Having a vegan cookout is a lot easier than you might think. Here's how.

NEW YORK CITY (TND) — If I close my eyes and dream up a vignette of the quintessential cookout, concocted with considerable assistance from long-ago childhood memories that somehow still feel like yesterday, I land on my grandparents’ screened-in porch.

It’s summer, or maybe late spring, and the kitchen, an inviting hub for those holidays situated in the harshness of winter, is no match for the feeling of fresh air. The adults are instead perched on the floral-printed vinyl cushions of the porch’s patio furniture or otherwise assembled in a backyard flanked by cotton candy blue hydrangeas, as the youngest relatives flock to the swing set or gather around the basketball hoop in the driveway. For all, the afternoon seems to stretch on lazily with no mind to the realities of time, but eventually, the feeling of sunlight on bare skin will fade into the relief brought about by an estival evening of lightning bugs and sparklers.

The flavors are no less vivid: the sheets of corn that my dad would so kindly slice off the cob for me, the sweet, syrupy baked beans swaddled in their goopy sauce and several boxes of frozen veggie burgers — Boca, perhaps, or Morningstar — perfectly portioned for the meat-opposed among us.

Should a patty or two be leftover at my family’s cookouts, they attracted no interest whatsoever from outside the bounds of our vegetarian cohort. It wasn’t that any of the omnivores felt bothered by the veggie burgers’ inclusion on the grill, but they felt a stronger magnetic pull toward the juicy red meat sizzling seductively alongside the less flashy black bean pucks.

In the early 2000s, a palatable plant-based option and an overall attitude of indifference were the most the average vegan could ask for on Memorial Day or Fourth of July, maybe with a side of beans cooked without the aid of pork. A vegetarian could also wish for mac-and-cheese sans bacon and a vat of coleslaw or potato salad. But the safest bet for some was packing up their own meal to carry along and then hoping, Tupperware in hand, the host didn’t perceive their personal dietary restrictions as any sort of broader slight against the food being served.

Certainly, there would be those who would take offense. A 2007 Seattle Times article questioned the ability of carnivores and herbivores to enjoy the simple pleasure of a shared meal, and several of the meat-eaters interviewed expressed disdain for those living a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle. One person described their unwillingness to ever find love with a vegan, because, as they told the Seattle Times, they loved food and barbecues too much.

“I’m not going to date someone who’s going to sit there sipping water and complaining about the ingredients in the salad dressing,” they said, hiding behind anonymity.

Another said vegetarians showing up to her gatherings would have to fend for themselves because she needed a hearty serving of meat to satiate her appetite. Otherwise, it didn’t feel like a real meal.

At hearing that quote, Latisha Daring, owner of Greedi Kitchen, let out an uninhibited laugh.

“They haven’t been to my vegan barbecue,” she said.

Nearly a lifelong vegan, save for a brief period prior to the birth of her daughter, Daring is intimately acquainted with every single stereotype that could be thrown at her and firmly rejects the frequent misconceptions about the vegan diet, not with words alone but through an unabbreviated demonstration of plant-based possibilities at her Brooklyn restaurant.

The menu at Greedi Kitchen draws inspiration both from Daring’s southern background and from her husband’s Caribbean roots with options ranging from coconut fried ginger plantains to an oyster po'boy overflowing with oyster mushrooms instead of mollusks.

Most emblematic of the blend of influences, though, are the soon-to-debut barbecue ribs, which ingeniously utilize sugar cane to simulate the experience of eating meat off the bone while also minimizing waste and maximizing the health benefits (sugar cane is said to have diuretic properties and is used in Ayurvedic medicine to support healthy liver functions). They’ll make their way onto the menu this summer, coinciding with Greedi Kitchen’s move to a new location with a sizable backyard in which Daring pictures nightly barbecues for as long as the season allows.

“I’ve been working on this barbecue rib recipe for about three years, and I’m so excited that I finally perfected it,” said Daring.

The generalization of all vegans as lettuce-nibbling know-it-alls comes from a particularly whitewashed viewpoint of plant-based eating that glaringly overlooks the myriad of cultures around the world that have refrained from eating meat, or at least limited their consumption, long before the term “vegan” entered our lexicon in 1944. It’s a perception centered on a poster child who is likely skinny, wealthy and white, who touts the benefits of quinoa and açaí as if they were recent inventions rather than long-established dietary staples for ancient civilizations outside of the western world.

Vegetarian principles can be found throughout history, from the ancient Indian religion of Jainism that mandates vegetarianism on the grounds of nonviolence, or ahimsa, to the writings of Al-Ma’arri, an 11th-century Arab poet who argued in his work that eating animals and animal byproducts was essentially stealing from nature. Daring’s own introduction to veganism came from her Rastafarian mother, who faithfully followed the religion’s Ital belief system. Deriving its name from the word “vital,” Ital calls for an unprocessed, plant-based diet as a way of expanding livity, or the life force within each of us.

And the transformation of classic barbecue dishes into vegan offerings can serve as an acknowledgment of the plant-heavy diet enslaved West Africans ate in their home country before they developed soul food as a means of survival in antebellum America.

In recent years, an expanded understanding of this background has invited greater diversity to the vegan table, allowing the modern-day movement to rejoice in its celebration of cuisines well beyond the standard salad.

All the while, companies like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods are putting forth their very best effort to convince even the staunchest of meat lovers their plant-based burgers can be just as tasty (and even as bloody) as the real thing. Never before has it been this easy to be a vegan — or to host one — at a cookout.

When Jerel Jefferies, owner of Refocused Vegan in Baltimore, decided to go vegan more than 20 years ago, there were no bleeding burgers made from soy protein or ribs held together by anything other than a stark reminder of the animal from which they originated.

"Back then, it was really hard. You had to be more creative, more flexible," he said, bemoaning the French fries that were often presented as the sole vegan menu item at restaurants that had never before considered customers with dietary preferences outside of the mainstream.

Subsisting only on greasy, high-calorie baskets of French fries wasn't an option for Jefferies, whose motivation for the major lifestyle shift stemmed largely from a desire to stay healthy after a hamstring injury ended his college football career. So rather than acquiescing to limited options, he began to experiment with plant-based cooking in hopes his favorite flavors would translate well into his altered way of eating. Seasoning his recipes was easy enough; mimicking textures, on the other hand, presented a far greater challenge back in the day.

The idea to start a restaurant wouldn't come until much later, as the logical next step following a first-place finish in a vegan mac-and-cheese competition among formidable opponents. First, Jefferies had to endure years of tired, unimaginative jokes and a constant influx of questions from friends and family members who struggled to understand his sudden rejection of the food he had grown up enjoying, of the sub shops and burger joints he had once frequented.

"A lot of people met it with opposition," he said. "They were offended, because to them, it felt like a personal attack."

If, on an average day, Jefferies' diet could so readily be interpreted as a monumental statement encompassing within it far more than the straightforward choice of a single individual, the effect was assuredly magnified at holiday gatherings, during which a shared meal carries with it a great deal of significance in both a culture's traditions and those specific to a particular family.

Almost always, it's a meaty centerpiece around which the feast is formed. Would it still feel like the Fourth of July without beef slapped on the grill? Thanksgiving without the turkey tucked away in a roasting pan awaiting the arrival of family members and a drizzle of gravy?

"We connect so much over food in our celebrations and traditions. It’s not just the turkey. It’s the bond of sitting for that meal," said Jefferies.

With the opening of Refocused Vegan in 2019, Jefferies saw the opportunity to recreate in a restaurant setting (and in a vegan restaurant, at that) the same profound, near-universal appreciation of quality time spent with loved ones around a table full of food. Here, though, it's not turkey or hamburgers but Jefferies' award-winning mac and cheese, vegan wings and plant-based burgers that bring people together, each interaction helping to formulate new associations that could someday grow into familial traditions if fostered by a pattern of repetition.

And at Refocused Vegan, the menu beckons for repeat visits, given the difficulty of trying the wings, a vegan cheesesteak, a vegan crab cake sandwich and a vegan quesadilla in a single sitting.

The multisensory quality of our food-based memories makes them particularly potent, our recollection guided as much by the circumstances around the food as by its taste alone.

