat waves has only added to the debate about farming and meat consumption. And Australia, I was excited to find out has one of the largest vegan communities worldwide.
Zacchary Bird: Oh wow. Good for us.
Suzy Chase: So as much as I love to credit compassion to people switching up their lifestyle, I really believe it's going to be the climate that's going to be the real motivator. What do you think?
Zacchary Bird: Well, I agree. I think there's a percentage of people who can be swayed through ethical means or the sort of, me, the bleeding heart vegans of the world. But I think as time goes on, we're seeing that veganism is hitting mainstream quicker than I think a lot of us expected. And I think it is because of the looming climate crisis and people kind of scrambling for a way to feel like they have something that they can do to combat it personally. And that's what I love about veganism, that it is something that I, as an individual, can decide to be as conscious as I can in those respects, just by making little switches in my own life without, or at least on my end, feeling like I've made really much sacrifice at all.
When I was working for a plant-based meat brand and we were in major commercial supermarkets, I, as a vegan was so excited to create products for my fellow vegans and really myself. But what I'd come to understand is that they were less than 5% of our purchases. So getting people to decide on more ethical or environmental choices on a day to day basis really has a much larger impact when it comes to just swapping what people choose on supermarket shelves. So it's really, I think, exciting. It's not exciting that we're going through a climate crisis, but I think exciting that people seem to be responding in the right direction at the moment.
Suzy Chase: What is the vegan easy challenge?
Zacchary Bird: So vegan easy is a wonderful initiative run by vegan Australia. It's really just a way for people who might be on the fence. As I said earlier, a lot of people are starting to understand that veganism isn't going to kill them from protein deficiency and they might understand more about why you should and they could go vegan, but they don't know how. So vegan easy is this wonderful 30 day challenge that allows people to get their recipes, have a literal mentor to ask their questions to. And it's also got prizes to give that little bit of an incentive to go, you know what, I'm going to take November and I'm going to really give this my best shot, so I can say I did.
Suzy Chase: Is there infighting in the vegan community?
Zacchary Bird: Look, there's always going to be infighting in the vegan community because we are a massive community with no leader. And that's just the way it works. When we had this wonderful movement kind of spurred on by the ideas that Donald Watson laid out when the vegan society was coined and it came to be. But really there's no doctrine being handed down. So it is up to us to be having these conversations amongst ourselves and educating each other and finding this common ground to understand what veganism is and looks like in our evolving contemporary space.
Suzy Chase: So, the other day I made your Vegan Fried Chicken on page 70. Can you describe this recipe? And I was wondering why you named it Vegan Fried Chicken.
Zacchary Bird: Wonderful question. A lot of people, as soon as they open the book, they're like chicken, I've been deceived. And I've really had to go through the book and remind you quite a few times that, no, it's vegan. That's why the word, the vegan butcher is on almost every page in the corner, just to keep you in the know of what you're looking at. But really this book isn't trying to show you something else to eat. So it's saying if you like eating fried chicken for dinner, I'm not telling you, why don't you try lentils and rice. I'm telling you that this is the closest thing that I know and a lot of us know how to substitute chicken. And I'm trying to explain to people how to replace or find analogs to dishes that are close to their heart, close to their family, close to their childhood.
And so the book does need, in my opinion, to explain that to people to say, oh no, you want a Turkey for Christmas. This is how to create one. And by pussy footing around the language to remove all of those references, I don't think does justice to the idea that this book is opening the floodgate and saying, no, this is a vegan chicken. If you want chicken, well, you can do it vegan as well.
Suzy Chase: Do you think that'll change in, let's say 10 or 20 years? Do you think veganism might be just so new right now that you still have to say vegan fried chicken and maybe there will be new terms, very vegan centric terms down the road?
Zacchary Bird: I think that's a really wonderful point. And it's something that I do agree with where we are in that sort of transition phase, where we're explaining to people and we're educating people. And if you jump on TikTok and you look at literally any comment on any video about anything I make, there are people who do not understand why a vegan is trying to make substitutes for chicken. And they don't understand that you can enjoy these foods and we are just trying to separate them from the animal agriculture industry.
And so in this period of time, I think there needs to be a lot of reeducation done. And that's what this book exists to do. I hope that in years to come that evolves, but also language evolves. And we use things like the meat of the argument and we use a lot of metaphors and we contextualize things. I love the English language for its ability to provide context then to explain great ideas. And I think by adding the word vegan in front of it, I think it does enough for now to explain exactly what we're trying to do.
Suzy Chase: Okay. Can you describe your glorious Vegan Fried Chicken?
Zacchary Bird: The fried chicken part of the chapter. And a lot of people know me for my initial fried chicken recipe. And a lot of people think that my name Zacchary Bird was initially written as some sort of food blogger name, but it's my actual real name. And it's just a coincidence that my Turkey and my chicken are my most popular recipes. But the Southern fried chicken, it's what I ate every Friday night when I was a kid. I always had KFC for dinner and this is the ultimate comfort food for me. So it's got these secret spices or not so secret at this stage, in the flour. And that's got a vegan buttermilk holding it onto your choice of a substitute for chicken.
