Meat lover vs. vegetarian: reconciliation around the barbecue

Are you vegan, vegetarian, flexitarian, or don't feel like eating meat? Don't worry, only today is barbecue day with your family or friends and you will have to answer the age-old question: "what are you going to eat then? It's high time to break the preconceived ideas and show all meat lovers that you can also enjoy a vegetarian barbecue. Demonstration with 4 typical BBQ dishes that will make you feel like you're eating (almost) all the same!

1 - The potato in field dress

After being cleaned, brushed and rinsed with water, the potatoes are cooked with their skins on, wrapped in aluminum foil, on the embers of the barbecue. This cooking process gives the stewed potato its taste and a slightly smoky flavour. Count about 30 min of cooking time before removing them from the embers, crushing them, cutting them in half, digging them out and garnishing them with a knob of salted butter, olive oil, fresh cream and chives.

As always, everyone interprets and revisits the recipe in their own way. For our part, we replaced potatoes with sweet potatoes that we stuffed with cheese. Discover our sweet potato en papillote and cancoillotte recipe.

In the vegan version, the sweet potato can be filled with grated, smoked or herbed faux-mage and mixed with a little vegetable cream to obtain a smooth result. They can also be garnished with a few slices of vegetable mozzarella made from rice.

2 - The ribs

This popular recipe for American-style BBQs is still very popular. Good news, we found the ribs recipe vegetarian version, and the resemblance with meat could fool the most barbak lovers. Made from seitan, a vegetable substitute for wheat flour, rich in protein and with a meat-like texture. This very complete recipe proposes a realization of the dish from A to Z, that is to say by making your own seitan but you can find it in organic shops. There are even special varieties to grill, thicker and sold under vacuum like a real butcher's piece: you'd get lost in it!

As with pork ribs, it's all about the marinade! Whether you follow the recipe to the letter or if you already have your own recipe for the meat version, you can use it to coat the seitan. Discover our recipe for pork ribs with 5 spices. In any case, the more marinated the ribs, the better. Ideally, they should be prepared the evening before and left to rest overnight.

3 - The hamburger

Easy to prepare, user-friendly and practical when you receive a lot of people at your BBQ. After preparing the basic ingredients to garnish the burgers: tomato slices, salad leaves, fried onions, slices of grilled or marinated vegetables, etc. all that's missing is the grilled steak. And here, as far as vegetable substitutes are concerned, there is something for every taste: soy, wheat, lentils, seitan, lupines, spices, herbs: you have a wide range of choices...

Here are a few original burger ideas for meat lovers, which can be easily adapted into a vegetarian version by replacing the meat with a veggie steak :

Lebanese Chicken Burger

Turkey Burger

Shredded pork burger

You will see, once placed on the grill, you won't even be able to tell the difference between meat and vegetable steaks.

4 - Sausages, merguez, chipolatas

Here again, plant products are the perfect change. There are all kinds of them: spicy, smoked, merguez... They are undoubtedly the simplest products to cook as they do not require any preparation, whether they are meat-based or not. All you have to do is grill them - the vegetable versions are a little more fragile and require a slightly shorter cooking time - before putting them in bread and accompanying them with a little mustard, ketchup or mayonnaise!

If you would like to smoke your sausages with Kokko to give them a little extra taste, check out our Kokko smoking instructions. In this case, opt for sausages with a fairly neutral taste: Toulouse sausages or plain chipolatas on the meat side, soya or oat sausages on the vegetable side, so that the smoke gives the meat a nice scent.

From now on, there's no reason why you shouldn't all get together for a BBQ party and why not for a nice winter evening around the Kokko!