BBQ Tempeh Plate

Does everything taste better slathered in barbecue sauce? Yes. Is everything bigger in Texas? Probably, I don’t know. I’m going to break down how to prepare this vegan BBQ plate. The focal point is the BBQ tempeh, but I’ll briefly go over the other stuff too. I didn’t have any pickled red onion or refried beans ready, forgive me. I also didn’t have one of those cool serving trays, but I did drink a lone star!

Tempeh is strange. But it’s cool, especially slathered in BBQ sauce.

BBQ TEMPEH PLATE

prep time: 15 minutes
cook time: 55 minutes

If you don’t have Lone Star on deck, Shiner makes just as fine a substitute.

What you’ll need:

• one brick of tempeh (as pictured below)

• olive oil

• salt, pepper, nutmeg, cumin, garlic powder, paprika

• dry rub (I used Trader Joe’s coffee/garlic rub)

• liquid smoke

• barbecue sauce (again, I used Trader Joe’s)

The goal is to take this goofy looking thing and make it look like the picture up there!

Preheat your oven to 315°. Grab a plate and lay that brick of tempeh down on it. Toss a little olive oil on it and coat it as evenly as possible. We’re gonna rub this baby down with all kinds of spices and then toss it in the oven.

Your starting lineup!

After you’ve moistened your tempeh with olive oil, add a little bit of liquid smoke to it too. These will both help your dry rub stick to the tempeh. Moist. You can mix your spices in a bowl and then rub the tempeh down or apply directly. I applied directly. Add around a teaspoon of everything except the dry rub.

Now you’re going to add a generous amount of dry rub to the tempeh. Eventually you will sear your cooked tempeh in the pan and this will make it nice and crisp on the outside.

I wasn’t kidding, you really wanna lay the rub on thick.

After your tempeh is completely coated and your oven is at temperature, throw it onto a slightly oiled baking pan for 45 minutes.

This is a weird picture. See you in 45 minutes!

While your tempeh is cooking, you can clean up and prepare your sides. I used spicy pickles, seared kale and broccoli, and mac & cheese. Vegan cheese.

Obviously the focal point here is the tempeh and you can prepare whatever sides you would like, but I had 45 minutes to kill while the tempeh cooked so here’s what I came up with.

What you’ll need (for the mac):

• mac & cheese

• bread crumbs

• paprika

• vegan butter

• some kind of milk

• nutritional yeast

Get a pot out and boil some water. You’re going to make your mac in there. Follow the directions on whatever mac you’re using. I’ll do a for-realsies mac recipe eventually but until then, for this I used Annie’s.

What you’ll need (for the other stuff)

• pickles

• kale

• maple syrup

• cayenne pepper

• olive oil

• broccoli

• liquid smoke

For the kale, toss it in an oiled pan with a little bit of maple and cayenne pepper. After it’s slightly crispy, put it in a dish. Hopefully your mac is cooked by now. I added miyoko’s butter and nutritional yeast into the mix. Once your mac is finished, put it in some kind of oven-safe pot. You can keep it warm in the 315° temperature oven while we move on. I didn’t include pictures of the sides process because OPTIONAL!

In the same pan you made your kale in, throw broccoli in there. I sauced it with a little bit of the liquid smoke from earlier. Once that’s done, add it to another dish.

Then take some pickles and put those in another dish.

Assuming it’s been around 45 minutes, your tempeh should be nice and baked.

Wipe out the pan you’ve been using. Without burning yourself. Add a tablespoon of olive oil into the pan and turn the flame up to medium high. This next part is tricky because you want to sear but without burning the living shit out of the tempeh.

Apply your barbecue sauce directly onto the tempeh. Take a brush and spread it on there as evenly as you can. The dry rub should stay put.

Put the tempeh into the pan and it should start to sear fairly immediately. Continue to apply barbecue sauce as it dries out. Flip it and repeat the process. You don’t want the crust of the tempeh to get stuck to the pan!

Keep a close eye so you don’t lose your crust.

