All posts by Jared

Jared became vegan at 22, he was a chef for eleven years and cooking professionally was a childhood dream. He went to Warren Tech culinary arts program in high school for two years and studied under two certified chef instructors where he learned all the basics of cooking and baking. At twenty-seven he left the restaurant industry and found a career in IT. He still loves the creative process of cooking and is sharing some of his experience with you here.

Best practices for food manufacturing

**Update 04/19/2018**

**Update 2 04/26/2018**

This was going to be a part of my AMA and FAQ, but when I started responding to her to explain best practices for food manufacturing it started getting long so I made it into its own article.

Recently I got some feedback from one of my viewers, Diana. She wrote

“FYI, chocolate chips by ghirardelli, guittard, hershey and other general chocolate makers are not vegan. These companies use the same equipment to make milk chocolate and dark chocolate and DO NOT clean the equipment in between batches of milk and dark chocolate. So there will be a significant amount of milk in the dark chocolate. You have to buy from a company with separate equipment for dairy free chocolate to get vegan chocolate. Enjoy Life makes vegan chocolate chips.”

Click to read my response

Knife safety, cutting techniques, and buying guide

Today I am bringing you something different. I am going to show you some knife safety and handling tips, cutting techniques, and a buying guide to choose the best knife to work with. This video is split into four segments, so look at the time table below and forward to the segment that you want to see if you don’t want to sit through the entire video.

00:47 Knife Safety
07:51 Knife Handling
12:11 Cutting techniques
33:44 Buying guide

Some handpicked knives for your consideration. All inexpensive and good quality tools:
This is a complete Victorinox knife set with a wooden block
If you want to piece your knife set together:
Knife bag to protect your knives when not in use
Victorinox 8 inch chef knife
Victorinox 10 inch honing steel
Victorinox bread knife
Victorinox paring knife
Victorinox serrated utility knife
This is the cutting board I have. It is 15×20 (38x50cm) which is right in the middle of being too small and too big.
Medium cutting board
If you would like a slightly smaller cutting board then this may be an option. It is 12×18 (30x46cm)
Small cutting board
Know the temperatures of your food
thermometer

Click the link to open the article and read more safety tips

Key Lime Pie – Pi day 2018

It is Pi day and that means another one of my vegan pie recipes. This time I am making a really tasty Key Lime Pie that is as traditional of a Key West key lime pie as I can make it while still being vegan!

“Chee Zee Beach, Beachfront Celebration ” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Continue reading Key Lime Pie – Pi day 2018

The Dirty Vegan cookbook review

*Disclaimer* I was given a free copy of this book from the author for a honest review of the book.

I have been following Cathrine Gill on Instagram and Twitter for a while and I was given the opportunity to review her new book; The Dirty Vegan.

The Dirty Vegan cookbook.
The Dirty Vegan cookbook.
I spent some time reading through her book and decided to make three of her recipes. The recipes I decided to make were her spinach and artichoke dip, meatloaf, and no tuna salad sandwich.

The recipes seemed simple enough, and I went out and bought the ingredients I needed and throughout the week I made the recipes.

Click to continue reading the article

Piccata

Hello everyone, first of all I would like to apologize for my extended awful appearance and voice. I am suffering from Bells Palsy and so I am going to be a bit of a challenge. Also somehow the audio got recorded from my camera instead of my external microphone so the audio in the first parts of the video is horrible. Just a series of challenges this time.

Today I am making a perfect dish for valentine’s day this year, you can also make it for those romantic date nights or your special anniversary, vegan piccata, it makes two, is quick and easy to make, and will help make you lucky.

Click for recipe

Tip – Easy vegan whipped cream

I am going to show you a really quick tip on how to make an easy vegan whipped cream. Watch the video and the recipe is below.

Music by Memento Dubstep
Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0)
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Continue reading Tip – Easy vegan whipped cream

Valencian Paella

Today I am making another recipe I have been wanting to make for a long time but have been putting it off. I had Paella when I was in Spain and really fell in love with it. I am making a vegan version of Valencian Paella and I hope you find this tasty and as authentic as I can make it. This dish is served directly out of the pallera and is great with some Spanish wine.

Click for recipe:

Wild mushroom strudel

Today I am recreating and reimagining one of my favorite dishes I used to love to eat at one of the now long gone restaurants I worked at. Wild mushroom strudel with a madeira wine sauce. I really hope you make this recipe for your family and enjoy it as much as I do. The fun part of this recipe is going out and finding the mushrooms.

Click to view the recipe

Banana bread and or muffins

Do you have any extra bananas laying around, any of them that are too ripe to eat? Well I have a recipe for you! Today we are going to be making banana bread and or muffins! Also you might want to check my recipe for nice cream that utilises over ripe bananas. But today I will be making banana bread, so now lets go bananas!

Click to view the recipe: