Lose the Meat: Tips for the Almost Vegetarian

Beans' versatility and variety make it easy to cut back on meat, whatever your motivation. Beans provide the protein that every body needs, but with none of the cholesterol that meat supplies. For a home cook trying to improve the family diet, or a chef trying to enhance customer options, beans can inspire solutions.

Some strategies for minimizing or eliminating meat:

Shift the balance of power. Rethink the old "center of the plate" concept, with meat as the meal's focal point. Make it a bit player in some dishes and give beans the starring role.

Old style: Grilled pork chop with white beans
New style: White bean "cassoulet" with pancetta and slow-roasted tomatoes

Old style: Chicken enchiladas
New style: Spicy Mexican bean soup with butternut squash, corn, chipotle chile and shredded chicken

Think of meat as a seasoning. Use it to give depth to bean dishes, to add another layer of flavor — just as you use onions, garlic and herbs. Add a smoked turkey wing to a pot of navy beans…or a ham bone to a cranberry bean and kale soup... or a single thick slice of bacon to a big, brothy pot of black beans with garlic and cumin.

Borrow ideas from traditional vegetarian cuisines. Look to India, for example, where vegetarianism is a way of life, to find techniques you can adapt. Prepare an Indian-style dal with pink beans, perfuming the pot with fresh green chiles, ginger, turmeric, cumin, black mustard seed and cilantro. To impart a signature Indian flavor, toast whole cumin seed and mustard seed in hot oil or ghee (clarified butter) and stir these aromatic seasonings in at the end.

Replace meat stock with bean broth. Cooked beans produce a rich and full-bodied broth that gives backbone to vegetarian soups. Always save the broth from cooking beans to enhance soups and vegetable stews. You can cook rice in bean broth, too. A rib-sticking Tuscan Bread and Bean Soup gets its robust character from beefy cranberry beans simmered with garlic and bay leaf. No meat required.

Meatless bean recipe to try:
Tuscan Bread and Bean Soup