Do this a couple of times until your brick of tempeh looks charred on the outside. Using preferably a metal spatula, get that thing out of the pan and put it back on the baking sheet to rest for a second.

Rest up my sweet angel.

While your tempeh is wondering what hit it, your mac is still in the oven. Again, it’s optional but I like to add a little bit of bread crumbs, miyoko’s butter and paprika directly on top and toss it back in the oven for a quick 3-4 minute broil. Keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn’t burn.

Now you can put your optional mac in a dish and put it with the kale, broccoli and pickles.

I put the tempeh right onto a cutting board to serve because I didn’t have one of those cool serving trays.

Feel free to add more barbecue sauce and have some paper towels ready.

Does anybody have a knife?

Now cut the brick down into even strips and open another Lone Star.

or Shiner.

---

Fried Potato Tacos

These were supposed to be flautas but I ripped the tortillas. So now they’re fried tacos!

Do you ever think to yourself, “I wish this taco were fried”? Well perfect, because this recipe is just that, and probably far from healthy! But I mean, I did chicken and waffles a few weeks ago for christ sakes.

FRIED POTATO TACOS

prep time: 20 minutes
cook time: 20 minutes

There’s spinach and black beans in there too! And those are healthy!

What you’ll need:

• two large potatoes (or a bunch of little ones)

• black beans

• onion

• spinach

• salt, pepper, garlic powder, paprika

• tortillas

• dipping sauces (optional)

• olive oil

Go ahead and peel yourself those potatoes and bring a pot of water to a boil. Toss them in and salt the water once your water is boiling. While those cook, drain a can of black beans and dice up some onion.

In a separate pan, add olive oil and cook the onions and then toss the black beans in there too. After your onions look caramelized, toss in a good fistful or two of spinach and continue to stir everything in your pan.

If you did it right, your pan looks like this. Please tell me you did it right.

Assuming the potatoes aren’t ready yet, turn off the flame on the pan so you don’t burn any of your beans/spinach/onion. Once the potatoes are ready, transfer into a bowl and mash them with olive oil to soften them up. Or you can use vegan butter, whichever you feel. Once you have a smooth consistency and you haven’t yet skipped past the part where I tell you how to mash potatoes, add in your black beans/onion/spinach. Mix them up nicely. I said nicely! Add salt, pepper, garlic powder and paprika right into the mix. The paprika will give it a subtle smokiness.

Here is a horrible, blurry picture of your brand new mixture.

Get your tortillas out and place your new mixture onto one half of each tortilla. It helps to warm them up a little bit so they don’t tear when you roll them. Your potato mixture will act as an adhesive to glue the tortilla shut.

If the tortilla does rip, just add a second tortilla because you probably aren’t concerned with your carbs if you’re making this too.

I heard you like carbs, so we put carbs inside your carbs!

Now in that same pan from earlier, give it a wipe clean and add fresh olive oil. A nice amount. Once your oil is hot, gently lay your taco shaped tortilla thing into the oil and let it cook until golden brown. Be careful flipping it because it may unravel. I used a spatula to pin it down while it cooked out on each side.

Continue this process until you are out of ingredients. Place your finished products on a plate with a paper towel to dry them of excess oil.

As you can see, I doubled down on tortillas because I messed up.

But if you followed directions, they should look like this

Look how golden brown and pretty

Have a couple paper towels ready! The salsas were easy too. The green one is avocado, lime and vegan sour cream. The red one is vegan sour cream and some red taco sauce I bought at Trader Joe’s. If you’re able to roll your tortillas, these can also be flautas! But like, I said - I messed that up.

---

Pozole Rojo

Pozole Rojo is a delicious, hearty, rich, moderately time-consuming dish. It’s perfect for colder months or any month if you don’t let outside temperatures determine your meals. I’m going to use the word simmer a lot so prepare yourself for that. You’re going to be on a low flame most of the time, so here is the word simmer again.

Pozole Rojo with jackfruit instead of chicken. Make sure you use the big pot.

