I'm a big fan of making my own veggie burgers and other veggie "meats".
Although I'm very thankful that meatless foods have gotten better-tasting over the last few years, their ingredients sometimes freak me out. They have too many weird ingredients and GMOs. Granted, there are some good ones out there, but they are few and far between.
I've made some vegan sausages before, but they called for vital wheat gluten. If you're not familiar, it looks like flour and basically makes everything stick together. It also gives the sausage a weird, spongy texture. Not for me. This recipe was found on The V Word and it originally calls for xanthan gum - again, for the binding. I chose to use coconut flour for this; it probably isn't as effective, but I like that ingredient better.
These sausages are gluten-free, vegan, and have the consistency of most veggie burgers. As a word of advice, I would make eight smaller sausages (instead of the four I made). It will keep them smaller and firmer on the outside.
Ingredients:
Adapted from The V Word
2 T. extra virgin olive oil
3/4 c. mushrooms, chopped
1/4 c. onion, chopped
1 clove of garlic, chopped
1 tsp. garlic powder
1/2 tsp. pepper
1/2 tsp. sea salt
1 tsp. paprika
1/4 tsp. red pepper flakes (or more!)
1/2 tsp. oregano
1/2 tsp. allspice
1 can of chickpeas
1 roasted red pepper
1/4 c. nutritional yeast (you can find it here)
1/2 c. brown rice flour
2 T. coconut flour
1 T. vegan worchestershire sauce
2 T. smoked bourbon (learn about it here!)
a few good shakes of Liquid Smoke (usually found in the ketchup aisle)
Directions:
In a medium-sized skillet, saute the olive oil, mushrooms, onion, and garlic, until they become soft.
In the mean time, add the chickpeas, spices, roasted red pepper, and nutritional yeast to the food processor. Once the skillet veggies are done, scoop those in there too. Pulse these items in the food processor. You want them to be chunky, yet combined. Add the flours, worchestershire sauce, bourbon, and Liquid Smoke. Pulse a few more times.
Once you have the sausages wrapped, you'll want to steam them. You can do what I did (place them in a colander above boiling water) or use a veggie steamer. (I actually have a veggie steamer, but I was too lazy to get it out! It's probably much more effective, haha). So, at this point, you'll want to boil some water if you're doing it that way.
Take eight pieces of aluminum foil and wrap gobs of the "sausage" dough into cylindrical shapes. Steam the sausages for 10-20 minutes. After, place them in the refrigerator for a few hours (I chose to do this overnight).
When you're ready, add a few more tablespoons of olive oil to your skillet. Unwrap your sausages and saute them until they're brown on all sides - mine ended up looking more like rectangles in the end.
I actually crumbled a bunch of mine (cooked it as a sausage, hacked it up and kept cooking, until it looked like little crispy sausage pieces) and used it as "taco meat" for my husband and me. It was really good!
Enjoy this recipe and let me know what spins you put on it!
Cheers,
-Aileen
