Don’t like waiting in lines? Don’t eat meat? Perfect. If Popeye gets a reboot in 2020, he’ll be eating these instead of spinach.

As always, if you dig this recipe, tag me at @draggedthroughthegarden on instagram and we can debate over which streaming service will get the rights to the Popeye cartoons.

The Plant Based Popeye Sandwich. Popeye didn’t get swoll eating meat.

PLANT BASED POPEYE

prep time: 20 minutes
cook time: 20 minutes

I’ve used the word vegan a whole bunch, plant based rolls off the tongue easier here.

All in all, this is a pretty quick sandwich to put together. The “chicken” is made of oyster mushrooms. Pickles and chipotle mayo on a toasted bun with butter. There isn’t even spinach on this thing. Poser.

What you’ll need:

oyster mushrooms
oat flour
soy milk (unsweetened almond is fine)
apple cider vinegar
salt
pepper
onion powder
garlic powder
adobo
cayenne pepper
olive oil

First, you’re going to get your flour started. Sieve oat flour into one bowl. Always sieve to prevent clumping. In another bowl, add soy milk and a generous splash of apple cider vinegar. Whisk up that one and let it sit for a second until it starts to curdle some. This will function as your buttermilk. Take a pinch of the flour and put it into your buttermilk. Stir.

Two bowls, one for the plug and one for the load.

Take a couple teaspoons each of salt, pepper, adobo, cayenne, onion powder, and garlic powder and add it directly to your mushrooms as well as your flour. You want all of these flavors to carry through your batter.

In a small pot, heat up some oil and add a little salt.

Take your oyster mushrooms and remove obnoxious stems as needed. They are very chewy and not the texture you’re going to want on a sandwich. Coat them one by one in dry flour, then into the buttermilk and then back into the dry flour. Set them on a plate for now while your oil heats up.

Once you have the mushrooms all coated, add one into the pot to fry. It’s easier to do these one by one and in a pot rather than a pan to minimize mess and oil usage. Fry them on each side, until they are golden brown and then set aside.

Mind the dirty stove, had a little oil fly out of there.

Once you’ve gotten through each of your mushrooms, sprinkle a little bit of cayenne pepper and black pepper right on top of them.

Some of those stems will get chopped off.

Next, you are going to prepare your chipotle mayo. There are a few ways to approach this, so it’s however you want to do it. If you want to mix mayo with chipotle hot sauce, that works. If you wanna boil down some chiles and stuff and mix it with mayo, that works too. If you want to make mayo yourself out of cashews and the aforementioned, that might take a while but you can do that too. I chose option two because I had chiles, garlic and onion on hand. No cashews though.

If you do it this method (recommended) — here is….

What you’ll need:

garlic
onion
apple cider vinegar
salt
dried ancho chiles
olive oil

Peel some garlic, dice up a little onion and remove the stem from your ancho chile. Take the seeds out of the pepper so you don’t burn your mouth off.

In a new pot, add olive oil and bring the heat up. Add your onion, garlic and ancho into the oil and let everything cook and blister for a minute. Add a splash of apple cider vinegar. Once everything looks browned, add a big splash of water and bring the contents to a boil. This will soften everything and ensure a smooth blending.

Here is a somewhat blurry picture of those things.

Drop the flame and add the contents to a blender. Pulse until smooth and then let cool down. This will eventually get mixed with your store bought mayo because cashew mayo takes too much time.

That color will get toned down once you add mayo, but still looks pretty cool.

Make a mixture of one part chipotle to two parts mayo. Or half and half, whatever.

Next, your sandwich is almost done — all you have to do is toast your buns and get pickles out of your fridge.

What you’ll need:

hamburger buns
butter
sandwich pickles

You can use the same pot you made your chipotle sauce in. Assuming it’s dry, add a knob of butter into the pot and throw your bun in there. My pot only allowed me to do one at a time. Coat the buns as evenly as you can and be sure the inside halves get nice and crispy.

Once your buns are ready to do, add your chipotle mayo to each bun, put a few pickles on there and add your fried oyster mushrooms. I hope you aren’t counting calories. Agagagagagagaga.

I will gladly pay you tomorrow for a sandwich today!