POZOLE ROJO

prep time: 30 minutes
cook time: 90 minutes

The weather said it was supposed to be 67º but it ended up being 77º today. I already bought all the ingredients so I’m making pozole, goddamnit.

---


Before we jump in, I’m going to show you how I prepare jackfruit no matter what the dish is. I buy the jackfruit-in-a-can from Trader Joe’s. It’s $4 for two of them and it’s way less tedious than prepping an actual jackfruit. If you want to do it that way, more power to you.

What you’ll need:

• canned jackfruit (2)

• a strainer and a towel (or paper towels)

Open your cans of jackfruit, and toss the contents into a strainer. Rinse them off and start to pull them apart so they look reminiscent of pulled chicken. After you’ve ravaged your jackfruit, put them in a towel and press them as dry as you can.

Rinsed and pulled jackfruit in the strainer. I don’t mind the seeds, you can pick them out if you do.

Now put them into a bowl and toss them in whatever seasoning (or sauce) tailored to the appropriate dish, In this case, I doused the jackfruit in salt, pepper, lime, chipotle and adobo seasoning.

What you’ll need:

• salt, pepper, lime, adobo, chipotle seasoning

• olive oil

Add a dab of olive oil and dust the jackfruit in the aforementioned seasonings. Now that your jackfruit is dusted in the aforementioned seasonings, you’re going to make a rojo sauce. This sounds intimidating but it’s not so bad. Again, I’ll be breaking this up bit by bit per section of the recipe. Also rojo means red.

What you’ll need:

• dried chiles (chile de arbol / chile ancho)

• garlic

• onion

• a blender

• some bowls

Take five of your ancho chilies, cut the stems off and remove the seeds inside. They typically fall out pretty easily. This is so you don’t burn your mouth later. Do the same to about seven or eight of the arbol chilies, depending on the size. Put both gutted chilies into a small bowl. Then you’re going to take your garlic apart and add that to the bowl too. Finally, take half of your white onion, dice that up and put it in there too.

I emphasize “half” because the other half will be used as topping later. Or maybe you have more than one onion.

Boil a small pot of water and add your bowl of chilies, garlic and onion into the boiling water. You want to soften them and then blend them into a sauce.

All of the chilies, onion and garlic in hot water. Don’t breathe this in please.

While your soon-to-be rojo sauce is in boiling water, you’re going to get a much larger pot ready, for this is where the entirety of the dish will end up. Once your mixture is soft, strain and toss your chilies, garlic and onion into a blender. Add most of the water from the boil. Add more if needed as you blend the mixture into your sauce.

Scary red death sauce. Pulse until smooth. Again, add water if mixture is too thick.



Now you’re going to get your hominy ready. This will be in a large pot and is where the majority of the pozole preparation will take place.

What you’ll need:

• a large pot, like the one I keep talking about

• canned white hominy (2)

• vegetable broth (2)

• salt, pepper, lime, oregano

The hominy portion of the dish is the most time consuming because you will be simmering most of the time. But while the broth is being simmered, you can get a bunch of other stuff done.

Put both containers of vegetable broth into your large pot. Start with a medium flame. Drain and rinse your hominy off and add it to the broth. Bring the flame down to a little less than you have it now. Add salt, pepper, oregano and a nice squeeze of lime.

It puts the hominy in the broth

Now that you have broth warming up and rojo sauce prepped, you’re going to cook your jackfruit.

Oil a pan and add your jackfruit in. Cook thoroughly and add salt and pepper to taste. Adobo too if you want. Once your jackfruit is cooked out, add your rojo sauce directly into the pan and allow that to simmer just like your big pot of broth. So much simmering!

Simmer me timbers!

Now the toppings for pozole are just as important as its contents. While your jackfruit (in rojo) are simmering alongside your broth (with hominy) you can begin to prepare the toppings for your pozole.

What you’ll need:

• radishes

• onion (the other half from earlier)

• cilantro

• cabbage

• avocado & sour cream (optional but you’d be missing out)

• tostadas

Clean all of the things that need cleaning. Especially that cilantro. Dice your radishes thin and your onion moderately fine. Trim the cilantro off the stems. Cut the cabbage however you cut cabbage.