So although I have not lived in Baltimore for more than two decades, I can so clearly remember walking past cobblestone streets in the city's Federal Hill neighborhood to visit Herb’s Bargain Center, where I was always able to find an addition to my Troll Doll collection, and then Cross Street Market, where a doorway beneath a circus-like awning opened up to stalls vending cuts of meat in deli display cases and pungent fish resting wide-eyed on a bed of ice.

Today, Cross Street Market is still standing, but an $8.4 million renovation has ensured neither its interior nor its exterior match very closely to the one frozen in time within the confines of my mind. But no matter the brief twinge of nostalgia that can be expected to accompany the transformation of a beloved space — there are still plenty of stalls to explore, including several that have withstood the test of time. The butcher that first opened in Cross Street Market in 1952 remains, as does Steve's Lunch, a lunch counter that has called the market home for over 50 years.

And now, standing in complete contrast to the meat-dominated offerings at Steve's, an eatery called Gangster Vegan boasts a menu that is fully plant-based and entirely raw. The two lunch spots actually share a couple of sandwiches in common, but whereas the tuna salad and the hamburger at Steve's are as straightforward as they come, the dehydrated onion bread at Gangster Vegan immediately sets an unfamiliar tone that's further amplified by "tuna" salad made out of sunflower seeds and burgers formed from either broccoli or beets. Further separating Gangster Vegan's burgers from even other vegan options elsewhere in the city is the fact that they're served cold.

"It's probably the healthiest burger you could possibly make," said James Yarborough, co-owner of Gangster Vegan DMV alongside his wife, Taneea. "They’re made from nothing but vegetables and seeds. There’s no soy. They’re not made in a lab. They’re made fresh every day in Cross Street Market."

The Yarboroughs, who also operate a Gangster Vegan location in Riverdale Park, Maryland, and a smoothie bar in Washington, D.C., follow a raw vegan diet. Similar to Jefferies, their journey has been closely tied to the pursuit of better health. James made the switch while looking for more energy to support his consulting career and Taneea saw plant-based eating as a pivotal way of taking control of her well-being while navigating two cancer diagnoses and ultimately beating both. Through the positive shift James and Taneea experienced in their own lives, the couple felt compelled to turn their confidence in vegan food into a career to improve its accessibility and enable others to achieve equally advantageous results.

Among all the successes James has achieved thus far as a restaurant owner, he draws the most pride from the role he has played in providing crucial nourishment to frontline workers during the coronavirus pandemic through Gangster Vegan's nutrient-focused menu.

The promise of significant health benefits has long served as a source of attraction to the vegan lifestyle for those seeking to improve specific conditions, as well as for those on a more general path to personal wellness. Plenty of the same people who once teased Jefferies for going vegan have since approached him for his advice on improving their diets, some motivated by a grim report at a recent doctor's visit. And Daring, too, has seen a growing interest in healthy lifestyles and an increased awareness of the impact proper nutrition can have on one's longevity.

"People understand now that the way to a long, healthy life comes from what you consume and what you put in your body," she said.

It’s been suggested this incentive of plant-based eating is especially appealing to Black Americans seeking tangible solutions for the health disparities that put their communities at greater risk for disease and the limitations they face in accessing high-quality health care. Recent surveys have revealed Black Americans are the fastest-growing vegan demographic, and as the COVID-19 pandemic flashed an even brighter spotlight on the inequalities in health care, the trend is expected to continue.

The closest that any American holiday comes to encouraging healthy behavior is the resolution that tends to follow the binge drinking typical of New Year's Eve, or perhaps the Christian tradition of giving up sweets during Lent in preparation for Jesus' resurrection on Easter Sunday.

Holidays instead tend to promote a day of indulgence, and anyone called to stuff their face with hot dogs and heaps of coleslaw during a cookout should feel no shame in exercising their right to do so. But ringing in the unofficial start of summer with a more nutritious meal need not require any sacrifice of flavor, as evidenced by Gangster Vegan's Dirty South BBQ Bowl.

"That bowl is a play on classic Memorial Day flavors," explained James.

