I’m attending a small pot-luck where we all have to guess the “secret ingredient” (not visually apparent) in each other’s recipes. I’m hoping to make a savory vegetarian dish. Any suggestions for ingredient or recipe that’ll take one to two hours max to make? Tasting good is priority over the secret.
As an example, years ago I made a brownie recipe where everyone thinks there’s coconut, but it’s actually rinsed sauerkraut. I’m cool with such fun trickery, but if I can explore a subtle, unappreciated dimension of an ingredient it would be even better. Any ideas?
Ideally it would be a dish that I can drive across town, but I can do some last minute stuff (stir frying or boiling) at the host’s house. But no Aquafaba soufflés
Avocado chocolate cake or mousse
We once put edible crickets in brownies and everyone thought they were walnuts
Aquafaba meringues can be made in advance
ON the veg side maybe something with spaghetti squash or beet root.
2 Likes
meatn3
(equal opportunity eater in the NC Triangle)
3
Tea. Black, green, white, herbal…
Tea can be used in pickling, poaching, steaming. Dry tea can be pulverized and used as a seasoning. Simple applications are in fruit compotes or in the cooking liquid for rice. I’d be very surprised if anyone guessed it!
My Fauxtato Salad used dry large lima beans, soaked and cooked until the skins start to split. These are what is sold canned as butter beans, not the grassy green ones. Don’t sub canned, the texture is different. Use the cooked beans in any potato salad recipe. You’d never know they aren’t spuds. They should work as mashed potatoes to, if you put them through a ricer to remove the skins.
Steel-cut oats, used raw in cookies and cakes, are indistinguishable from finely chopped nuts.
This.
I bring to holiday parties every year and no one is vegan and this disappears before the cheeses and cured meats.
Secret ingredients- base of lentils and walnuts and mushrooms, soy sauce and the splash of alcohol they will never guess.
This is one of the pates I was thinking about upthread. I will say that I love pate and I can definitely tell that it’s lentils, but it’s tasty (and healthier).
There are some great ideas for ingredients that will trick people. If you’re looking for an ingredient that people have trouble placing I’d suggest pomegranate molasses.
Thanks for all the great suggestions! I brought a vegetarian pate to a previous event, so can’t duplicate. I’m gonna pass on the fauxtato salad for this event, but have all the ingredients in my pantry and will make it for lunch soon— those beans are the best.
Combing some ideas from above, I could make some tacos— black beans made smoky with some lapsang souchong tea and extra savory with miso, a guacamole made “spicy” with horseradish and acidic with lemongrass and lime, and plain old pickled onions. If any part is a 90s fusion disaster, I’ll just serve the good parts with tortilla chips
