This video / recipe was recently shared in !food@beehaw.org, and I thought it would be easy to make and extend my meals without having to go to the grocery store.
I tried out the recipe today using TVP as the meat substitute, and made some cornbread to go with it:
here's the recipe from the video description:
Ingredients:
- 1 lb pinto beans, soaked
- ½ pack MyBacon (mycelium bacon), diced
- 1 onion, diced
- 4–5 cloves garlic, minced
- 2 Tablespoons oil
- 2 tsp smoked paprika
- 2 tsp granulated garlic
- 2 tsp granulated onion
- 2 Bay Leaves
- 2 tsp No-Chicken Better Than Bouillon
- 8–10 cups water (for a brothy first day)
- Salt and black pepper to taste
Optional “pork” substitutes:
- Light Life tempeh bacon (diced),
- ½ block tofu (smoked tofu works great),
- soy curls (rehydrated, chopped, and roasted ahead).
Method
- Soak Beans with boiling water for 1 – 2 hours.
- Prep onions
- Drain and rinse beans
In a separate pan, render the diced MyBacon until lightly crisp with added oil. Add onion and cook until softened, then stir in the garlic.
Add seasonings and cook briefly. Add the beans and bring to a slow boil, then simmer for 1 -2 hours until beans are tender. Stirring frequently. Season with salt and black pepper. -Brothy the first day, thickens naturally the next.
Top with nutritional yeast 🔥
Ingredients I used and approximate cost:
- 200 g (~1 cup?) dry pinto beans, ~$0.75 (estimate based on what I paid for kidney beans; these were some beans I’ve stored in my pantry for a while, I don’t know what price I paid)
- 157 g (2 small) onions, normally ~$0.55 for this amount, but I found a deal and actually paid $0.07
- 25 g canola oil (I don’t have cost estimate for this, but oil is expensive)
- 13 g garlic, ~$0.14
- 79 g (~1 scant cup) dry TVP, (I don’t have cost estimate for this, but TVP is usually fairly cheap)
I would guess it’s less than $5 for the whole pot.
I don’t bother to measure lots of ingredients, so I don’t have a cost estimate for other things I threw in there to help it out:
- spices (like paprika)
- miso
- better-than-bouillon
- soy sauce
- mushroom seasoning powder
- MSG
It sorta tastes like it needs more veg, like maybe a can of diced tomatoes. It’s a lot like a chili in some ways, so I keep wanting to add tomatoes. I bet potato would be good in it too, if you wanted to make it more like a smoky potato & bean soup dish.
A bowl with a slice of cornbread & a dollop of vegenaise (for creaminess, instead of sour cream) came to under $2 and had these nutrients:
- 580 kcal
- 23 g fat
- 60 g carbs
- 23 g protein
- 1.8 g fiber
I’m not sure jumping through hoops to poorly replace pork would be as good as just leaving it out, but it’s a damn nice effort for those that want it :)
For me, if I’m doing pintos, the smoked paprika alone does everything I would use a pork product for except maybe the fats. Since I find using oils just as good as pork fats for this application, the only thing left is texture, and I’m fine with just the beans for that tbh.
Again though, that’s me going on a tangent about personal preferences, and the recipe and work behind it are fucking great :)
personally the texture and nutrition are major reasons to substitute pork with something like TVP.
I really hate the way TVP tastes generally, it has this chalky off taste that I don’t know how to get rid of. So this time, determined to eliminate that weird taste, I rinsed the TVP thoroughly in hot water, then boiled it in a separate pot with black pepper, no-steak better-than-bouillon, vegan Worcestershire sauce, etc. and then drained it again before putting it with the onions to fry it up a little bit.
The TVP dramatically increases the protein per serving, it would have been probably 10 g or less in a bowl / serving without the TVP, and then it wouldn’t have seemed like chili at all - just a thin bean soup. I try to aim to have around 20 g protein per 500 kcal meal, and it’s even more important when vegan to pay attention to the protein content.
The reason I want protein is mostly for energy and satisfaction reasons - I’m less hungry when I eat more protein, and I notice I have more energy, which is important for supporting healthy habits like exercise (besides generally making life easier, as fatigue makes getting your tasks and work done more of a drag).
Also, adding the TVP didn’t feel like too much of a hassle tbh - it was certainly easier to prep than cooking dry beans for hours, and having to do that prep a whole day in advance.
Fair enough :)
In all honesty, the folks I used to cook vegan for aren’t as big a part of my life as they used to be, so I’ve fallen out of the habit of directly supplementing protein since I eat meat to some degree or another a few times a week. I can do fine with a big ol pot o beans and some veggies the rest of the time. Since I don’t tend to miss the texture for the same reason, I didn’t even think about it being a big factor for anyone that would be using this recipe to begin with. That’s what I get for not thinking outside of myself lol.
For real though, it’s great that you put the extra effort in and posted it. Seems like a really solid recipe