I think that desire to copy is why we’ve seen the boom of tech meat as well. Old-school vegan cooking doesn’t try to be meat, because they don’t want a meat-like experience. People who are used to eating meat on the regs want the virtue without all the negative aspects. That way of thinking is really frustrating because it still seeks eliminate the nature of the foods in question: that milk is still cow juice, that pork products are still from an intelligent animal, that meat involves a death and tremendous resources.
This is all to say that embracing the taste and texture differences in an alt milk could be really exciting, and I hope more folks start looking at it this way. Oat milk tastes great! It has an oat-y flavor in the same way that real coconut milk has a coconut flavor! We should work with their properties instead of trying to mask them or eliminate all of the context that got the food here in the first place.
I think that desire to copy is why we’ve seen the boom of tech meat as well. Old-school vegan cooking doesn’t try to be meat, because they don’t want a meat-like experience. People who are used to eating meat on the regs want the virtue without all the negative aspects. That way of thinking is really frustrating because it still seeks eliminate the nature of the foods in question: that milk is still cow juice, that pork products are still from an intelligent animal, that meat involves a death and tremendous resources.
This is all to say that embracing the taste and texture differences in an alt milk could be really exciting, and I hope more folks start looking at it this way. Oat milk tastes great! It has an oat-y flavor in the same way that real coconut milk has a coconut flavor! We should work with their properties instead of trying to mask them or eliminate all of the context that got the food here in the first place.