It only takes one bite, if scooped correctly onto the fork as a heaping mass of all the bowl's numerous components, to be transported to the heat of a summer afternoon that lingers into early evening and a paper plate straining under the weight of a burger loaded with all the fixings alongside a sloppy helping of mayo-soaked coleslaw. Some of the bowl’s ingredients provide this sensation with little need to deviate from those that would be enjoyed by near-carnivores. Pickled onions, for instance, are almost certain to be vegan, whether plopped onto a hunk of beef or accompanying a bowl at Gangster Vegan.

Barbecue sauce is less of a sure thing, as several popular brands achieve an umami flavor through anchovies, and others incorporate honey into the recipe. But at Gangster Vegan, the barbecue sauce is house-made and provides an excellent complement to the sunflower seed “cheese” sauce that’s drizzled atop the bed of brown rice and marinated kale as well.

And then there’s the essence of meat, not in a way that would fool anyone into thinking they’re eating animals but with enough of a resemblance for a connection to be formed, that comes from marinated mushrooms. Black beans, carrots and roasted beets round out the rest of the bowl’s toppings.

“When we’re eating food, we’re associating the flavors with our memories,” said James. “The [Dirty South BBQ Bowl] still unlocks the memories in that way.”

Even hot dogs, infamous for their remarkably low level of nutrition and associated with the increased risk of a whole laundry list of health issues, now have better-for-you counterparts that don't, as a 2021study found true for wieners, cut 36 minutes off of one's life.

In the 207-year-old historic building best known for housing the Women's Industrial Exchange of Baltimore City, a mother-daughter team is challenging the assumption that all hot dogs are toxic tubes of mystery meat by creating more wholesome franks from scratch and emphasizing the importance of transparency in allowing consumers to feel good about their food choices.

So when it became evident that Sporty Dog needed a vegan dog, Lashauna Jones, who runs the eatery with daughter Daejonne Bennett, knew immediately she wanted to move in a direction antithetical to the overly processed approach of Impossible Foods. Like the all-natural beef dogs on the menu, the vegan variations passed across the iconic old lunch counter are unambiguous in their contents, starting with a white bean base and achieving a savory, smoky flavor by way of seasoning.

“You can taste that it’s real food,” said Jones, who currently follows a primarily pescatarian diet despite spending her days surrounded by beef. “So I think that’s one of the reasons why our vegan hot dog really started to explode.”

Sporty Dog’s classic vegan dog sticks to the script with customary toppings like ketchup, mustard and relish, but adventurous eaters will find their curiosity satisfied with a menu that unabashedly argues in favor of strawberries and grilled pineapple as suitable hot dog additions. There’s also the Baltimore Black Sox Dog that makes appropriate use of black-eyed pea chili to honor the city’s professional Negro league baseball team from the early 20th century.

For someone interested in going vegan, the path to plant-based eating becomes more clearly defined with each passing day, as meat-free solutions to an undying love of cheese or a longing for sausage line grocery store shelves, such that the barrier to entry is not a lack of options but too many from which to choose. And at restaurants, there’s rarely a need in the present day to settle for a side of fries, especially when French fry cravings can be satisfied with a dish as positively indulgent as Refocused Vegan’s cheesesteak-topped rendition.

“It’s not going to be as difficult as people make it seem,” said James as a word of advice to anyone feeling drawn toward veganism. “There are definitely enough options to keep you from feeling like you’re eating the same thing over and over, and you’ll likely find that you love more flavors without meat than you realized.”

Jefferies agreed. “My first tip is to be grateful because vegan food options have come miles past when I was doing it back in 1999 — because those were bad. Those were really, really bad. So be thankful you have a lot of good options.”

He further encouraged potential vegans to try more than one brand to uncover their preferences, comparing his decision to sell both Beyond and Impossible burgers at Refocused Vegan to the strong affinity that someone might have for either Pepsi or Coke.

Still, even with the abundance of vegan products available to today’s consumers, the prospect of then working with these ingredients in the kitchen to create an actually appetizing meal or a scrumptious side dish for a cookout can appear daunting.

In recognition of this barrier to entry, Catskill Animal Sanctuary, a refuge for rescued farm animals located on an approximately 150-acre property in Saugerties, New York, offers plant-based cooking classes and educational discussions to vegans and non-vegans alike.

