| |

Vegan Filipino Spaghetti.

Byamazingfoodstv


As an Asian American who also happens to be vegan, I sometimes find myself occupying a strange place—on the one hand, I’m very familiar with the harm of othering language or behavior, the damage caused by cultural insensitivity around food. On the other hand, my personal values dictate against eating many of the foods that are very endemic to my culture. I think many people have concluded that these are mutually exclusive. That’s a shame. It’s very possible to remain respectful and inclusive towards other people’s cultures, their stories, and even the trauma surrounding those stories, while still being true to your values and ethics.
.
I can’t even tell you how nostalgic it was for me to make this Filipino spaghetti!! That first bite was unREAL—it tasted EXACTLY like I remembered. Growing up, I thought it was just “spaghetti,” because that’s what my mom called it. It wasn’t until I got to college that I learned that most people did NOT put hot dogs and red bell peppers and ketchup in their spaghetti. So, I thought it must be just a thing my mom did. And now, all these decades later, I learn that this is Filipino Spaghetti, which makes sense since my mom’s best friend at work was Filipino and Omma borrowed Filipino recipes from her friend and made them for us at home (chicken adobo was one of my FAVORITES growing up!).
.
Here’s the #recipe for my vegan version, which, with the exception of Banana Sauce and syrup, is a one-for-one vegan replica of my mother’s spaghetti (she used plain Ketchup instead of Banana Sauce and sugar instead of syrup):

2/3 cup walnuts
5 medium baby bella mushrooms
1 tablespoon oil
3 vegan hot dogs, sliced on a bias
1/2 cup diced onion
1/2 cup diced red bell pepper
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons Banana Sauce (or Ketchup)
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 container Prego tomato sauce (this is what my mom used!)
Optional: 1/4 cup vegetable broth
1 tablespoon sweetener (I used brown rice syrup)
1 lb cooked spaghetti noodles
1/4 cup shredded vegan cheddar cheese

Place your walnuts and mushrooms into a food processor and pulse about 10 times, until you get a crumbly texture that looks a lot like ground beef. Add oil to a large pan over medium high heat. When it begins to shimmer, add your vegan hot dogs and cooked until browned (about 3 minutes). Remove from pan and set aside. To the same pan, add onion, red bell pepper, and garlic. Saute for about 3 minutes, until onions become translucent and garlic is fragrant. Add Banana Sauce and tomato paste and stir until pan contents are evenly coated. Add Prego tomato sauce and stir. Lower heat to medium low, add back hot dogs, and continue to cook for about 15 minutes, until sauce has reduced a little bit and gotten nice and thick (almost like a gravy). If your sauce gets too thick, add a tablespoon or two of vegetable broth to slacken it. Serve with cooked spaghetti noodles and garnish with vegan shredded cheese.

Joanne Lee Molinaro is a Korean American trial lawyer, New York Times best-selling author, James Beard Award-winner, and host of the Are You Ready podcast. With nearly 5 million fans spread across her social media platforms, Joanne has appeared on The Food Network, CBS Saturday Morning, ABC’s Live with Kelly and Ryan, The Today Show, PBS, and The Rich Roll Podcast. She’s been featured in the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, NPR, and CNN; and her debut cookbook was selected as one of “The Best Cookbooks of 2021” by The New York Times and The New Yorker among others.

Helpful Resources:
Website:
The Korean Vegan Cookbook:
The Korean Vegan Meal Planner:
The Korean Vegan Podcast:
Linktree:

Find me on Social:
Instagram:
TikTok:
Twitter:
Facebook:

source

Similar Posts

39 Comments

  1. Calling white people colonializer in its self is racist. Maybe some of their ancestors were colonizers but they are not their ancestors. This is ridiculousness of wokism even as a left leaning libertarian I just can’t support its absurd.

  3. As a vegetarian Filipino, I have never used ketchup (banana or otherwise) when cooking red sauce spaghetti but am aware that's what many FIlipinos prefer. Pasta is a staple at home but my family never ever cooked sweet spaghetti even when I was a kid and wasn't a vegetarian then. I've only tried sweet spaghetti in other families' homes, at parties or fastfood joints. (Yup. Many Filipino fastfood places have spag on their menu).

