Vegan Meats Anyone Can Make! No Seitan

There are a lot of really, really awesome vegan meat products out there, but it's also really fun and cool to make your own mock meats at home. So I have five amazing homemade vegan mock meat recipes for you, and spoiler alert, none of these contain making any seitan. We'll handle that a different time. Today, we're just gonna make some easy homemade vegan mock meats that you can use. They can be staples in your house, and I'm so excited to share them with you. So let's do it. For our first recipe, we're gonna be turning soy curls into these beefy strips. They look so good. I love this recipe because it is so flavorful. It's so easy to make, and the soy curls are an awesome replacement for vegan beef. They look pretty beefy to me. So I'm excited to show you how to make this one. Let's get into it. First up, we've gotta rehydrate these soy curls. We're adding in warm water. The vegetable base is better than bouillon. We have some pepper, salt, garlic powder. We're gonna add that in. We're gonna add in some soy sauce and vinegar, and mix that up. We're using balsamic vinegar. Pour in your soy curls. This is half a cup, 60 grams, and you're just gonna set those to the side for like 15 minutes. Let them hydrate. In the meantime, I decided I was just gonna roast some potatoes to put on the side of this because I felt it would be boring without something on the side. So I cut up some potatoes, and I'm just popping them into a bowl, and then I always keep my roasted potatoes really simple. A little bit of olive oil, and then a few seasonings, garlic powder, paprika, salt, garlic, you know, whatever you like. It's honestly, there's no science. Parsley, I like putting parsley. Mix them up, and then you'll just pop them onto a little baking sheet and bake them like 425 for like 30 minutes. And this is good because these can cook up while the soy curls cook up. So after about 15 minutes, the soy curls will look like this, and you can see they're like rehydrated now. They look really good. So we're gonna pour them into a pan along with the marinade that we made, and you're gonna cook this on like a medium heat and let the liquid cook off and let the soy curls absorb it. Now, this is where you can kind of experiment. I wanted my soy curls to have a little bit of a darker color, so I went in with some vinegar. I went in with a little bit of oil. We did a little more garlic powder after I tasted it. So you can just really play around and add in what you like. And again, I just kind of kept adding more vinegar because I felt like I wanted it to be darker. There was a little bit of a fawn building up, so we added in some water. There's like no science to this. It's easy. I even threw some maple syrup in there because it's my recipe and I can do what I want. So when they're all done, they will look like this. And I think they look awesome. So I just put some parsley and black pepper on for like food styling purposes to make it look pretty. And these are our nice little crisp potatoes looking good. And that was it. It is now just time to plate everything up. And as always, if you're ever wondering like exact measurements and stuff, check the description box. I put all the ingredients down there and I put the blog post as well. And this is just such a pretty looking little dish and it is so good. And I love the texture of the soy curls. They are so versatile. They're seriously the best. I'll have them linked down below for you. They're so awesome. All right, so you saw how easy these are to make. They're so fun. I really love soy curls. We're gonna make another recipe with soy curls in this video as well. Let's do a little taste test. Okay, you guys, as I'm filming this, I have the hiccup. I've had them for the last like 25 minutes. They won't go away. I have to edit out all these hiccups that I've been doing. So I just don't want to hiccup and then take the bite. You know, the flavor on these is so good. The one thing I will say is they are a little bit salty. So if you're somebody who likes things less salty, just add in a little bit less of like the better than bouillon and the steak seasoning and the soy sauce. But they are delicious. They are meaty. They're so good with the potatoes. Such a fun little dish. And let me show you how to make our next easy vegan mock meat. So next up, I'm gonna teach you how to make this amazing plate of homemade vegan deli meat. I actually first shared this recipe as a turkey substitute in a sponsor post that I had done on Instagram. And it was so good and I was so happy with it. And it was so delicious that I was like, I just want to share it with you guys. And it's so easy. It is literally four ingredients, four simple ingredients. You could add more things in, of course, if you like. I'm always like, you know, it's your kitchen. Add in seasonings and flavors you like. But the base recipe of this is so good. And it's delicious. So let me show you how to make it. For this recipe, we want to use super firm tofu because it's the best at holding its shape. It's the firmest tofu. And you're