Linda Soper-Kolton, director of culinary arts for the sanctuary, leads the Compassionate Cuisine program, which includes both in-person and Zoom-based cooking classes, several hundred free online recipes, and a cookbook by the same name that takes a deeper dive into Soper-Kolton’s techniques and shares the sanctuary’s overarching mission to spread the message of veganism as extensively as possible. "We chose this name for our program, and for this book because we believe that eating can be kind to animals, to our bodies and to our planet," wrote Soper-Kolton at the start of the cookbook before jumping into an analysis of the key nutrients the human body needs and the reliable sources of each within the restrictions of a vegan diet.

There are endless amounts of invaluable tips peppered throughout the pages — how to easily substitute the meat in a recipe for tempeh or lentils, how to find a vegan mentor, how to plan for long-term success in a gradual conversion to veganism — as well as the incredibly practical advice to wear closed-toe shoes to protect the feet from an accidental falling knife.

For a devout meat eater who is looking up vegan recipes, not for their own sake but to accommodate a friend's dietary preferences at a cookout,Soper-Kolton advises a simple swap. "I always say look at what you already do. Look at what you already have, and think about how you can make the dish vegan. For example, if you have a fantastic potato salad, you can go to the store and buy vegan Hellman’s mayonnaise, right where you get the other Hellman’s mayonnaise."

Soper-Kolton also includes several more adventurous recipes fit for a barbecue online and in the cookbook, from sausage and pepper pizza kebabs to a variation on potato salad that uses sauerkraut and mustard in place of mayonnaise.

Throughout the cookbook, frequent mention is made of the sanctuary's residents, describing the gusto with which the pigs enjoy their breakfast and the warm greeting the flock of sheep grazing on the hill bestows uponSoper-Kolton in the early morning. The accounts of the animals surrounding the recipes help to paint a bucolic picture that can all the more clearly be realized through a visit to the Hudson Valley sanctuary and the opportunity to come face-to-face with some of the current occupants during a tour of the grounds.

"When you can be close to an animal, you can see that animal as its own being. It has its own life. It wants to sit in the sunshine on a spring day and feel the breeze just as much as we do," said Soper-Kolton. "And when you have that experience, it’s harder to think of the animal in a package that’s wrapped in plastic."

She's careful, though, to avoid falling into the stereotype of a pushy vegan, the sort of person who will burst into a monologue preaching the benefits of veganism if a friend so much as glances in the general direction of steak on a restaurant menu. It's not that she doesn't feel strongly enough about her beliefs to argue passionately in their favor — she did, after all, author an entire cookbook on the subject.

Rather, Soper-Kolton recognizes an outright lecture, with its potential to come across as judgmental or self-congratulatory, is hardly the most effective strategy for motivating non-vegans to listen to her perspective with an open mind.

"I didn’t grow up vegan, so we have to give people grace to understand that we were there once. We’re not going to win anybody over by making them feel guilty or shaming them.We try to win folks over with good food and a good attitude," she said.

Many vegans, like Soper-Kolton, feel some level of responsibility to share their personal journey with the world in the name of mitigating climate change, putting an end to animal cruelty, helping others achieve optimal wellness, or promoting the other purported benefits of veganism to which they most strongly subscribe. But they, too, are mindful of the way they come across in doing so.

Jefferies suggests, instead of regarding cookouts as an uncomfortable scenario ripe forostracization, people following plant-based diets can take advantage of the potluck-esque nature of the casual backyard gatherings to encourage their friends to sample the results of a delicious vegan recipe.

"I’ll usually bring some food for myself, and I’ll bring a little extra so that people can try it," he said.

Flavorful and surprising vegan options at a Memorial Day barbecue or at a local eatery, Jefferies has found over the years, will almost always present a stronger case for plant-based diets than a fervent tirade against the horrors of the meat industry ever could. And so, he continues to let his vegan wings coated in buffalo sauce and his award-winning mac-and-cheese do most of the talking for him in hopes Refocused Vegan will, as the restaurant's name suggests, call upon customers to shift their previously held notions and expose themselves to a new way of eating.

"Let’s look again. Let’s think of a different way to do the vegan thing. You think vegan is this, but if you look again, we have all of this," he said, gesturing to the space around him but implying something larger in scope than his menu of American comfort food alone. "All of this."