  15. I mean almost all of south indian food is vegan and many north indian dishes are vegetarian and can easily become vegan by swapping the cow milk and ghee.
    I would argue indian food has the best and most creative vegetarian dishes ever. Meat is very optional in india.
    Its eurocentric to asssume veganism was in invented in by European descendants white people. Its not new just repackaged.

  16. veganism came wayyyy after colonialism. White people were never typically vegan, meat and potatoes was our staple diet. That's like saying yoga is a colonial sport just because it's mostly white women doing it now lol

  17. This looks delicious! I will admit, though, for having tasted pasta where ketchup was added, I really didn't like the taste. My flatmate said it was the same as the sauce we had, and wow, it really wasn't. But I will look up Filipino spaghetti. I'm hungry.

  25. What IS racist is when people try to say that humans were never meant to eat meat at all, disregarding the cultures throughout history that widely did rely on it as a source of protein and had culture focused around agriculture and hunting. It’s the generalization there that erases the validity of other food cultures and creates a hierarchy of “good food culture that is natural” and “bad food culture that is unnatural”

  26. About the “ketchup and hot dog spaghetti” I would like to say it’s absolutely delicious. Over a decade before I discovered the filipino dish I had already eaten it a hundred times. My family is fully hispanic European. My brother is handicapped and HATES 90% of foods so this dish has been a staple as it was affordable and all of us could eat it. I still make it sometimes and it was so funny when I saw the filipino version because I thought we just had a weird taste but it’s actually pretty common!

  28. THANK YOU for this video omg 😭 i hate that veganism is seen as a white people club or rich privileged person thing. so many different cultures have been vegetarian/vegan for thousands of years or have plenty of plant based dishes/traditions. meat has always been for the ruling class but because of factory farming and government subsidides processed foods, meat, dairy, and eggs are often much cheap than fresh fruits and vegetables, especially those treated without pesticides IDK i could talk on an on about this topic ugh i hate to admit because it's a stereotype and not all vegans are reactionary or bigoted but unfortunately a lot of vegans are bigoted, racism, classist, etc! it sucks! but we live in a white supremacist society so it makes sense, if you don't take the time to unpack your own ignorance, regardless of if you're vegan or not, you might end up being really rude, judgemental, hateful without even realizing it :/ does that make sense? idk im just ranting here

  29. Man americans have alot to worry about . Two things that have nothing to do with eachother . Mind gymnastics . Thanks for not stepping down and embracing your cultural background, veganism and creativity . And also thank you for sharing all these recipes , wisedom and stories with us.

  32. Sure, a lot of cultures have foods that are not meat-based, Korea (the namesake of your channel) is not one of them. Nobody in east Asia is vegetarian or vegan. Pork, fish, etc are just so central to the diets there that yeah it's kind of colonial to be vegan.

    But who cares. Nobody is expecting you be an ambassador for a purely authentic Korean lifestyle.

    I mean like you do what you want. It's not a huge deal. You have a presence on the Internet which earns you an income and you speak English without a trace of an accent. Your husband is incredibly Anglo-Saxon. Why not throw that diet into the mix?

    Anyway I remember a video that you made where you were like "My husband and I were talking about breaking our veganism even slightly, even for the sake of survival, and I said I never would then he told me, 'have some faith in me, have some faith in me,'" and I can only think of that video whenever I see you. The utter zealotry and privilege. You're just SO much better than everyone else, huh?

    God, and the way you speak with this obnoxious, self-aggrandizing tone like everything you do is some sort of inspirational feat. You tokenize yourself and don't even realize it. This video comes off as the ramblings of someone too insecure to contend with the fact that they've been whitewashed.

    I can't fucking stand you.

  37. Although I’m not a vegan, I love watching your videos and trying new recipes. It’s always been important to me to try different cuisines to better understand others cultures. I grew up in a mostly white school so I saw the judgmental stares at people just for eating different foods. It’s such a shame that even as children we look and judge each other just for being different. I love your videos and the kind messages you send out!

  38. I don’t understand why anyone gatekeeps or shames anyone’s food choices anymore. With food scarcity, a prevalence of EDs, and high food cost let people feed themselves however they can and however they see fit. The world sucks right now, let’s be nicer to each other, it’s the one thing we CAN control immediately.

  39. Imagine being in Louisiana and vegan… people there literally use their holiday/vacation time to explicitly go hunt animals as a hobby! 😂😂 someone legit asked me if I was mentally ok bc I didn’t want steak😂
    To each their own people! ❤

Leave a Reply