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Jun. 29th, 2020 09:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwynThanks to the Instacart shopper who couldn't find the Sweet Earth bacon I ordered a while ago (out of curiosity, not dietary restriction- I'm not a vegetarian but occasionally I like the taste and texture of certain meat substitutes), I started what may wind up being a series of experiments yesterday. Went through a number of websites to look at various fake bacon recipes and see if I could make an attempt at one of them.
Experiment One
1 lb. firm tofu (I'd ordered extra firm as per the various web sites but the buyer couldn't get it)
3 tablespoons Coconut Secret coconut aminos (I don't have soy sauce in the house at the moment, and coconut aminos or Liquid Aminos are usually put forward as an acceptable lower sodium substitute)
1 tablespoon maple syrup
2 teaspoons Bragg nutritional yeast seasoning (if you are a veg*n you are probably nodding in recognition, if you are not, nutritional yeast isn't the stuff you raise bread or make beer with, it's yellow flakes that amp savory flavor)
1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
1/2 teaspoon Penzeys smoked paprika (this and the sesame oil are because virtually every recipe I have encountered for fakon has called for liquid smoke, which I do not currently have- smoked paprika imparts some degree of smokey flavor, and toasted sesame oil helps with that)
3/4 teaspoon Penzeys Justice seasoning blend
Steps:
1. Tipped out the water, put the tofu block on 3 paper towel half-segments, each folded in half. Put that in a plate. Put 2 half-towels, each folded in half, on top. Balanced my plastic cutting board across the top and put three 28-oz cans of tomato puree on top for weight. This started around noon.
2. Located all the ingredients. Most online recipes call for some combo of black pepper, onion powder, and garlic powder as separate ingredients. Justice is a blend composed of shallots, garlic, onion, green peppercorn, green onion, and chives, so what the hell, this is Justice Bacon now.
3. At 12:30 removed sodden paper towels, replaced w/one half-towel folded in half on each side of tofu block, replaced board and cans
4. Whisked ingredients other than tofu together in measuring cup, cleaned up the kitchen
5. At 12:41 took the tofu out from under the cans. Paper towels were dry about an inch in from the margins.
6. Sliced pressed tofu with large sharp santoku. Slices were between 1/8 and 1/4 inch each. At least one recipe had indicated use of merely firm tofu would result in slices falling apart, esp. if really thinly cut; glad to see that pressing and removing water helped with that.
7. Gave slices somewhat desultory pat-dry with edges of the absorption paper towels, not that it made that much difference, and returned them to original container, which had been rinsed and dried.
8. With slices standing on edge in the container, poured the marinade over all the slices, made sure it got on all slice surfaces, shook it around a little, put it in a ziploc bag in the fridge (the smell was a little strong) at 12:55
9. Cleaned up kitchen
10. Around 2:30 PM, heated up carbon steel skillet (I do not have a nonstick as many recipes seem to assume people have) with a few teaspoons of canola oil in it. When the oil was hot, began frying about eight or nine slices of fakon- facon? JUSTICE BACON- at a time. Wasn't clear on how to tell when a side was done without the smoke alarm going off, so I flipped each slice several times before finally pulling them out.
Result: Texture definitely chewy as I was not really able to get them to a crisp status. Not sure if this is flaw in the cooking, me cutting them too thick, or the fact that I used frying rather than baking- most fake bacon recipes on the Internet tell you to bake tofu bacon for about 10-15 minutes per side. It was much too warm yesterday to run the oven that long.
The taste wasn't bad, although it wasn't nearly as salty as I was expecting. Probably the result of using coconut aminos rather than soy sauce. Bog standard soy sauce has around 900 milligrams of sodium per tablespoon. Low-sodium soy sauce has 575 milligrams per tablespoon. Coconut Secret coconut aminos has 270 milligrams per tablespoon.... so, yeah, not gonna get the OMG SAAAAALT experience one associates with bacon here. This is probably a good thing, although I think I would have liked a bit more salt.
Could have done with a little more smoky intensity. Debating acquiring Liquid Smoke again even though this and maybe beef jerky are the only things I'll use it in.
I've seen one or two recipes that call for the use of tomato paste in the marinade. I think this may be an attempt at adding umami flavor as tomato paste has an awful lot of glutamic acid action going on. I'm debating how to improve the meaty aspect overall. One thing that comes to mind is the possibility of playing with the nucleotide side of things- umami, meatyflavor, is amplified a LOT by the presence of certain nucleotide molecules. I suspect this is why kelp jerky for vegans is made with kombu and shiitake mushrooms; the seaweed contains lots of glutamate molecules and both shiitake and porcini mushrooms are stupid high in nucleotides. I've made mushroom essence in the past from a recipe in the Guide to Discworld (it's a component of Wow-Wow Sauce, at least the version that Roundworlders make). Might not be the worst idea in the world to see if I can make up a bit of that and include it in the marinade for a future batch of JUSTICE BACON. That, or homemade mushroom powder- the stuff you can buy at Asian markets has salt in it and other seasonings, which I am not after. Dried, ground shiitake mushrooms may be enough for my purposes without the added fuss of having to cook mushrooms in liquid and strain things out.
