Recipe of the Month: Soykebabs

One of the toughest things about being vegetarian in the summertime is grilling. There are, of course, lots of veggies that are delicious cooked on the grill, including zucchini, onions, mushrooms, eggplant, peppers, tomatoes, corn on the cob, and even potatoes. (Cut into slices, they cook quickly and are quite tasty.) But even if you cook several of these together, it's not really a complete meal. To be satisfying, it needs some kind of protein.

Brian has experimented with grilling different meat substitutes, with varying degrees of success. Some veggie burgers more or less fell apart when he attempted it. Lightlife Smart Dogs were okay, but kind of dry and bland; Morningstar Farms Grillers were, despite their name, a bit tough when cooked this way. The new high-tech plant burgers, Impossible Burger and Beyond Burger, are supposed to be the most meat-like, but we haven't tried them due to their high cost — currently around $12 per pound at our local supermarket. That's not actually Impossible, but for us, it's Highly Unlikely.

A week or two ago, we tried grilling some plain old tofu. We used the extra-firm variety, and Brian cut it into slices about half an inch thick and marinated it in a mixture of water, canola oil, garlic, soy sauce, brown sugar, and black pepper. This turned out reasonably well. Neither the taste nor the texture was much like meat, but then, it doesn't really need to be. Brian wasn't quite satisfied with the marinade, but it was still better than most of the plant proteins we've tried on the grill to date.

The success of this recipe got Brian wondering whether it would be possible to grill Soy Curls. The biggest practical difficulty with it is that they're too small to lay directly on the grill; they'd just slip through. But Brian thought he could get around that by making them into kebabs, alternating the soaked curls with chunks of veggies on bamboo skewers.

So, last night, he attempted this experiment. He soaked the Soy Curls in a marinade based on the one he used for his vegan sausage and threaded them on skewers with zucchini, mushrooms, and Vidalia onion. Then he grilled all that over a wood fire, along with a sliced potato and a couple of ears of corn from the farmer's market. (Side note: Brian has learned over the years that wood isn't really any harder to cook with than charcoal; it just takes a bit longer. Once you've built your fire, wait for the flames to die down, and at that point it's essentially the same as cooking over lump charcoal.)

I worked my way along the skewer, trying chunks of zucchini, mushroom, and onion before finally getting to one of the Soy Curls. Gingerly, I bit into it, and my teeth sank in just as if were a chunk of real meat. The flavor was meat-like, too, though I would have been hard put to it to say exactly what kind of meat it most resembled. Brian thought a meat-eater trying it without being told what it was would guess it was chicken, but I thought it was closer to pork. In any case, it had plenty of salty, smoky, umami flavor. I don't think even a die-hard carnivore would have any complaints about either the taste or the chew.

The one respect in which they didn't resemble meat? The cost. I just recently ordered another bulk shipment of Soy Curls, and the price has gone up a bit: 12 pounds, including shipping, came to $72.69. So that's about $6.05 per pound for the dry curls. But when soaked, they absorb about twice their weight in water, so the price of the rehydrated curls is only a little over $2 per pound. That's cheaper than either the sale-priced ground beef ($2.99 per pound) or the sale-priced pork chops ($2.49 per pound) at our local supermarket, and roughly on a par with the free-range chicken legs we used to buy from Trader Joe's. Even the fuel we used to cook them was free, since the wood was partly trimmed off our own plum trees and partly salvaged from some broken sticks discarded by our Morris dance team.

In short, these Soykebabs were an unqualified success. If you want to try them yourself, here's the full recipe:

    Brian's Soykebabs

1. Soak 4 bamboo skewers in water. This is an essential step if you don't want them to catch fire.
2. Mix together 1/3 cup water, 2 Tbsp. soy sauce, a grind of pepper, 1 crushed clove of garlic, 1 Tbsp. brown sugar, and 1/4 tsp. salt. Microwave the mixture for 30 seconds on high, then add 1/4 tsp. Liquid Smoke.
   
3. Pour this marinade into a shallow dish. Then add roughly 12 long, intact Soy Curls to the dish, or however many it takes to more or less fill it while keeping the curls mostly submerged. Soak for about 20 minutes.
4. Mix up a separate marinade for the vegetables from 1 Tbsp. balsamic vinegar, 1 Tbsp. soy sauce, 1 Tbsp. brown sugar, and 1 crushed clove of garlic. Microwave this mixture for about 20 seconds. 
5. Slice 1 small zucchini into coins about 1/4" thick. Cut about 1/4 pound of mushrooms in half, or in quarters if they're extra large. Add these to the marinade. Cut up 1/2 a Vidalia onion into bite-sized pieces, but don't marinate this.
   
6. Optional step: if you are grilling over wood or charcoal, go out and build your fire now. Then go bring the various components (skewers, Soy Curls, veggies, onion, and olive oil spray) outside so you can keep an eye on the fire as you prepare the skewers.
   
7. Remove the Soy Curls and veggies from their respective marinades and thread them onto the skewers. You will need to fold the curls in half or even thirds, poking the skewer through each one two or three times. Spritz the skewers lightly with olive oil.
8. Grill the skewers, turning them every two or three minutes, until the Soy Curls are ever-so-slightly blackened on the ends.