Recipes online can often seem easy and delicious, but when you actually try them at home, it’s not what you think. So here we are going to tell you about the cool vegan recipes we see, what happened when we tried them, and lessons learned. Hipster 1 is a very good instinctual cook and Hipster 2 can follow a recipe, so together hopefully we can get the best out of each dish.
We are not going to go into details on the recipe itself since the original creators do it better and deserve the credit. Here we are going to discuss vegan pork belly by Veggie Anh.
For our attempt, we did use TVP slices for the lean “meat” and yuba for the “skin”. These ingredients are easy to find at an Asian grocery store. Of course, if you don’t have access to an Asian grocery store you can order the ingredients online. The yuba is probably optional but you need the TVP for sure. Another option Veggie Anh suggests is to use tofu for the lean part and baguette for the skin, both of which are much more accessible ingredients. Here is our result.
The left is after pan frying and the right side is prior to frying. After frying we made turned them into a Vietnamese braised pork belly using this Veggie Anh recipe.
This is amazing, Veggie Anh is the real deal. The pork belly as layers of texture, and takes up the sauce like a sponge. The sauce is a traditional Vietnamese dish, and is very tasty, but on the sweet side. That being said, if you aren’t a fan of overly sweet dishes, you can braise the pork belly in just about any sauce you like. In a subsequent trial, we made a simple garlic and shallot braising liquid with just soy sauce and it came out great as well.
Here are our thoughts and lessons:
- It may look complicated but the end result is worth it and it’s not as difficult as it seems.
- When making the “fat” layer, do not walk away from the pot and stir constantly, the mixture gels up very fast.
- Slightly wetting your hands before handling the fat helps a lot.
- Do not overlap your TVP slices. There will be nothing to glue the overlap slices together and will fall apart when frying.
- Make sure you get a dark brown color after the fry. If the fry is too light when cooking with sauce the texture will get soggy.
In conclusion, this is something we will incorporate into our regular menus for sure. We can see many different ways to utilize the pork belly.
Rating:
H1: 10/10 – pretty good
H2: 10/10 – I wasn’t a fan of pork belly as a non-vegan, these I would eat anytime.
Let us know if there is a vegan recipe you want us to try.
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