Dear Cath,

I know you saw the flurry of emails about me receiving a bottle of Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce and thought whaaaa? Well, I got my lovely bottle in the mail* and then proceeded to get busy thinking of recipes.

We didn’t really grow up using any sort of Worcestershire sauce did we? I really believe the main deterrent was the name had too many syllables (and certainly a Cajun mom and a Chinese dad had no clue how to say it properly). “War-chester-shire-sauce” or “wooorr-stershire sauce.” I think the last one was dad’s — just deleting those pesky syllables willy nilly. Which apparently was the right idea.

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So, no longer deterred by pesky pronunciation, I got to experimenting. As Matt and I still don’t eat much meat and I figured most people use worchestorshire sauce for such things, wouldn’t it be nice to find something vegetarian and a wee bit healthier to use the sauce for?

I love a bloody marry and baked egg dish as much as the next person (see the video below), but what about our veggie-eating friends or for anyone watching their svelte-selves or doing a meatless Monday plan?

So here’s what I came up with:

Roasted and sautéed veg with Lea & Perrins!

It’s easy-peasy-lemon-squeezey, just:

• caramelize some onions and then stirfry with some zucchini/corgette

• give your carmelized onion/ zucchini mix a healthy couple of splashes of Worchestershire sauce

• whilst your veggies are stirfrying, slice up your sweet potato, drizzle with oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper and pop it in the oven for about 20 minutes or until slices are nice and soft and smelling devine

• boil a bit of quinoa or brown rice, slice up some cherry tomatoes

• pile all of the goodness together (I did quinoa, then roasted sweet potato slices, then my Worchestershired-onions and zucchini, sprinkled with sliced cherry tomatoes)

• EAT

Like I said, easy-peasy-worchester-splooshy.

And just a note to you (Cath and readers), Lea & Perrins Worchestershire sauce is not vegan (it’s got anchovies in) nor gluten-free (it’s a bit like soy sauce that way), so even though this above recipe does not include wheat or dairy or meat, it’s neither gluten-free nor strictly vegan. It’s still healthy, tasty and quick. Let me know if you give it a go.

Also, I did a little bit of reading and it turns out the recipe for the Lea & Perrins sauce in the States is a wee bit different. Instead of malted vinegar, they use white vinegar and it comes wrapped in paper, whereas the British/Canadian version doesn’t. Also the US version had high fructose corn syrup in it until 2011, so if  you have an old bottle in storage, you might want to chuck it out for a new version that just has sugar rather  than the scary HFCS.

If you want a few more classic uses for the sauce check out Lea & Perrins videos below:

* Disclaimer: Lea & Perrins sent me a free bottle of Lea & Perrins to try out, but this post isn’t sponsored by them, so all my thoughts, recipes, ramblings are my own. I thought it would be nice to start doing a few more recipe posts on the blog as eating healthy has been a big part of my life these past few years and I’m always struggling to come up fuss-free healthy options.

Cath, do you and Troy ever use Worchestorshire sauce? I know it’s probably not at all paleo. Why are the tasty things in life never on any diet. Curses.

Love you like onions love Worchestershire sauce!

Lar