#132: How to Level-Up Your Cooking with Vegan Chef Adam Sobel
Create meals that WOW with legendary chef Adam Sobel, who shares his top plant-based cooking hacks, from transforming simple ingredients into bold, flavorful dishes to mastering the tools and techniques that will make you a kitchen pro. Level up your cooking with valuable tips, tricks, and inspiration that will unlock the magic of plant-based cuisine.
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Ever wish you could have a professional chef in your kitchen, helping you along the way? Then we’ve got just the episode for you! Adam Sobel, the culinary genius behind the award-winning vegan eatery Cinnamon Snail, brings us his expertise and helpful hacks to level up the flavor and finesse in your kitchen.
Adam wrote the cookbook Street Vegan, which captures his signature bold flavors and playful approach to food, and he hosts fun online cooking classes to share his passionate advocacy, not just for food but for our planet.
In this episode he shares his intriguing start into the plant-based landscape, which includes everything from a professional chef using his childhood kitchen as a test-kitchen, to loving a vegan, to caring enough to accommodate plant-based restaurant customers, and finally to the profound way having his own child propelled him fully into a plant-based life of advocacy.
Adam shares his deep conviction that care and love make all the difference in our cooking, but also brings us super-practical (and intriguingly unusual!) recommendations for inexpensive and often overlooked kitchen tools that can up your cooking game.
We cover the ins and outs of knives and cutting boards - from how to select one to how to maintain one, and why these simple tools really can make all the difference. And if you’re nervous about knives, Toni has a great rec to boost your confidence and keep your fingers safe.
Speaking of, Toni and Michelle dish a little of their cooking background, including some humble starts and mistakes they made along the way. You’ll want to stay tuned for Adam’s encouraging advice to home chefs that speaks just to this - how to be ok with getting better as you go, and embracing the enjoyment along the way.
And an episode on vegan cooking hacks wouldn’t be complete without a deep-dive into vegan cooking staples. Tofu and seitan, anyone? Adam gives his top tofu tips, from using soft tofu to imitate chicken, to turning tofu into a snack worth taking a road trip for. Also, learn all the ins and outs of seitan - what is it and what can you do with it?
And finally, we couldn’t close an episode with Adam without touching on one of his specialties: sandwiches! He shares his secret to making a gourmet version of the classic BLT, that's totally vegan!
No matter where you’re starting from, a seasoned chef or a newbie to plant-based cooking, this episode has something to offer EVERYONE because it’s packed SO full of tips and tricks. And with Adam’s bright spirit, bold style, big-hearted inspiration you’re bound to feel empowered to WOW in the kitchen after giving this a listen.
EPISODE SHOW NOTES
- Adam tells how he got his start under his mother, who was a cookbook agent, and a professional chef who test-cooked in his kitchen
- How working in a restaurant and learning to accommodate plant-based customers turned him vegetarian
- The striking realization, upon having his own child, that moved him into veganism
- How wanting to make a meaningful difference in society propelled Adam into professional cooking
- How the care and love you put into food really do make all the difference
- Overlooked kitchen tools and gear that you can up your cooking game
- What you need to know about selecting a cutting board
- How one good quality, sharp knife (and keeping it sharp!) can change your life
- Tips for maintaining wooden cutting boards
- A little of Toni & Michelle’s background in the kitchen and how far they’ve come
- The benefits of ceramic knives and knife gloves
- Adam’s top tofu tips, from making soft tofu feel like chicken to roasting road trip snacks
- How to make and use seitan to create meaty textures
- A delicious sandwich idea from the sandwich aficionado
- Advice for those new to vegan cooking, including being ok with getting better at it and letting it be an enjoyable meditative experience
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