gonna need a vegetable peeler. And then you're just simply going to make little peels and slices of super thin tofu. Which if you've never done this before, it's so cool. And it's such a like another versatile way to use tofu. Like you don't just have to cut it into cubes. You can shred it. You can grate it. You can peel it. It's so awesome. And it takes a little bit of time to do this, but it's not that bad. It may break apart while you're doing it. It may not be the most perfect strips ever. That's honestly totally fine. We're making a lunch meat out of this. So it doesn't have to be perfect. And something that you may notice is as you kind of start peeling, you may have like sides that come up too high or something. So I will just slice those up super thin. I don't really like even care. It doesn't matter to me. I kind of like having a variety of texture in there. And then once you're all done, it'll look something like this. And then of course I did the other half off camera. And then we're going to take Better Than Bouillon. Better Than Bouillon is the star of this video. I tell you, because it's using a lot of recipes. And I'm going to add it into some water. We're going to add in those tofu slices in there. And then we're going to add in some rosemary and thyme. Now this is where you can add in whatever kind of seasonings you like. I just felt that this was a good base starter for this recipe. Like if you want to add in more stuff. But the Better Than Bouillon has a lot of flavor in there too. So you're just going to let this simmer until all the liquid has been kind of boiled out and sucked up by the tofu. It'll take about like 15 to 20 minutes on a medium heat. Be careful as you move it around too, not to break the tofu up too much, but sometimes it happens. Then once it's all done, remove any of the herbs. And then I just popped it onto a plate. Doesn't that look so good? So now that we've got the tofu vegan deli meat all done. And I like having the different textures that some of it is thicker, some of it's thinner. Some of it really just kind of comes apart and that's okay. Like it just looks really delicious. Deli meat in general, like when I used to eat deli meat, like my mom would get stuff sliced so thin that it would literally, it would be like that. It'd be paper thin, it would rip as we ate it and it was awesome. So let's make a little sandwich with this, shall we? To make our sandwich, I'm using sourdough bread. You can use any bread you want. Then I just sliced up some vegan cheese. This is the Babybel vegan cheeses. And I popped them on there and I melted it in the microwave so our cheese got nice and gooey. Then I added on some spinach for greens, some cucumber as well. I love cucumber on sandwiches. And then I just piled on that vegan lunch meat, vegan tofu, turkey, whatever you want to call it. I also added some fresh basil and then I did a little bit of vegan mayo, just a little bit because I don't like it that much. Using the Hellmann's one though, it's pretty good. And some balsamic glaze. And now you just have like a beautiful little sandwich and it looks so pretty. And I just really wanted you guys to be able to like see it in action. There are of course so many ways you can make sandwiches and so many combinations. And on the blog post, I cover some other flavors you could try out. All right, I got a confession. I am not a good sandwich maker, wrapper. I always suck at wrapping it in parchment paper, but look at this. Oh baby. I absolutely love using the tofu, like the turkey here. It works out so well. It's so delicious. Melts in your mouth. You got to try this one. I'm off to eat the rest of the sandwich and let's make another mock meat. All right, for our next meaty recipe, I'm going to show you how to make these awesome vegan sausages. They are made from lentils, oats, and seasonings. They're so delicious. They smell so good. And they're so fun. I actually first really created this recipe years ago when I shared my vegan McGriddle recipe. And I love them because they're simple. They're easy to make. They take a little bit of time because you have to like wait for the lentils to cook and stuff. But like other than that, they're very easy. So let's make them. To make these, we're going to start off by pouring a third of a cup of dry lentils in. And then we're going to add in two cups of water. I highly suggest using brown or green lentils for this. Let this boil on the stove like 30 minutes until the lentils are cooked and the water has come out. We're going to pop in three quarters of a cup of oats into a blender. And we're going to blend this until it's like a little bit rougher than oat flour consistency. We don't want anything to be too soft here, too mushy. Otherwise it's going to give like no texture to our little sausage patties. So this is what the lentils looked like when they were done. You know, just let them cook out until the water is cooked and the lentils are nice and soft. Then you're going to mash it up with a spatula or the back of a fork or potato masher, whatever you like to use to mash. I'm