Vegan pad thai
Pad thai is a stir-fry dish made with rice noodles, shrimp, chicken, or tofu, peanuts, a scrambled egg and bean sprouts. Vegan pad thai, as you probably know is a bit different.
I did my best to make this as easy for myself as I could. Mainly because pad thai is something that requires quite a few ingredients. So I read a bunch of recipes and in the end I came up with something quick and easy, with easily available ingredients.
I had pad thai several times before, and usually it’s topped off with some crushed peanuts. I never really liked that, so I decided to not use peanuts in this recipe. Similar versions of this Thai dish are probably out there, I am not claiming I discovered something new. But this is the version I really liked and thought was easy to make for lunch.
Next thing I knew, I was making it for lunch for a few days in a row. It’s an everyday dish, and I am really in love with it. In the beginning I thought that a stir-fry recipe is too simple for my blog, but after making it, I decided I have to share it.
Some health benefits
There are a few nice ingredients in this recipe, even though it is not the healthiest dish on earth. And as always, I am going to describe here the potential benefits your body can get when incorporating them into your diet. This time I chose to talk about tofu and scallions.
Tofu is one of the main ingredients of this dish. It is low in calories but high in protein and fat. It also contains many important vitamins and minerals.
It contains antinutrients like trypsin inhibitors and phytates. Soaking or fermenting soybeans before making tofu reduces these antinutrients, increasing its nutritional value. All soy-based products contain isoflavones, which are believed to have various health benefits.
Whole soy foods like tofu can improve several markers of heart health. This may lead to a reduced risk of heart disease. Research indicates that soy has a protective effect against breast, digestive, and prostate cancers. Tofu may have positive effects on blood sugar control, but more studies are needed to confirm this.
Like many vegetables and fruits, scallions are mostly water. A cup of it has just 32 calories, trace amounts of fat, and no cholesterol. It also has less sugar and fewer carbs than vegetables like carrots, potatoes, and corn.
A cup of cut scallions has about 10% of the fiber you need for the whole day. Getting lots of fiber helps you feel full, keeps your cholesterol levels down, and may lower your chances for diabetes, heart disease, and other conditions.
Scallions and other similar vegetables may block cancer growth, especially in the stomach. Scientists are still not sure how. They believe that a compound called allicin, which is what gives you garlic breath, may prevent cells from turning cancerous or slow tumors from spreading.
Extracts of onions, garlic, and their relatives have long been used as medicine. They can kill bacteria, fungi, and viruses. Lab tests on certain varieties of onions showed that at high enough concentrations, some can kill or slow the growth of salmonella or E. coli.
Vegan pad thai
Ingredients
rice noodles (for 1 person)
3 tbsp of oil
100 g of tofu
3 scallions
1 horn pepper
1 lime
bean sprouts
- For the sauce:
2 tbsp of soy sauce
1 tbsp of rice vinegar
2 tbsp of coconut syrup (or maple syrup)
1 tbsp of lime juice
1 tbsp of garlic sauce
a few shakes of chili powder
Directions
- Prepare all of the ingredients. Cut the tofu into small cubes, slice the horn pepper into thin strips and chopp the green part of the scallions into small pieces. In a small bowl mix together all of the sauce ingredients and set aside.
- Bring a pot of water to boil. Add the rice noodles in the pot and cook them for one minute. Remove the pot from the stove and let them soak for 5 minutes. Drain the water from the pot and rinse the noodles with cold water.
- Heat the oil to medium heat in a non-stick pan. Fry the tofu cubes until they become golden brown from all sides. Then add the sliced horn pepper, noodles, the sauce and the scallions to the pan. Stir and toss it around the pan from time to time. The vegan pad thai is ready when the ingredients have soaked up all of the sauce.
- Cut one lime into wedges. Transfer the pad thai into a bowl, top it off with some bean sprouts and garnish with the lime wedges. If it fits your taste, squeeze a bit of lime juice on top.
- Serve your vegan pad thai righ away.
If you liked this recipe, make sure you check out my other recipes like:
Feel free to tell me what you think about this in the comments below, or send me the pictures of your own vegan pad thai. If you did something differently, I would also like to hear that, I’d love to see the things you come up with.
P.S. for more recipes like this and a bunch of other stuff, follow me on instagram, @margo_drobi.
Also, I recently started a Patreon page, where you can subscribe and help me create more/better content. In return, you will get an exclusive piece of content (recipe) each month. My plan is to increase the amount of that content if I gain a few subscribers. If you are interested and you want to find out more, I will leave the link to my Patreon right – here