I waited til the end to open the avocados so they didn’t turn to mush. Cut up some limes.

I used one of the limes for a beer I was drinking

Now you have your toppings ready to go for after the master simmer is complete. Take the jackfruit (in rojo) and add it directly into the large pot. Give it a good stir, turn up the flame a tiny bit and simmer (this time with a lid.)

Adding the jackfruit will add a nice color to your broth. Careful not to splash yourself! Add a lid and let this do its thing for an hour (or so)

Now you have time to knock out some of your dishes or check your instagram. Let the large pot simmer for about an hour or so. You want the flavors to mesh and for the contents to become dense and tender. Also the color of the broth is now red! Also I’m sorry for using the word “simmer” so often, I can’t think of a better word.

Now that it’s been an hour or so,

Serve the pozole into a bowl and garnish with the toppings from earlier. You should have quite a bit of pozole and it freezes quite nicely, whatever you don’t finish. Assuming you used your time wisely and cleaned up some dishes, you can go to sleep on the couch now.

Now I dare you to go back and eat some of those chile seeds

---

Vegan Chicken & Waffles

For my second trick, I will show you how to make vegan chicken and waffles out of some weird shit. There are oyster mushrooms and applesauce in this recipe. There is thyme in the waffle batter because it is always thyme for the percolator.

Vegan Chicken and Waffles. Because “Fried Oyster Mushrooms and Waffles” sounds kinda dumb.

VEGAN CHICKEN AND WAFFLES

prep time: 45 minutes
cook time: 20 minutes

Which came first, the “chicken” or the waffle?
In this case, it’s the “chicken.”

What you’ll need:

• oyster mushrooms

• oat flour

• miyoko’s butter

• almond milk

• salt, pepper, cayenne, garlic powder, cumin, nutmeg

• frank’s red hot

• bread crumbs

• patience

• a couple of nice bowls to mix stuff in

• olive oil

First you’re gonna make a dry season. Use a little more than a tablespoon of each, but you’re going to put salt, pepper, cayenne, garlic powder, cumin and nutmeg into a bowl. Mix it up a little bit and then sift some oat flour into there. Always, always sift so you don’t get clumps. Toss the flour around with the seasonings.

Then you’re gonna make a batter. The batter is the exact stuff from the dry seasoning but now we’re gonna add two cups of almond milk (or a little more if the batter is thicc) with a few healthy dashes of frank’s. In a separate vessel, melt some miyoko’s butter in there so you can easily add it to your batter. You don’t have to use miyoko’s but it’s my vegan butter of choice.

If you did the math correctly, you should have two bowls full of stuff. Not counting the butter vessel. Now get a third bowl out of your cabinet because you’re going to fill that one with bread crumbs.

Keep the crumbs handy because you will be adding more to the bowl as you continue to batter your “chicken.”

Now you should have three bowls.

• Flour and seasonings

• Batter

• Bread Crumbs

Have a plate ready. Take your oyster mushrooms and dip them in the same order as bulleted. Dry, Wet, Crumbs. Coat them nice and evenly in the dry flour and then transfer to the batter. Drip off any excess so you don’t get your bread crumbs all gross. Roll the battered oyster mushroom in the crumbs evenly and set on the plate.

In a moderately deep pan, heat up some oil and get a baking rack ready to put the cooked mushrooms on. I keep mine on the grates of the stove I’m not using to minimize mess.

Cook and turn until the oyster mushrooms are nice and crispy. The crispiness will help them maintain a bit of sauce without getting soggy.

Look at them go!

Once the mushrooms are cooked out, set them on a rack to drip out and cool off. After that, throw them in a bowl with some frank’s and toss them around for a second.

This concludes the “chicken” part of the recipe.

The second part of the recipe concerns the waffles.

What you’ll need

• oat flour

• baking powder

• pastry flour

• flax seed

• applesauce (for real)

• salt

• thyme

• almond milk

• miyoko’s butter

Now you’re going to use more bowls and make a bigger mess.