not here to tell you what to mash with. And then, well, actually I guess I kind of am. So anyway, so mash it up until it reaches like a kind of a refried bean texture, but still has some consistency in there. Like I said, we don't want anything too mushy because otherwise it'll just make our little sausage patties turn into mush. Add in your oat flour, soy sauce, and then you're going to add in dried oregano, dried parsley, dried thyme, pepper, garlic powder, salt, onion powder, all-purpose seasoning, and red pepper flakes. That's a lot of stuff in there, right? But that's what's going to give it the good flavor. And of course, if you also want to add in fennel seed, you can, and then you're going to mix it up until it's well incorporated. And if you're finding it's like a little bit too dry, like it's crumbly in texture and it can't hold its shape, add in like a teaspoon or two of water. If you are finding it is too wet, you can grind up a little more oat flour and add that in. And then I'm going to take a third of a cup, measuring cup, and scoop out for our little mixture. This way it just keeps the sausage patties like an even size. Use your hands to shape it into nice little patties. And that's it. If you use this third of a cup measuring cup, you'll get four patties from this. So whatever size you want them to be, if you want them to be a little bit smaller, you can use a quarter of a cup and make like six of them. So it's your decision. And then I'm just popping them on a baking sheet. I have a silicone baking mat on there. Going to spray them with a little bit of spray oil and then these go in the oven at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 18 minutes, flipping halfway through. So this was them after nine minutes and then I'm just giving them a little flip. They're not too hot, so I'm able to like handle them with my hands. And then I'm just going to get them another little bit of spray oil because like sausage is fatty and these are very low in fat, which is fine. But the oil adds in that little bit of fattiness and crispiness. So pop those back in the oven for another nine minutes and then this is what they will look like when they are all done. And these are great for just keeping in the fridge and enjoying throughout the week. Obviously perfect for breakfast sandwiches and they have a great flavor on them and a great way to enjoy some lentils. I love lentils. Now you can use these sausages however you want. Obviously these are really designed for a breakfast patty, like a little breakfast sandwich, so we can make one real quick. But if you want to use it a different way, you totally can. And you know, these would be also delicious with like some maple syrup on them if you're somebody who likes to combine sweet and savory. If you want to have these like on the side of pancakes, waffles, something like that, yeah, you can freeze them, keep them in the fridge, warm them up, throw them in the air fryer. If you want them to be like a little more fatty, you can always add in some, like a little bit of oil or something like that. You can always pan fry them too if you want, but they're so good. Again, I just wanted to show you guys the little sausage patties in action. So I took an English muffin, took some vegan cheese, put that on there, popped it in the microwave, let it melt, added the sausage patty on there, and then I drizzled a little agave because I am a sucker for sweet and savory. And how cute, now you have like an adorable little breakfast sandwich to enjoy. Made our little sandwich here. Looks so good. I love, love, love this recipe because it really is. It's just made from simple ingredients. Easy to make, great to keep around. And yeah, let's take a bite. Again, like I say with a lot of my recipes, the intent is not to trick, it's not to fool, it's not to have anybody eat it and be like, oh my gosh, that's sausage, I couldn't believe it. No, but it has a nice flavor. You're getting in protein from the lentils and a little bit from the oats. It's a nice little breakfast sandwich. It's a nice way to start the morning. You can put some vegan egg on there. I didn't have any, otherwise I definitely would have. And I wish I had cheddar cheese, but I didn't. I just had vegan mozzarella. It's such a good one and I hope you try these ones out. All right, let's make our next meaty recipe. Next up, we will be making some vegan nuggets and these are made from soy curls and flaxseed. I have made a lot of vegan nuggets on the channel. So these are a little bit different. I wanted to give you guys something else, but if you want other vegan nugget recipes, I have like tons on the channel made with tofu, made with beans, made with seitan, I have a ton of them. So I'll link some other ones down below too. So one thing I do just want to say real quick is that these nuggets came out a little bit darker than I had intended. I did use a mixture of whole wheat breadcrumbs and like regular breadcrumbs, but there was more whole wheat. So I think that's why that happened, but they are delicious. They are great because you're