The Vegan Garbage Plate. It’s like a five course meal, but served to you all at once on one plate in upstate NY! I’m now convinced that Rochester is located in the bible belt somewhere.

As always, if you dig this recipe, share it with a friend. Then send it to everyone you know. Tag all the cool food people and also tag me at @draggedthroughthegarden on instagram and then send it directly to Rachael Ray.

Rachael if you are reading this, my email is draggedthroughthegarden@gmail.com

The Vegan Garbage Plate. Aptly named.

THE VEGAN GARBAGE PLATE

prep time: 30 minutes
cook time: 35 minutes

Is it greater than the sum of its parts? Yeah, pretty much.

Okay, so this isn’t particularly difficult to put together. It’s a number of components that come together in the end to form some sort of drunken Rochester Voltron. I’ll break down the order of operations and then we will assemble it in full. We have macaroni salad, home fries, meat sauce, smash burgers, a minuscule amount of baked beans, topped with yellow mustard and ketchup. You can add hot sauce or fries or hot dogs too, I don’t give a shit.

To start:

Macaroni Salad!

What you’ll need:

elbow macaroni
celery
red pepper
pickles
red onion
vegan mayo
vegan sour cream
dijon mustard
apple cider vinegar
salt
pepper
garlic powder

Moving forward I will be omitting the word vegan and all ingredients will be implied.

Dice up a red onion, half a red pepper and four or five stalks of celery. Toss all that stuff into a bowl and add salt, pepper and garlic powder. Season with your heart. Dice up a few dill pickles and add those to the bowl too. Then hit it with a splash of apple cider vinegar, a big squirt of dijon, two tablespoons of sour cream and two and a half tablespoons of mayo. WOO!

This could pass as some kind of Midwestern salad too!

Now that you have a bowl of stuff, get out a pot. Add water and salt and bring up to a boil. Cook your macaroni to al dente so it doesn’t get super mushy. Because it will be slathered in meat sauce later.

Here’s the finished product. Add a little bit of oil so they don’t stick.

Now add your macaroni to your bowl with the other stuff and mix thoroughly. If it’s too dry, add more mayo. Maybe a small splash of vinegar too.

I didn’t take a picture of the bowl for some reason but I stuck all the extra in a deli for snacking purposes. Take your bowl of macaroni salad and stick it in the fridge until the very end.

Now wipe out that pot you cooked the macaroni in because-

Next…

Home Fries!

What you’ll need:

russet potatoes (three large sized ones)
salt
pepper
old bay
garlic powder
olive oil

Peel all of your potatoes (if you want) and give them a thorough rinse. Dice them up home-fry style into half inch chunks. Bring a pot of salted water up to a boil and add your potatoes in small batches. You’re going to par-boil them. They should only take 7-8 minutes, you don’t want them overly tender because they’re getting fried next.

After cooking a small batch of potatoes, pull them out and stick them in a strainer. Bonus points if you add ice cubes to the bowl too to shock the potatoes. This will ensure you maximum crispness.

Repeat this process until all your potatoes are done.

Once all your potatoes are par-boiled, add them into a new bowl and season with salt, pepper, garlic powder and old bay.

Definitely added more than this but for photo sake.

Now you can fry these in a pot or air fryer or bake them on a baking sheet. I went with air fryer because this plate of garbage left me with quite a bit of dishes. One batch of potatoes in the air fryer took me about 20 minutes, shaking the bin once halfway through.

Now that you have macaroni salad and home fries, you need a ridiculous meat sauce to slather all over them both.

So next, you’re going to make a

Meat Sauce!

What you’ll need:

vegan burger patties (two of them)
white onion
garlic
olive oil
salt
pepper
chili powder
red pepper flakes
garlic powder
cumin
tomato paste
veggie broth

Finely chop up one white onion. Dice up four or five cloves of garlic too. Set aside a little bit of the white onion for later. Add olive oil to a pan and add your garlic and onion. Cook until fragrant, careful not to burn the garlic.

Still haven’t installed the smell-o-vision plug in yet.

Add a teaspoon or so of red pepper flakes two and a half tablespoons of tomato paste and mix that up real nice. Toss in two burger patties and break them up with your spoon. Add all of the aforementioned seasonings. As much as you want, go nuts. Add a splash of vegetable broth and give that a stir.

You don’t necessarily want a red sauce, but a runnier, sloppy-joe-reminiscent sauce.

Now as if you were making a sloppy risotto, add another big splash of broth and combine everything throughly. Let that cook out completely and do it two or three more times.

Keep mixing, the Joe is only growing sloppier.

Once you’ve got yourself the texture and consistency of a sludgy meat sauce, scrape that all out into a bowl and set aside for later.

Now that you have yourself a macaroni salad, home fries and a sloppy meat sauce — you can meal prep all of this and call it for the week, or you can finish what you started.

Because now it’s time for—

Smash Burgers!

What you’ll need:

salt
pepper
vegan burgers
oil
vegan cheese (optional, but come on)

In a cast iron skillet (or stainless I guess) add oil and get it ripping hot. Maybe open a window too. Season your burgers. I cooked them one at a time. Add your vegan burger to the pan and smash it down with parchment paper and a heavy object.

Cook til crisp and then flip, add cheese and cover. I didn’t photograph this part cause I got splashed with hot oil.

But when they’re done they’ll look like this:

Now I suppose it’s optional, but heat up some baked beans if you want. I added a small amount because I wanted the meat sauce to do the talking.

And now, time to assemble your plate of garbage. Get out that macaroni salad from earlier.

First shovel a bunch of macaroni salad onto half of your plate. Then throw a bunch of home fries on there too.

Unload a bunch of meat sauce right into the middle there. There’s some baked beans in there too. Not a lot though.

Add your burger patties atop your sloppy meat sauce. Throw a few raw onions on there from what you set aside.

Now, your coup de grâce: Add lots of ketchup and yellow mustard.

And now honestly, you have to figure out how to eat this thing. Go ahead, take a bite. But now you have to mix it all up into a disheveled mess if you intend on eating it properly. Which you absolutely have to.

If you’re from Rochester, how did I do? If you dug this recipe, please consider sharing it with everyone in your contacts. Find me on instagram @draggedthroughthegarden and show me the plates of garbage you eat. Send this to vegnews and vegout and veggietales too; there is no god.