Mouthwatering Healthy Creations by Vegemental

Lydiah Igweh
food
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02

Jan 19

Vegemental has been running for just over a year and founder Jamie has truly tickled our taste buds. One word springs to mind when we look at his mouth-watering creations! WOW!


If you are not so into your greens, believe us after seeing these extra ordinary colourful salads you will become a convert!

Completely wasted in an office environment and due to popular demand Vegemental was born and thank goodness for that!  Jamie set out to invent salads that deviated from your average mixed leaf salad to nutritionally packed salads made from seasonal vegetables, seeds and grains using only cold pressed oils and unrefined sugars, that are guaranteed to fill you up and curb those mid-afternoon sugar cravings! Some examples of these salads include:

  • Roast cauliflower with lentils, Tahini and Hazelnuts,
  • Tomatoes, Cucumber, rocket salad, pickled lemon and Basil,
  • Cauliflower rice with British lava bean Umami, seed and Asparagus

We caught with Jamie to find out more about what inspires his tasteful creations, an insider scoop on recipes and his future plans for the business. Here’s what he had to say:

How do you come up with your creations? do you test them on an audience first before making it a final product?.

We start by looking at what’s in season in Britain – that way; we’re using the freshest vegetables, which are better for the environment and better for our bodies. Once we have a list of vegetables in mind, it’s a case of researching flavour combinations and getting inspiration from all sorts of websites. We test the salads on ourselves – the week before an event, we basically eat the same thing every day for lunch and make tweaks each day!

How long does it take you to make your salads?

Each salad can easily contain 15 ingredients and we don’t use shop-bought dressings (we avoid using refined oil and refined sugars), so these salads aren’t thrown together in five minutes. For an event like FitFest, an entire day will be spent cooking, chopping, and mixing.

What is your best seller?

Our salads vary throughout the year depending on what’s in season, but our summer aubergine, chickpea and spinach salad with a Caribbean dressing went down well. Last autumn a celeriac noodle and lentil salad went down well, even amongst people who don’t like celeriac!

How many calories are in each salad?

It varies, but somewhere around 300. Our salads are filling – after all, it’s better to fill up on something healthy rather than eating a low-calorie healthy lunch only to need some biscuits afterwards! For FitFest we’ll be offering some lighter options too, so people can top up their energy between classes without getting indigestion.

Clearly your salads stand out from the rest but what keeps you inspired and motivated?

Food tastes have changed so much over the past decade there’s more to come. Being part of that is really exciting.

Some of the ingredients you use seem exotic! are they? or are they readily available here in the UK?

We use some interesting ingredients such as nigella seeds, which have an onion flavour, and buckwheat, which is similar to giant couscous only gluten free. Everything we use is available at large supermarkets, health food shops or Asian supermarkets. 

What struggles if any have you faced and how did you overcome them?

Everything has been a new learning experience, from food hygiene to working out which events are good to be at to overcooking the quinoa and having to make it all over again! It can be pretty stressful at times but then a customer says how delicious their salad was and it makes it all worthwhile.

Are you hoping to expand to other areas?

We would love to open a cafe so people can enjoy healthy yet tasty food every day. The cafe would also offer hot food, healthy snacks, (relatively) healthy cakes and of course excellent tea and coffee!

We don’t know about you but we’re sold. Vegemental is officially on speed dial. Jamie will be exhibiting at FitFest Oxford in June but you can get in touch with him for any private or corporate parties you have till then!

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