Veggie Sausage & Mock Bacon

We already looked at VTP and Seitan last week (see here), so this week we are going to make mock bacon and veggie sausages.

There are several veggie sausages available to vegans and vegetarians already. So why would you make your own? Simply because that are so yummy ~ and you can flavour them your way.

So my first recipe is veggie sausages that take no more than an hour to make (and you get a dozen easily).

Veggie Sausages

• Servings: 12-15 links
• Time: 1 hr
• Difficulty: moderate
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These taste better than any meat-based sausage I've ever ate in the past.

by Mr WitchCraft November-18-2017

Ingredients

• 1 onion
• 1½ cups button mushrooms, chopped
• 1 tbsp garlic, minced
• 2/3 firm tofu block
• 3 tbsp tomato paste
• 1½ tsp beef powder
• 1 tsp chilli seasoning
• 1 tbsp sunflower oil (or any oil)
• 1½ tsp salt
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 180g wheat breakfast biscuits (like Wheatabix), crumbled
• 150g gram flour (don’t substitute ~ this is the egg)

Directions

1. Add the mushrooms and the onions to a pan with 1 or 2 tbsp water and saute until all the moisture has gone. Allow to cool slightly.
2. Add all the other ingredients (except the flour and breakfast biscuits) and onion/mushroom mix to a blender and blend thoroughly.
3. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C/400 degrees F/gas mark 6.
4. In a bowl crumble up the biscuits then stir in the flour. Empty the contents of blender into the bowl and stir into the flour/wheat mix.
5. Form into sausages. Place on a foil lined baking tray and brush with oil. Bake for 20 mins, turning them half way through.

NB: You could fry them, instead of baking them if you want.

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And what goes with sausage? Bacon, of course. And the two make a great breakfast meal.

So here’s a Seitan (wheatmeat) based mock bacon. It’s slightly different from the seitan recipe from last week, and how we treat it to get that saltiness is also quite different.

Mock Bacon

• Servings: 8-12 rashers
• Time: 1 hour 20 mins
• Difficulty: moderate
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Mock bacon is quite salty, so don't eat the whole dozen rashers to yourself lol, even though you'll want to.

by Mr WitchCraft November-18-2017

Ingredients

• 1 cup Vital Wheat Gluten
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• ¼ tsp sea salt
• ⅛ tsp black pepper
• ½ tsp mustard seed, ground
• ½ tsp dried oregano, ground
• 1 tsp nutritional yeast, ground
• ¾ cup butter beans, skinned
• ½ cups vegetable stock
• 1 tsp soy sauce (or tamari sauce)
• 1 tbsp tomato puree/paste
• For broth:~
• 2 stock cubes
• 2 cups water
• 3 tbsp table salt

Directions

1. In a bowl, add the flour, garlic powder, salt and pepper. Using a mortor and pestle, grind the mustard, oregano and nutritional yeast. Then add that to the flour and stir in. (You need to make sure the flavour is well incorporated before adding any liquid, because as soon as the gluten starts to work, it becomes very difficult to distribute the flavour. So make sure you don’t add the liquid until after you’ve mixed all the flavour into the flour.)
2. Mix together the stock, soy sauce, and tomato puree. Now blend the beans. (Pulse them in a blender to get a smooth texture.) Add to the flour mix.
3. Form into a stretchy dough with your hands. Pull and knead it in your hands for 5 mins. Keep working the gluten until it has the texture of muscle or meat. You don’t want it too spongy or it will end up like rubber. You need to work the gluten so that it’s elastic and can be torn apart easily. Now’s the fun part; you get to beat up the wheat meat, you have to tenderise it on a clean work surface with your fists or with a potato masher or meat hammer. The idea is exactly like with traditional meat to make it less grisly and tough, and to produce something tender when you eat it. So beat it up for about 5 mins.
4. Pull and stretch it into the rough shape you want it to end up. I formed something that resembled bacon strips mirrored (so I could cut it into two piece later ~ after I’ve sliced it into rashers).
5. In a large pot, make up the brine that will give it that characteristic saltiness. Add the ‘bacon’ in. Slowly heat up the broth until it is simmering (not boiling, or the bubbles will break up the gluten and make it spongy). Set a timer from the moment the water starts to simmer ~ simmer for 50 mins to 1 hour. The wheat meat will float fully once it’s cooked.
6. Once the seitan has been simmered it will increase in size slightly. Now you can cook it in any way that you would cook bacon.
7. You could fry it in a little veg oil (or coconut oil), or you can grill or bake it in the oven. It’s up to your preference.

NB: Before you recook it, you can marinade it to make it more smokey if you like your bacon that way.

This just shows that you don’t have to buy veggie meats, you can make them at home. And it’s relatively inexpensive to make them too. I hope I’ve inspired you to try you’re own versions.

Next week, I’ll show you how to make veggie smoked salmon.