getting in protein, you're getting in nice fats with the flaxseed. And yeah, so let me show you how to make them. To make our nuggets, we are using soy curls again. So we're going to add in half a cup of soy curls and then we're going to add in half a cup of water. We're also going to add in some better than bouillon. Again, the star of the show and mix this up and let these soy curls rehydrate. So you'll see a difference between this and the beefy soy curls, because there won't be any water left. In the meantime, I'm just going to like season my breadcrumbs up. So I have some whole wheat panko breadcrumbs and then some regular breadcrumbs. And I'm blending those up with some poultry seasoning, paprika, salt, garlic powder, onion powder. Poultry seasoning is just a blend of seasonings that are used typically in poultry. So there's no like chicken or anything in it. And I just like to blend it up when I'm using the panko breadcrumbs. So it comes out really, really fine. I am just going to pour those onto a plate, set aside for later. Into a food processor, we're going to add in those rehydrated soy curls. As you can see, this time there's no liquid left, which is good. And then we're going to add in some flaxseed meal and some water. This is going to help to bind everything. If you are not like a fan of flaxseeds, because this does have like a flaxseedy feel a little bit, you can just use a regular like Bob's Red Mill egg replacer. And once it can hold its shape, you are good to go. I'm also going to add in two and a half tablespoons of breadcrumbs. So that way it also like helps to hold it together. And then I'm going to scoop it out like a tablespoon of the mixture and use my hands to make a little nugget shape. And you can make these as big or as little as you like. And similar to with the sausage patties, if it feels too wet, you can add in more breadcrumbs. If it feels too dry, you could add in a little bit of water and yeah, but it should be able to hold its shape. And also if you're finding the mixture is sticking to your hands, just wash them in between because sometimes it's just like the liquid stuck on your hands. So then we are going to coat them in breadcrumbs. Just pat them on there. Very easy. And that's it. It takes a little bit of time, of course, to do this, to coat them, but it's really not that bad. And then I'm going to pop them onto a baking sheet. And again, I will hit them with a little bit of spray oil just so they get a nice color. And you're going to pop them in the oven at 425 for 10 minutes. After the 10 minutes, you will give them a flip again. And yeah, I painstakingly sprayed them all. So they'll look like this. I don't know why they cracked to be quite honest, but it's not that big of a deal. So I'm just going to flip them and then I will give them another little bit of spray and then they will go back in the oven again for like 10 to 12 minutes till they're nice and golden and crispy. And I just saved those remaining breadcrumbs because there's nothing wrong with them. They're not contaminated in any way, shape or form. So yeah. And once our nuggets are done, they'll look like this. They look beautiful. I'm just going to pop them all on a plate and then just to try and make it look a little bit fancy, I'll give a little more spray oil on there. Just kind of like gives them a little bit of a rehydrated look. Add a little bit of coarse sea salt, some parsley, and then I put some ketchup on the side and that's it. Now you got a plate of vegan nuggets. So those were our nuggets. And the fun part about these is you can air fry them, you can bake them, you can pan fry them if you want. Like you could kind of just like bake these however you want. I always just like to bake them. It just makes it a lot easier, I think. And then of course, you're just going to pair it up with your favorite sauce. This is what it looks like inside. Also probably because of the flax seed. It's definitely a little bit darker, but I don't want you guys to be like weirded out by these because they taste good. They taste nice and salty and they're crispy and they're crunchy and they are delicious. So, and I like them because you're getting in lots of good nutrients. We'll get a little bit of ketchup in here. I'm not a big ketchup person, so. It tastes so good. And they're full of flavor because we hydrated those soy curls in the Better Than Bouillon. For our final recipe, we're going to be making meatless meatballs. And I'm so excited to share this recipe with you. They are so yummy, so delicious. These meatballs can be really used in any kind of sauce that you want. They are just like a generic meatball recipe with a little bit of an Italian flair, but you can always like play around with seasonings and stuff so you can put like them in barbecue sauce, buffalo sauce. You can do like Swedish meatballs. You can do a lot of fun things with these. To make our meatballs, we're going to start by using the Bob's Red Mill Egg Replacer. So there you go. You could see it in action now. Pour in water and just mix this up, set it aside. It will