Add four tablespoons of flax seed to a bowl. Add water and whip that mixture up until it has an egg-like consistency. Now to that, add half a cup of almond milk. Using the same method of heating up some butter separately, heat up some butter separately. Again, this will make it easier to mix in with other stuff.

Now you have a mixture of flax seed, almond milk, miyoko’s butter and water. Set that aside as you prepare your flour mixture.

Sift out a cup and a half of oat flour into another bowl. but one of those bowls that has a spout on it, because this will contain your finished batter and it will be easier to transfer it into a waffle iron. In that same bowl, add half a cup of pastry flour. Then add a tablespoon of baking powder and a healthy pinch of salt. Mix that up a little bit and then you are going to add your flax mixture to your flour. Keep whipping it and continue to add almond milk as it thickens up. I got about 3/4 of a cup of almond milk in there during the process. Then add one generous tablespoon of applesauce, because vegans add weird shit to everything.

The last piece of the waffle batter puzzle is thyme. Do that cool thing where you run the thyme through a strainer like they do in those Tasty videos. That will keep stems out of your batter.

Thyme adds a savory aspect to the waffle and you gotta trust me on this!

After you mix up the thyme into the batter, heat up your waffle iron. And I certainly hope you have one because you made it this far. Spray the inside of it with olive oil. Now get that thing preheated and pour your batter in there and follow whatever directions your waffle iron has.

They should come out something like this. You can hardly see the applesauce!

Now that you’ve completed your waffles, plate those suckers with some butter and maple syrup. Toss your oyster mushroom “chicken” on there with a little extra frank’s for measure. Now hurry up and eat because you have a lot of dishes to do.

I added thyme to the plate for extra Instagram likes. Works like a charm.

---

Nashville Hot Tofu

This is my first published recipe and I’m not going to post a five paragraph preamble about how I went on a vacation to Nashville in 2013 and it changed my outlook on life forever because I’ve never been to Nashville. And I don't like lengthy preambles.

That being said, I’m still figuring out all the bells and whistles of this website. I’ll probably edit it one thousand times a day. So forgive my wonky line breaks and formatting. Recipes will be updated with exact amounts of spices, et cetera, when I go back and trial each of these again. This is new to me.

Christening this new website with a recipe on Nashville Hot Tofu. It’s not very difficult and it is delicious.

NASHVILLE HOT TOFU

prep time: 20 minutes
cook time: 40-42 minutes

What you’ll need:

• extra firm tofu

• cashew milk

• miyoko’s butter

• salt, pepper, cayenne, garlic powder, cumin, oregano, nutmeg, cinnamon, brown sugar, smoked paprika, more cayenne

• frank’s red hot

• potato starch

First and foremost, preheat your oven to 400º and press your block of tofu.

Then you’re gonna make a batter. The batter is cashew milk, miyokos, salt & pepper, frank’s, a dash of cayenne, cumin and a little bit of (sifted) potato starch.

Mix all of that stuff up so it’s nice and even.

Second and foremost, the dry rub, the most important aspect of the recipe is — a lot of cayenne pepper. Like, a lot. Then garlic powder, salt & pepper, cumin, oregano, nutmeg, cinnamon, smoked paprika and a little bit more cayenne.

Get that dry mixture tossed evenly and add a heaping amount of brown sugar. This will offset the heat and help your taste buds from falling off. It helps to sift the brown sugar too to prevent clumps.

After your tofu is pressed and drained of all liquid, cut it rectangularly as pictured below. Coat each piece in the batter and then shake off any excess.

Toss the battered tofu square into the dry rub and coat as evenly as possible. Repeat this process until you can’t anymore. Lay down some parchment paper on a baking sheet and bake them @ 400º for 30 minutes, flip them and bake for 10 more minutes.

I always end my baking endeavors with a quick 2 minute broil to get a little char on top.

After that 40-42 minutes have gone by, toast some bread, throw some vegan mayo on there with red onion, sautéed kale and pickles. Add tofu.

There you have a Nashville Hot Tofu.

---