If you are a vegan like me, you are probably a “perimeter
shopper” when you are at the grocery store.
That means that you stick to the outside edges of the store, you walk
through the produce, bakery and other cooled food departments, and almost never
venture into the middle parts. There are
a couple reasons for this. Firstly, most
vegans like fresh stuff, which generally speaking does not come out of the
boxes and bags of “the middle”.
Secondly, if one actually does venture into “the middle”, you then have
to read all the ingredients on the god-forsaken labels to find out if the
product is in fact vegan before you drop it in your basket or cart. Sucky.
(Actually, new labeling requirements in Canada are such that the major
common allergens are soon required to be listed in great big bold font at the
end of the ingredients list, including major vegan no-no’s like milk and eggs…
no luck though on hidden assholery like carmine, lanoline, etc).
And that’s at the regular grocery store. What do you do when you go to the Asian
grocery store? Unless you are lucky
enough to have the language understanding, this can be even more intimidating
and frustrating than visiting the regular grocery store. But despair not! There are many fabulous things to be found at
the Asian grocery store for vegans, and most of them don’t require fluency
in Mandarin!
So, I present to you, a very humble vegan’s guide to shopping at the Asian grocery, based on my most recent trip to 99 Supermarket in Edmonton’s Chinatown.
Produce!
Don’t let the weird root vegetables scare you! The Asian grocery is a great place to pick up
produce, often at a much lower price than the mainstream grocery store. On the day I was there, bags of bean sprouts
were on sale for 50 cents! Many of your
North American dietary favorites can be found in the produce department, along
with a bevvy of exotic choices for the more outgoing. My favorite unusual vegetable to pick up here
is the nagaimo, a white root that is
grated for use in making vegan okonomiyaki.
A nagaimo, and okonomiyaki with and without toppings. |
Canned produce!
The next best thing to fresh produce is produce in a
can. Well, frozen might be the next
best, but produce in a can is just so damn handy. Already having been
de-seeded/peeled/cored/whatever, canned produce is a great, affordable
convenience food that is available in great variety and abundance at most Asian
groceries. On this particular visit, I
picked up a couple of cans of jackfruit.
Jackfruit is what is known as a “tofu-vegetable”; it takes on the flavor
of whatever you season it with. As such,
it makes a completely delicious and ingenious vegan pulled pork! (if you
haven’t tried this, you really should, it is absolutely mindblowing.) You could buy a whole jackfruit (which they have in the produce department)
and process it yourself, but I’ve found the cans are so easy and they make the
perfect amount to serve 2-3 if you’re making the pulled pork recipe.
Tofu!
Obviously tofu. This
Asian and vegan dietary staple is available in so many varieties that I didn’t
even know existed until I went to the Asian grocery store. They often even have tofu made fresh! The brands that Asian stores carry tend to be
much cheaper than the ones carried by the bigbox competitors, and of better
quality quite often as well. On this
particular trip, I was hoping to find some inari. I couldn’t find anything specifically labeled
as such (99 Supermarket is a Chinese grocery, and most foods are not labeled
with their Japanese names), so these were the two things I picked up: frozen
sheet of dried tofu and braised tofu in a can.
I’m hoping that when I open them up, they are inari pockets, but if they
aren’t then I can always chop them up and put them in a stir fry anyway. One has to be willing to be a bit brave and
experimental in these cases!
Shichimi!
I love this stuff.
Shichimi is Japanese seven pepper spice. It is soooooo good when you add it to a bowl
of udon noodle soup! I use it to season
a ton of Asian dishes, it has some sort of magical powers in the peppers and
black sesame that makes absolutely everything taste spicy-good!
Tamari!
Superstore keeps the tamari in the gluten-free aisle, and
charges a small fortune for it as a result.
Stop paying high prices and pick it up next time you’re at the Asian
grocery store. I saved about $2 on this
bottle alone. I use a lot of tamari in
place of salt in recipes, and it is a key ingredient in my favorite miso gravy
too!
Unusual juices!
Refreshingly different! |
Interesting vegan “meats”!
No picture because I didn’t buy any this time, but the store
had a huge selection of really interesting vegan meats, including a “ham” and “ribs”. The only thing that sort of worried me was
the “chicken ham” (????). You can also
find canned seitan as well.
So that is just a sample of some of the vegan foods you can
find at the Asian grocery store without too much label reading prowess. Consider taking a trip to your local Asian
grocery the next time you go shopping.
Give yourself a bit of time to wander the aisles, you might be surprised
to find so many interested vegan things to eat.
excellent guide :)
ReplyDeleteThanks very much! I've gotten suggestions to do a similar post on Chinatown's tofu factory and Whole Vegetarian Foods store, so watch for those in the future.
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