My vegan take on carne asada tacos. Get yourself some soy curls.

As always, if you dig this recipe, tag me at @draggedthroughthegarden on instagram and we can talk about how store bought salsa is not good.

Vegan Tacos De Carne Asada. No lettuce, no tomato, no ketchup.

VEGAN TACOS DE CARNE ASADA

prep time: 35 minutes
cook time: 25 minutes

The marinade for this recipe is what will carry this dish into the land of deliciousness.

This recipe will require you to buy some soy curls. You can get them on amazon or in some grocery stores.

This is the brand I got. Found it at Cermak Produce, if you’re local to Chicago.

To start, you’re going to prep your soy curls and start your marinade. Like the picture above, place the soy curls in water to hydrate them and then move them into your marinade.

What you’ll need:

soy curls
ancho chiles
guajillo chiles
garlic
onion
orange
lime
salt
pepper
cumin
chili powder
coconut aminos
liquid smoke
olive oil
boullion

As stated, throw your soy curls in some water and let them sit in there until your marinade is done. Then you can transfer them over.

Dice up half a red onion and a bunch of garlic. Remove the stem from two ancho chiles and remove the seeds as well. Do the same for one guajillo chile as well. In a small pot, add olive oil and bring the flame up to medium temperature. Once your oil is hot, add your onion, garlic and chiles. Add salt, pepper and a tablespoon of chili powder into the pot. Once your ingredients start to blister, add two cups of water and bring the water to a boil. Once the water reaches a boil, add the juice of an entire orange and two limes. Add four tablespoons of coconut aminos (or soy sauce) and a few dashes of liquid smoke. Toss a bouillon cube in there and let it dissolve.

Bring the pot down to a simmer and let it cool down a little bit. Transfer all of those ingredients into a blender in two or three small batches and move all of the mixture into a big dish once it’s all blended.

Add a little bit of olive oil into the marinade and you get those cool oil bubbles.

Add all of your soy curls into the marinade and let them sit for at least 20 minutes. Move them around in there to make sure everything is evenly coated. The more marinade you end up with, the better because it will eventually end up in the pan with the soy curls as well.

While your soy curls are marinading, you can get the rest of your taco stuff ready. I’ll leave an optional salsa recipe below too because I needed that verde stuff in my life.

What you’ll need:

cilantro
onion
limes

Rinse off your cilantro and remove the leaves from the stems. That’s it. Now using that same onion for earlier, dice it up into tiny little onion pieces. Cut some limes up into quarters.

Now if you wanna throw a quick salsa together, you can. Here’s how I made mine.

What you’ll need:

tomatillos (5)
poblano pepper
serrano pepper
garlic
cilantro
lime
salt

Cut up some more garlic and remove the husks from the tomatillos. Open the peppers up and remove the stems and seeds just like you would do with some shitty weed. Bring a pot of water to a boil and throw all of that stuff in there and drop the temperature to a medium flame.

Drain most of the water from the pot and add your solid ingredients to the blender. Pulse until it looks like salsa. It may be warm so put it in the fridge while you get the soy curls going.

Next, add oil into a skillet/pan and bring the temperature up to a medium flame. Using a strainer-type device, remove the soy curls from the marinade and add into the pan. You want to cook them with minimal marinade too to achieve the right texture. While your soy curls are cooking, you’re going to want to burn them a little bit. Just a little bit! When you do that, add more marinade into the pan little by little to rehydrate them. This will give your soy curls optimum carne asada texture.

Keep on doing this until all of your soy curls are cooked and all of your marinade is gone. Remove all the soy curls from the pan and put on a cutting board to cool off. Once they are not scorching hot, use a sharp knife and dice them up into smaller, less frito-like shapes. You can leave them on the cutting board or move to a plate if you want.

Look how dirty this plate got! Splendid!

Finally, you’re going to cook your tortillas.

What you’ll need:

tortillas

Oil a pan and keep the flame low. Add your tortillas and cook them. This part is self-explanatory.

Now. check on your salsa and make some tacos!

Stunning. Absolutely stunning. Magnificent.