So I love oyster mushrooms because they're meaty and they are chewy. And I think that's some that you chose, but there's also throughout this book. So many other choices to use jack fruit. You can use TVP, you can use the okara, which is the leftovers from making tofu. And there's a couple of other choices. So it's really up to whatever the hell you've got in your pantry.
Suzy Chase: The oyster mushrooms were so delicious.
Zacchary Bird: Have you played around with oyster mushrooms much in the past?
Suzy Chase: No. You know why? Because I always thought they were tough.
Zacchary Bird: Yes. I mean, if you've, if someone has robbed you of your first opportunity with an oyster mushroom and kind of painted them in the wrong way, I can imagine it's hard to redeem themselves in your eyes.
Suzy Chase: But you did it.
Zacchary Bird: Oh, wonderful. Well, they are. If you keep going through the book, oyster mushrooms are one of my favorites because they're just, well, as you've now discovered, they're so meaty. I've used them in the lamb shishkebabs, also in the beef chapter. And I absolutely love king oyster mushrooms because the really long stalks become scallops just by cutting them, by scoring them and putting them in a sort of seafood inspired marinade. Once you've seared them up, they are absolutely out of this world. That's beef, fish and chicken all made out of just the oyster mushroom family. How wonderfully versatile.
Suzy Chase: Okay, I also made your stinger sauce.
Zacchary Bird: You jumped over into the burger chapter.
Suzy Chase: Yes, because I think that was a recommendation on page 70 that you could dip the chicken into the stinger sauce.
Zacchary Bird: Wonderful. That does sound like something I would recommend. And if you, next time you give it a go, you can also try the stinger coating on the oyster mushrooms. And the book is this mix and match moment of, especially in the index it's quite good to just open up and say, I've got oyster mushrooms and it'll tell you where all the secret recipes are hidden. But if you crush up corn chips and use them in the stinger coating, it adds that texture that you get at KFC where it's blobby and weird, but super crisp in all the blobby crispiness, that's absolutely stunning for your next run, I think.
Suzy Chase: Now what makes the stinger sauce stinger?
Zacchary Bird: So what's really interesting about writing a cookbook for the international community is I've got my references from how much I've traveled and my family's history and where I've lived in. I've gotten to eat, in Australia we have the zinger burger and they've got a zinger sauce. And oh my that's exactly what my 12 year old Friday night dreams were made of. And so I really needed to create that mix of creamy with a little bit of a kick up the butt to go on some beautiful fried chicken. So I'm glad it hit the spot for you.
Suzy Chase: Well, your stinger sauce is amazing.
Zacchary Bird: Thank you. I saw your stories pop up. I mean, clearly you're no stranger in the kitchen, but I there's something that gets me hot under the collar about seeing a perfect crumbing station, just clean and ready to get the ingredients into the oil. It just, the look of excitement for me, it just says, hey, look how much promise this kitchen has.
Suzy Chase: Oh my gosh.
Zacchary Bird: And mushrooms are so great for you. They are a wonderful thing that vegan or not we should be incorporating into our diet. And it's been, I mean, they are the recyclers of the planet. They are growing on waste and they are such a wonderful sustainable avenue for us to go down for a food source. And there's so many different mushrooms and something that the book really goes into is, I was robbed of knowing of the variety of mushrooms. And I guess I grew up just looking at button and cup and I think you call them baby bellas where you are.
Suzy Chase: Yeah.
Zacchary Bird: And I had no idea that they're the same bloody mushroom in different stages of its life. And I thought those were all the three different mushrooms for so long that you could play around with. And it turns out there's different textures and there's different flavors and there's different health benefits. I think people really need to open up their mind to how many different mushrooms they can add to their weekly rotations.
Suzy Chase: There's your next cookbook?
Zacchary Bird: Oh yes. The vegan hunter where I show you how to forage for mushrooms in the forest. It's marketing itself already.
Suzy Chase: I can see your outfit already.
Zacchary Bird: I'm already Googling faux leather to do a little apron or something.
Suzy Chase: Now to my segment called dream dinner party, where I ask you who you most want to invite to your dream dinner party and why? And for this segment, it can only be one person.
Zacchary Bird: I think it would make sense to invite a foodie. Seeing is it's a cookery podcast, but I'm a good cook so I really don't need their help. So I'm choosing to invite my favorite author of all time. Who's Douglas Adams, and he's the author of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Dirk Gentley's Holistic Detective Agency. And I would just love to shut up and listen to him talk shit for one night of my life.
Suzy Chase: Where can we find you on the web and social media?
Zacchary Bird: You can find me throwing myself at absolutely any social media possible. So that's Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook. I'm pretty sure. Zachary Bird with two C's. Really easy to get a domain name and really hard to remember it. Thank you mom, for choosing that spelling.
Suzy Chase: To purchase the vegan butcher and support the podcast, head on over to CookerybytheBook.com. And thank you so much, Zachary with two C's for coming on cookery by the book podcast.
Zacchary Bird: It has been a bloody delight, Suzy. Thank you so much. And I hope that we get to share a Southern fried oyster mushroom one day.
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