Vegan / vegetarian cooking with Susann Losseff

Susann Losseff is head chef at Düsseldorf Youth Hostel. Together with her team of eight, she is responsible for catering for the youth hostel guests. Despite an average of up to 900 meals a day, she is committed to a healthy and balanced menu plan with a majority of meat-free alternatives. She is extremely creative and is constantly developing new vegan and vegetarian dishes to encourage people to reduce their meat consumption. She has collected her best recipes and developed two cookery books from them, which will be published soon. Follow us on Instagram and Facebook! We will keep you up to date there and from now on regularly publish vegetarian and vegan recipes developed by her.

Would you like to find out more about Susann Losseff, her everyday life and her motivation? We spoke to her....

From school classes to families and conference groups, there are always different groups of guests „at the table“. How do you manage to cater for the most diverse wishes and eating habits?

I work out weekly menus and meal plans based on occupancy plans. Communicated guest wishes and requirements, such as intolerances or allergies, naturally take priority. I also know from many years of experience how to surprise my guests with quality and variety. Children, for example, are not familiar with many types of fruit and vegetables and don't even know what is included in a balanced diet. We often bread courgettes and serve them as a vegetarian schnitzel. Add tomato sauce and the children are happy. It's as simple as that. Young schoolchildren and young adults, on the other hand, are often well informed about food trends and therefore pay more attention to healthy and conscious eating, as do the conference groups. The desire for sustainable catering from an ecological point of view also plays an important role here.

You prepare up to 900 meals a day. What do you attach particular importance to?

When shopping, I pay particular attention to fresh ingredients, seasonal fruit and vegetables and nutrient-rich components. For example, where possible, I avoid exotic fruit in favour of regional apple varieties and prefer local potatoes to imported rice. Of course, this doesn't always work. And yet: ready-made products are never on the plate here. Everything is always freshly prepared.

We have already addressed the wishes of conference groups. What role does sustainable conference catering play in particular?

Sustainable catering is more than just a trend for conference organisers. Ecological responsibility is taken very seriously in the industry and there is an increasing demand for creative concepts for healthy and resource-saving conference catering. This includes, above all, vegan and vegetarian conference catering. I am naturally delighted about the increased demand. Because meat-free catering is not only environmentally friendly, but also encourages participants to gain new culinary experiences and promote their health.

Your commitment to healthy and conscious eating has resulted in a collection of recipes with vegetarian and vegan dishes. How did this come about?

It is important to me to show that meat-free eating can be varied, healthy and balanced, tastes delicious and is not a long-term sacrifice, but a welcome change. Perhaps I can help one or two people to discover a healthier and more sustainable way of eating.

All the recipes for the cookery book are self-created. Where do the many ideas come from?

I enjoy being creative in this field, trying out new things and then testing how my own creations are received by the guests. If the feedback is consistently positive - we often actively ask whether and how it tasted - the dish goes into the recipe archive. In this way, I have selected the most popular dishes for the cookery book.

You want to share your recipes with others. The first cookery book has been published. What's next?

Cooking is not only my profession, but also my passion. That's why I continue to experiment and will be coming up with lots more new recipe ideas and, of course, passing them on: first as a meal for our guests and then in recipe form for anyone who is interested. I'm currently baking a lot. So it's quite possible that the next book will be a baking book.