Lifestyle

Chicken nuggets conjure nostalgic childhood memories for many of us. So while faux-chicken nuggets may not be the healthiest snack food option, they can definitely satisfy those cravings for something familiar. They're also easy to find in most grocery stores, and easy to prepare, so they're perfect when you don't have a lot of time.

If you're overwhelmed by the number of options in the vegan chicken nugget world, you're not alone! This part of the grocery store freezer section has grown quite a bit lately. With so many options to choose from, how do you know which vegan nuggets will actually satisfy your craving?

Well, I got together with a friend (Dominique, also vegan) to try 13 brands. With so many options, it was a difficult task just to narrow it down to just 13 nuggets for our taste test.

Vegan cheese may be the final frontier of vegan food; at least it seems to be one of the hardest things to get right. And these non-dairy substitutes often get a bad rap for being goopy, plasticky, and artificial tasting. Fortunately, vegan cheese has come a long way. So whether you're vegan, lactose intolerant, or just looking for a healthier option, the best cheesy options for topping a vegan pizza are now quite good.

There are so many vegan chocolate chip cookie recipes on the internet, and they all seem to have great reviews. But are these recipes as delicious as they claim to be? How do you know which one is the best vegan chocolate chip cookie recipe before you spend your ingredients and time?

Mac and cheese used to be one of my favorite junk foods, but when I went vegan it became a lot harder to find a vegan mac that I liked. It seemed like I was always hearing someone raving about a new vegan mac and cheese, and I'd try it, just to be disappointed. So in a quest to finally find something better, I got together with another vegan friend and we taste-tested ten vegan mac and cheese products.

I think by now, every vegan has tried at least a few non-dairy ice creams. I know I have. But what I didn't realize is just how many options there are these days. There were so many options, in fact, that I had to restrict our taste test to vanilla-only, just to keep it manageable. In this taste test, we tested 12 brands of vegan vanilla ice cream, but we could have tested many more.

I'm really happy to say that we found 5 really excellent options in our taste test. And all of our top five choices have different ingredients and bases. So if you can't find a particular brand in your area, or if you're allergic to a certain ingredient, you can likely still find an amazing non-dairy vanilla ice cream option that works for you.

It wasn't too long ago that vegan creamers were hard to come by. But today there is a plethora of vegan coffee creamers out there, and so there's a new problem: it can be hard to know which one to choose. Many simply don't stack up to their dairy counterparts. A good creamer provides richness and can even balance some of the bitterness of coffee.

To find out which creamer is the "cream of the vegan crop," I sat down with two friends (one vegan, one not) to taste-test eleven creamers and barista milks.

While vegan food has come a long way, cheese seems to be one of the hardest foods to get right. The stretch, melt, and flavor of vegan cheese is hard to compare with the original. And while a lot of vegan cheeses might do the trick to add a little flavor to your veggie burger, when you put them in a grilled cheese sandwich, with the cheese being the main attraction, they often don't quite stack up.

I've personally been using Field Roast Chao original cheese on my veggie burgers for many years, but I've stopped trying to make grilled cheese sandwiches because I've been disappointed. However, this time I searched 4 supermarkets to find as many different vegan cheese brands as I could, and I put them all in a head-to-head grilled cheese taste test to find the best vegan cheese.