Within seconds I became a Vegan

lard A Roast or medallion of Veal low temperature cooking: was Previously clear – every chef, every cook needs to know how to do this. The preparation of meat and fish is an important part of the training. However, animal products currently have bad press to their harmful impact on the climate, to frightening images of animals in mass attitude. Already 14 percent of the Swiss population eat a vegetarian or vegan. In recent years, were launched in various cities initiatives on sustainable food – including the requirement that public canteens vegan have to offer menus.

Now, the gastronomy is not responding. Ab 2021-trained chefs no longer need to prepare for the Federal professional examination is mandatory and a menu with meat or fish, as was recently announced. In the doctrine, but the Perch and the lamb will continue to play an important role. It was up to the Swiss Vegi-pioneer Rolf Hiltl, there is also a meat-free cook-teaching. A concern, for the also the top Austrian chef Siegfried Kröpfl fights. Since three years he is in Vienna, chefs and cooking teachers in the art of purely plant-based cuisine.

Many chefs say to cook vegetarian, the go. But vegan dishes: much too expensive! Since you have to change the whole kitchen.
I know this Argument. Absolute Bullshit. If you are familiar with the basics of the vegan kitchen, it's quite easy. You do not need to change the kitchen at all. The Problem is that a lot of chefs know what it means to cook purely vegetable. When I started six years ago, had some almost feel like there's one coming home with a new sect. Now it is better. The chefs know: the base is the same. The vegetables, the legumes, these are the ingredients we cooks use anyway. And instead of Butter we use Margarine.

that an official apprenticeship will be introduced to vegetarian and vegan cooks.
We want the vegan chef is a private professional image. I give us five years, then the reality is. Perhaps not in Austria, since the structures are, in part, a little hillbilly, but maybe in Germany, or why not in Switzerland? I am convinced that meat-free cuisine is the future. The demand is too great. There is hardly a Restaurant you can afford, guests to send. And with a salad and mixed vegetables, you convince no one. So many young people want to have anything to do with meat also cooks.

For a chef, it is exciting to cook a good piece of meat than green stuff.
it's not. The options without meat are more diverse. Meat can I braise in a sense stewing, roasting,, then your done. Vegetables I can prepare in much more different types. Root vegetables, for example, I can stewing and glazing. Or low temperature cooking with herbs and spices. Or a puree. There's a different flavor composition is produced each Time. This is the real art in the herbal kitchen: the taste of an ingredient to work out. I want to be able to say: This is a carrot really tastes like a carrot. As for meat, the additives that make the taste: the sauces, the herbs, the spices are it is usually. This is the big difference.

How to proceed when they make new menus? They try to imitate well-known dishes are meatless, or create entirely new ?
I'm trying to handle meat imitations. Someone who knows how to be a real Schnitzel tastes, pulling at a scrap of meat set instinctively the comparison. Therefore, I create something completely New. I always go by what people are aware of. In my case, so the Austrian cuisine. Goulash for example. Why should the man on goulash? I just prepare it with vegetables and chickpeas. Then the guest has to be goulash.

Vegetable kitchen may be in the cities, there is a need. But at the Inn crowns the country, nobody asks for vegan goulash.
you are right. In the cities, meat works loose kitchen are wonderful, the country is difficult. Because of the reference to the meat and to the animals is much stronger. But I don't want to demonize. And imagine: In the Tyrol, there are even huts where you can eat vegan. Who would have thought five years ago?

Also in the top gastronomy, which is very heavy on meat, to think slowly. The French star chef Alain Ducasse makes in its Restaurants, the requirement that meals should only consist of 20 percent from animal proteins.
I think it's great when top chefs for the meat-free kitchen Express. It then gets a value. The people need role models. At the prestigious cooking competition Bocuse d'or in 2017 was cooked for the first time, a purely vegetarian dish. A Milestone! Apart from that, the meat-free kitchen is also lucrative: In Vienna, we have vegetarian chefs, where a menu costs 120 Euro. There's a good margin there. Imagine, you would demand a similar price for a dish in which the beef € 30 fillet of costs.

anyone Who thinks economically, so a vegetarian kitchen?
Correctly. Where it is for me personally, an ethical thing. When my daughter for her training as a nutritionist with a diploma thesis on the meat made kitchen, my wife and I us. What I saw there, especially about the mass animal husbandry, that was the madness. It was, as would have killed me with a switch. Within seconds I became a Vegan.

Until you have been to vegan cooking, it took then but still.
I have fought one and a half years of hard and long with me. Colleagues have turned away from me, the media I had in Austria is already a name – broke the head, what was in me. But for about three years, I am very happy as a vegan chef and educator. I am also against Food Waste, since I'll have the vegan kitchen the same flow, because herbal in addition to products is much better. Many chefs will envy me today. Because I no longer have to work the day before, every day for 14 hours and at each Meeting.

(editing Tamedia)

Created: 26.04.2019, 21:30 PM