Experiment One
1 lb. firm tofu (I'd ordered extra firm as per the various web sites but the buyer couldn't get it)
3 tablespoons Coconut Secret coconut aminos (I don't have soy sauce in the house at the moment, and coconut aminos or Liquid Aminos are usually put forward as an acceptable lower sodium substitute)
1 tablespoon maple syrup
2 teaspoons Bragg nutritional yeast seasoning (if you are a veg*n you are probably nodding in recognition, if you are not, nutritional yeast isn't the stuff you raise bread or make beer with, it's yellow flakes that amp savory flavor)
1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
1/2 teaspoon Penzeys smoked paprika (this and the sesame oil are because virtually every recipe I have encountered for fakon has called for liquid smoke, which I do not currently have- smoked paprika imparts some degree of smokey flavor, and toasted sesame oil helps with that)
3/4 teaspoon Penzeys Justice seasoning blend
Steps:
1. Tipped out the water, put the tofu block on 3 paper towel half-segments, each folded in half. Put that in a plate. Put 2 half-towels, each folded in half, on top. Balanced my plastic cutting board across the top and put three 28-oz cans of tomato puree on top for weight. This started around noon.
2. Located all the ingredients. Most online recipes call for some combo of black pepper, onion powder, and garlic powder as separate ingredients. Justice is a blend composed of shallots, garlic, onion, green peppercorn, green onion, and chives, so what the hell, this is Justice Bacon now.
3. At 12:30 removed sodden paper towels, replaced w/one half-towel folded in half on each side of tofu block, replaced board and cans
4. Whisked ingredients other than tofu together in measuring cup, cleaned up the kitchen
5. At 12:41 took the tofu out from under the cans. Paper towels were dry about an inch in from the margins.
6. Sliced pressed tofu with large sharp santoku. Slices were between 1/8 and 1/4 inch each. At least one recipe had indicated use of merely firm tofu would result in slices falling apart, esp. if really thinly cut; glad to see that pressing and removing water helped with that.
7. Gave slices somewhat desultory pat-dry with edges of the absorption paper towels, not that it made that much difference, and returned them to original container, which had been rinsed and dried.
8. With slices standing on edge in the container, poured the marinade over all the slices, made sure it got on all slice surfaces, shook it around a little, put it in a ziploc bag in the fridge (the smell was a little strong) at 12:55
9. Cleaned up kitchen
10. Around 2:30 PM, heated up carbon steel skillet (I do not have a nonstick as many recipes seem to assume people have) with a few teaspoons of canola oil in it. When the oil was hot, began frying about eight or nine slices of fakon- facon? JUSTICE BACON- at a time. Wasn't clear on how to tell when a side was done without the smoke alarm going off, so I flipped each slice several times before finally pulling them out.
Result: Texture definitely chewy as I was not really able to get them to a crisp status. Not sure if this is flaw in the cooking, me cutting them too thick, or the fact that I used frying rather than baking- most fake bacon recipes on the Internet tell you to bake tofu bacon for about 10-15 minutes per side. It was much too warm yesterday to run the oven that long.
The taste wasn't bad, although it wasn't nearly as salty as I was expecting. Probably the result of using coconut aminos rather than soy sauce. Bog standard soy sauce has around 900 milligrams of sodium per tablespoon. Low-sodium soy sauce has 575 milligrams per tablespoon. Coconut Secret coconut aminos has 270 milligrams per tablespoon.... so, yeah, not gonna get the OMG SAAAAALT experience one associates with bacon here. This is probably a good thing, although I think I would have liked a bit more salt.
Could have done with a little more smoky intensity. Debating acquiring Liquid Smoke again even though this and maybe beef jerky are the only things I'll use it in.
I've seen one or two recipes that call for the use of tomato paste in the marinade. I think this may be an attempt at adding umami flavor as tomato paste has an awful lot of glutamic acid action going on. I'm debating how to improve the meaty aspect overall. One thing that comes to mind is the possibility of playing with the nucleotide side of things- umami, meatyflavor, is amplified a LOT by the presence of certain nucleotide molecules. I suspect this is why kelp jerky for vegans is made with kombu and shiitake mushrooms; the seaweed contains lots of glutamate molecules and both shiitake and porcini mushrooms are stupid high in nucleotides. I've made mushroom essence in the past from a recipe in the Guide to Discworld (it's a component of Wow-Wow Sauce, at least the version that Roundworlders make). Might not be the worst idea in the world to see if I can make up a bit of that and include it in the marinade for a future batch of JUSTICE BACON. That, or homemade mushroom powder- the stuff you can buy at Asian markets has salt in it and other seasonings, which I am not after. Dried, ground shiitake mushrooms may be enough for my purposes without the added fuss of having to cook mushrooms in liquid and strain things out.
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Date: 2020-06-29 02:50 pm (UTC)as for the crisp I've seen great things about the rice paper bacon recipes, although I myself am currently searching for the holy grail which is the pepperoni replacement...