If you’ve ever gone to lunch with a friend and each ordered a Caesar salad and fries to share, you’ve already been part of this summer’s biggest TikTok trend.
“A woman’s urge to eat Caesar salad and fries” is the slogan of several TikTok videos about the trend, which sometimes include drinks like dry martinis and diet cokes.
The trend is similar to last year’s “girl dinners” — dinners consisting of quick-prep snacks and appetizers — with many TikTok users praising the combination as the epitome of a “luxurious” meal.
With people raving about its balanced flavors and textures—salty, tangy, and crispy—it’s clear that this dish resonates on many levels, but for those embracing a plant-based lifestyle, it’s entirely possible to transform this staple into a vegan staple.
TikTok food trends go vegan
Want to turn this TikTok food trend into a vegan staple that you can enjoy all summer long? Here’s how.
Ashley Madden
The secret to a great Caesar salad is the combination of the salty, briny flavor of crisp lettuce with a bready element, such as croutons. Traditional Caesar salads achieve this with ingredients that come from animals, but the perfect Caesar salad doesn’t need any of the animal-based ingredients. Combine the following vegan ingredients to create the perfect Caesar salad:
Mother Law
1Caesar salad dressing
Traditional Caesar dressing is thick and creamy and is often made with egg yolks, mayonnaise, anchovies, garlic, Dijon mustard, lemon juice, and Parmesan cheese. This dressing is essential for giving the salad its distinctive salty flavor, but there are plenty of vegan alternatives that offer the same delicious taste.
Brands like Follow Your Heart, Daiya, and Mother Raw have developed amazing vegan Caesar dressings that perfectly replicate the creamy texture and tangy flavor of the traditional version, and these store-bought options make it easy to enjoy a vegan Caesar salad without the hassle.
If you’d prefer to make the dressing at home, you can whip up a delicious vegan version using simple ingredients: soaked cashews are blended with water, lemon juice, Dijon mustard, capers, garlic, and nutritional yeast until smooth, creating a dressing with the same creamy consistency and delicate flavor as the original.
Follow your heart
2Vegan Parmesan Cheese
No Caesar salad is complete without a sprinkling of Parmesan cheese, and fortunately, there are plenty of delicious vegan options that have the same flavor. Nutritional yeast, also known as “nooch,” is a popular choice that can be sprinkled directly onto salads.
For a more traditional texture, try making cashew parmesan by blending raw cashews, nutritional yeast, garlic powder, and salt until it forms a crumbly texture.
Or you could choose vegan cheese, available from stores like Follow Your Heart, Good Planet and Violife, which comes in wedges that you can grate and eat, giving you the full flavour.
Meaty Foods
3Croutons and additional toppings
Croutons are a key ingredient in adding crunch to salads. Most commercially available croutons are vegan, but making your own is easy and customizable: Mix cubed bread with olive oil, garlic powder and herbs and bake until golden and crisp.
To make your vegan Caesar salad even more delicious, try adding some creative ingredients: try using curly kale instead of (or mixing with) the romaine for a different texture and flavor, or add smoky chickpeas or crispy tofu for extra protein.
You can also go a step further and make a vegan chicken Caesar using crispy cutlets from Meati Foods, Gardein, Alpha Foods, or many other brands that make meatless chicken.
And you don’t have to stick to a salad format to enjoy this trend: Like Instagrammer Hannah Kling, turn a salad into a burger by air-frying a vegan burger patty (she uses Dr. Praeger’s), toasting the bun, and piling on a generous portion of homemade Caesar salad for a new take on the summer “it” meal.
french fries
The second element of this trend is shared fries. Since fries are usually just fries, they’re already vegan-friendly, but that’s not always the case.
If you’re making your TikTok meals from takeout, avoid places like McDonald’s, Checkers, and Popeyes, which use animal products like cow’s lard and milk powder in their fries.
Instead, you can opt for Burger King, KFC, Wendy’s, or any other fast food chain that offers vegan-friendly fries.
To make your own, simply air fry some diced potatoes with a sprinkle of salt, or if you’re looking for something a little more elaborate, try our recipes for Amazing Vegan Nacho Fries with Tofu Bacon Crumbles or Poutine with Herb Gravy and Mozzarella.
drink
The third element of this trend is the choice between two very specific drinks: one for women who drink alcohol and one for non-alcoholic women.
A perfect dry martini to complement the salty flavor of a Caesar salad, it’s usually made with vodka or gin, vermouth, and an olive (or three) as a garnish.
While the spirits in this drink are usually vegan-friendly, vermouth is a type of fortified wine, which means that animal products such as albumin (from eggs), gelatin (from animal bones), and isinglass (derived from fish swim bladders) may be used during the clarification process.
Taryn Elliott/Pexels
For those leaning more vegan, alcohol information site Barnivore can help you determine which vermouths are made without animal products to create the perfect martini.
Diet Coke is becoming popular as an alcohol-free option, and its sweetness helps to counter the saltiness of your meal. But is Coca-Cola vegan? Of course it is, and so is Pepsi, if that’s your preference.
Anna Starostinetskaya is the Senior News Editor at VegNews, keeping a close eye on all things vegan in her hometown of San Francisco, California, and everywhere else.
At VegNews, we live the vegan lifestyle and only recommend products that we feel will make your life amazing. Our articles may contain shopping links, from which we may earn a small commission. This does not in any way influence VegNews’ editorial policy.
