Meat alternative experiments (one miss, one hit)

In our mostly meat-and-dairy-free life, there are a couple of animal products that Brian and I still miss. We're doing pretty well with our almond milk, homemade vegan mozzarella, and coconut whipped cream, but we haven't found a decent substitute for the humanely farmed kielbasa that we used to pick up from Smokers' Deli at the Pennsylvania Dutch Farmers' Market. It was both delicious and convenient, since we could keep a pound or two in the freezer and just fry up a couple of links along with a potato and some frozen veggies when we had no other dinner ideas. But although there are various plant-based sausages on the market, none of them quite fit the bill. Beyond Meat doesn't make a Polish sausage, only Italian and bratwurst; Field Roast's smoked apple sage was okay for flavor but didn't have the right consistency, and it came with too much plastic packaging. The only one specifically billed as a Polish sausage was Tofurkey's, and it wasn't right either flavor- or texture-wise.

So, since we'd had good luck making our own version of a vegan cheese when the store-bought ones let us down, we decided to try the same with sausage. A recipe that billed itself as "The World's Best Vegan Sausages" didn't look too complicated, and all the ingredients were either in our pantry already or easy to get. The only one we had trouble over was "pork sausage seasoning," which wasn't sold under that name in any local supermarket. Eventually we ended up Googling it and found that the main seasonings in a Polish sausage are salt, garlic, and marjoram, so that's what Brian used: 1 teaspoon of salt, 1/4 teaspoon of marjoram, and one extra clove of garlic.

Since Brian was already used to making bread, making the "dough" for a half batch of these sausages wasn't too hard. It was just a matter of blending everything together, kneading it briefly, and dividing it up into four portions. He rolled these up into "vaguely sausage-shaped pieces," wrapped them in strips of aluminum foil, and steamed them. Then he let them chill overnight and fried up four of them in a pan for the next night's dinner.

As you can see, these looked not  unlike meat sausages, even if their shape was a bit wonky. And their flavor, too, wasn't altogether off the mark. It didn't have the meaty savor of a genuine pork sausage, but the blend of spices was about right, which was more than we could say for any of the store-bought alternatives we'd tried. But the texture was another story. They didn't have the firm outer skin I'm used to encountering with a sausage, but that wasn't a deal breaker; the big problem was that they were far too dry. A good sausage should be juicy, and these virtually fat-free vegan links had no juice in them at all. They were firm and didn't fall apart when cooked like some of their competitors, but they just didn't feel good to chew. I only reluctantly finished my link, and Brian ended up having to eat both the leftovers. So, if this truly is the world's best vegan sausage, it appears that the world will have to wait a while for one that's truly satisfying.

Fortunately, this disappointment was balanced out by another discovery in the world of vegan meat substitutes that appears to have much greater potential. I learned about it, ironically, on the It Doesn't Taste Like Chicken blog, since it actually does taste like a reasonable facsimile of chicken. It's called Butler Soy Curls.

Brian and I had already tried a soy-based product called texturized vegetable protein, or TVP, that made a reasonable substitute for ground meat in any highly flavored dish. TVP has no real flavor of its own, but it has a satisfying chew that gives chili or spaghetti sauce the appropriate texture. At first I thought these soy curls were just another name for TVP, but they turn out to be a completely different creation. According to Bon Appetit, TVP is made from defatted soybean flour, while soy curls are made from the whole soybean and contain all of its fiber and the healthy fats. So, not only are they less processed, which I consider a Good Thing in general, they're also more filling.

The only problem with soy curls? They're really, really hard to find. None of our local stores carry them, not even Whole Foods. And if you're not willing to buy from Amazon, as I'm not, the only places to find them online are the manufacturer, which has a minimum order of six bags (three pounds dry, which makes nine pounds cooked), or obscure sites like Country Life that charge a reasonable price for the curls themselves, but a bundle for shipping.

Since this was our first experience with the product and we weren't sure how we'd like it, we weren't willing to buy three pounds at once. Eventually I found some at Azure Standard, where we've shopped before for bulk cocoa. We didn't happen to need any of that, but we were able to make the shipping a tad more reasonable by purchasing some flax seeds at the same time (thus saving ourselves a trip down to the Whole Earth Center).

The recipe I'd first seen on It Doesn't Taste Like Chicken was for jerk soy curls, a flavor that didn't particularly interest me. So I did a little searching and found an interesting-looking recipe for Vegan Crispy Soy Curls that looked like a good one to start with. We'd previously tried making orange tofu as an alternative to orange chicken and found it uninspiring; perhaps the new product would do better.

We made only minor modifications to this recipe. We used all orange juice, since that was what we had, rather than a combination of orange and tangerine, and simple syrup in place of agave, and Brian also threw in some broccoli. And the resulting sauce was...not bad, but not extraordinary. The soy curls themselves, however, were remarkable. Soaked in liquid, dredged in flour, and then pan-fried, they had almost exactly the same texture you'd expect from chicken prepared the same way. And if the flavor wasn't the same, underneath all the sauce you could hardly tell the difference. We suspected that if we were to feed this to one of our most ardently carnivorous friends without telling him what was in it, he would never be the wiser.

We also learned from this recipe that soy curls — or, to be more exact, soy strips — aren't made exclusively by Butler. The blogger said she had purchased hers at "my local Asian market," which surprised me, since my previous searches hadn't turned them up anywhere in our area. However, upon further research, I found that the term "soy curls" is a trademarked name for Butler's product; the more generic "soy strips" are available from various sources. So we may not actually have to go back to the Internet for more of these when we run out our first 8-ounce bag.

The way we're going through these things, that won't take long to happen. We've already tried the soy curls in chili, using the broken pieces that had accumulated at the bottom of the bag, and found that it produced a texture nearly as satisfying as our beloved — and now mostly unavailable — Gimme Lean Beef. And It Doesn't Taste Like Chicken has posted a second recipe featuring them, this one with a lemon-garlic sauce, that looks well worth trying. We don't know if they can ever take the place of chicken in our beloved chicken and rhubarb, or succeed where seitan failed in a pot pie, but there's only one way to find out!