There are lots of ways to approach a vegan bacon. You can make it out of seitan or tempeh, smoked mushrooms (oyster or shiitake mushrooms are great for this), even chickpeas or eggplant.
As for the marinade, you can experiment. You might start with a ratio of ingredients with different flavors: 1 part liquid smoke, 3 parts sweet, 4 parts sour, 4 parts umami/salty. You can use whatever you like for these dimensions (e.g., brown sugar or maple syrup for sweet, cider vinegar or rice vinegar for sour, etc.). Then cook whatever way’s appropriate: bake, fry grill, etc. In this case, I used regular button mushrooms and a simple marinade from Kim at Fit for the Journey.
Mushroom “Bacon”
Servings
2 Servings
Ingredients
- 1 cup fresh mushrooms
- 2 tablespoons tamari
- 1 tablespoon maple syrup
- 1 teaspoon liquid smoke you can substitute smoked paprika if you need to
- 1 teaspoon olive oil
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 400°F.
- Prepare the marinade: Combine tamari, maple syrup, liquid smoke, and olive oil.
- Slice mushrooms, toss well in the marinade, and let soak for 10-20 minutes.
- Transfer to a lined baking sheet and bake for 20-30 minutes. As always, keep an eye on these and stir them up every 10 minutes or so to make sure they don’t burn. Bake to your desired doneness – you might want less done and more chewy, more more done and more crispy.
- You might want to make extra – it’s hard not to snack these all away.
I plan on making this as an hors d’oeuvre for 6 of us. Can I make this ahead of time & refrigerate? Will 6 cups be sufficient?
Portobello would be a great choice, too, just be sure to cut the pieces thin enough so they can get crispy.
i would think portobella to give it that smokiness & the deep rich flavor
I used regular button mushrooms in the version posted here, and they work great. You can mix it up with almost any mushroom; shiitake (but discard the stems) or oyster mushrooms would work especially well.
which are the best mushrooms to use for this?
Cassandra, of all the dishes I’ve posted, this mushroom bacon has gotten the most comments about causing exuberant addiction. There are tons of uses for it, but there’s a reason I always make extra for snacking!
OMG. I made this and could not get enough even though I doubled the recipe. But, warn people that the mushrooms shrink almost 90% if baked longer than 30 mins and do not get crispy. The mushrooms stay juicy, plump and taste wonderful!