thicken. It's like potato starch, psyllium husk. That's all it is. So you have two options. You could use super firm tofu or you could use the soy-free tofu, which is what I'm going to use to make these. And I'm going to pop them into my food processor. And I have garlic powder, onion powder, salt, parsley, and a little bit of black pepper. And I'm just going to pour that in there. This will give flavor. And then I have those breadcrumbs that I saved. And I'm going to add those in there as well. And then we're just going to also add in a little bit of vegan Parmesan. This is the Violife one. Our egg mixture has thickened up, our vegan egg. So I'll throw that in there. And then I'll just pulse this until it forms again, like a mixture that can hold its shape. You know, this is all kind of like same stuff, different font, I guess. So I'm going to then scoop it out. And actually you can taste this mixture. And if you want to like add in more salt or garlic powder, onion powder, like whatever you want, you can. Because everything in there is like safe to eat. So I'm just going to then roll my little meatballs out and they look so cute. So to cook these, I'm going to slice up an onion, like part of an onion. Going to add in some oil into my pan. We're going to let those onions saute for a few minutes over medium heat. This will add some flavor in. This is like how my mom cooks her meatballs in sauce. So that's the way I do it. So then I'm going to add in the meatballs, kind of like threw them in there. Let them cook up and get nice and brown. Again, do this over medium heat for a few minutes. You'll see they start to change. Looks so good. Our little meatballs. And I actually love those little bits of the vegan Parmesan in there. So good. So once it's like this, I'm going to add in some sauce. Do not tell my grandma or my mother that I am using jarred sauce. I'm cheating today. We're not doing homemade sauce. We're doing Rao's because it is very good. So I added that in there. And then a little trick is you can add a little bit of water into the jar and then pour that in there and let the meatballs cook up in that for a few minutes. And they'll just take on a lot of really nice flavor. And they look so good. They look beautiful. So once our little meatballs look all good, nice and done in our pan, so yummy. And I'm just going to top them with a little bit of vegan Parmesan. Again, using the Violife one, just grating it. And they look so cute. We can plate them up now. And these are so great for pasta, enjoying on their own. I also love to do like meatballs and salad together. And these are a really nice little way to make meatless meatballs at home. That is how you make these amazing meatless meatballs. I just want to show you guys, if you have my cookbook, Plantable, I have another recipe in the cookbook called Betty Grandma's Meatballs. And these are called Betty Grandma's Meatballs because they were inspired by the meatballs that my great-grandma used to make. And in my family, we always had like a set of dry meatballs and a set of meatballs and sauce because we would always pick on the dry meatballs like during the day on Sunday, before we sat down to have dinner with the meatballs and the sauce. So these are Betty Grandma's Meatballs. And actually in this picture, this is her sheet pan. So if you ever are interested, my cookbook is always linked down below. But yeah, these are a totally different recipe in the cookbook. So it's really fun to see all of the different ways that you can make a meatless meatball. Now, of course we have to do a taste test. Cooking them in the sauce makes such a difference though, because it adds in a ton more flavor. So this is what they look like inside. They look almost, I guess, maybe a little more like a turkey meatball or a chicken meatball. They're not as dark in color as a traditional beef or whatever kind of meatball, but who cares? They're cold. They've been sitting out for a while. But I love that you can make this with a soy-free tofu too, because anybody can enjoy these. And obviously if you're gluten-free, just swap for a gluten-free breadcrumbs. Super, super easy. And yeah, I hope you enjoyed these five amazing vegan mock meats. Like I said, they are supposed to be a little bit more of like a wholesome, homemade-y kind of take on them. We're not really trying to fool or impress anybody with these. It's just like a fun way to make some at home, to experiment, and to play around with them. As always, the full written recipes are on my blog. You can find links in the description box down below for that, and I write all the ingredients in the description box down below as well. If you have any questions, comments, concerns, leave them in the comments so I can answer you. If you haven't seen the other two videos I've put out this year so far, we did vegan cheeses and we did vegan eggs. So similar in a fashion to this, easy recipes, wholesome, kind of quick to make, not too difficult, not too hard. So thank you so much for watching. Thank you so much for being here, and I'll see you soon with another video. Bye.