I'm making a vegan version of my usual mac and cheese recipe and I have the flavor of the sauce down almost perfectly but I'm looking for a good substitute for little crispy bits of bacon. It just needs to work texturally as something both crispy and chewy. Should I try using seitan, or experiment with tofu a bit. If anyone has some vegetable ideas lemme know because I'm not sure what would hold up structurally the best
Tofu's protein structure acts similar to eggwhite when fried, which means that only the surface is going to evaporate and thus become crisp. This is why commercial bacon bits (made with tofu) are so small. So, if you decide to go with tofu you need to be sure that your bits of tofu are exceedingly small. In terms of flavor, it's going to be hard to replicate that without lard. Your best bet is simply ignoring the meat flavor of bacon and adding in elements of its cure and smoke. E.g, a sweet element, a salty element, and chiefly a smokey element. Smoked paprika is a great option there but it burns very easily so you need to apply it after frying.
What I'd do is chop tofu into very small bits and dry them, possibly even dehydrate slightly if you have a machine for that, then if you want you can experiment wiht flour coating but because of the protein structure you should be able to fry immediately. You'll want to pick a neutral oil because otherwise you'll need animal fat to replicate the flavor. You'll want to fry at at least 350f and then immediately upon completion you'll need to dry them and salt them (very important that you do this quick), and then add spanish smoked paprika and some kind of sweet element, but that's less important.
If you want to get real crazy in replicating bacon you can try and replicate a cure by emulating it through pickling, too.
This is pretty good advice but I'd add a mushroom extract to your flavoring suggestions. Really pumps that umami
Oh yeah that's a great idea. You can also use hing (asafoetida) for other applications where you need something meaty. People use it a lot with jackfruit. Stinks to high hell though so you'll want to keep the entire container in a zip bag or something.
The mac and cheese I had recently wasn't vegan but it had breadcrumbs on top (maybe about peppercorn sized?). After the whole thing was baked in the oven they became nice and crunchy and really took the place of something like a bacon crumble, probably wouldn't really work to replace strips of bacon though.
Sorry to dissapoint you. Here's my pork belly sandwich recipe:
- braise pork belly for about 4 hours in plum wine, soy sauce, ginger, peppercorns, brown sugar, and the white part of green onions. Add five spice if you have, if you don't make do with what you have that's similar. It's a very loose recipe. (don't forget msg!)
- pickle thinly sliced carrots in a mix of water, rice wine vinegar, white vinegar, and sugar
- throw it all on a baguette and try not to think too much about how much sodium you just had
If you're up for purchasing an alternative rather than making it yourself, McCormicks makes a Bac'N Pieces shaker similar to what you would see at a salad bar that is Vegan. Additionally the brand Sweet Earth also makes a sliced Vegan bacon that if you essentially burn the shit out of on both sides crisping the fuck out of, you can then mash up the pieces in a mortar and pestle or with your hands to make great crispy bacon bits.
There's a vegan place near me that uses roasted and seasoned carrots as bacon. I expect if you looked around for "carrot bacon" you might find something acceptable, though I haven't tried any, myself.
I've heard that rice paper bacon is pretty good. Haven't tried it yet though.
