Tempeh Bacon

Hey there! Happy New Year! Hope you are well.

I made tempeh bacon the other day and was surprised to find that it was pretty darn good. There are many recipes for this, but most called for liquid smoke. I made a marinade from what I had on hand and hoped it would bake into a crunchy smoky flavor since I did not have the liquid smoke. We liked it, but give it a try and let me know what you think?

Note: This doesn’t get as crunchy as bacon, as it would have to be cut paper thin — and then it would burn while cooking. But, it does give the taste of bacon on sandwiches without having to eat animals.

Ingredients:

1 pkg. – tempeh, rinsed and dried (this removes any bitterness from the soybeans)

3 Tbsp. – tamari (gluten free soy sauce), or regular soy sauce.

2 Tbsp. – 100% real maple syrup

1 – tsp. hot sauce of your choice

1 tsp. – smoked paprika

1/8-1/2 tsp. chipotle pepper powder

1 – Tbsp. BBQ sauce of your choice

1 tsp. – Steak sauce of your choice

Directions:

Heat oven to 425 degrees

Whisk together your wet ingredients and spices

Cut tempeh into any length bacon strips you’d like.

Front

Side

Place on a baking sheet lined with parchment

Put into the sauce and marinate for as long as you’d like. I only let mine sit for the time it took the oven to preheat.

Bake for 15 minutes

Remove from oven

Turn each piece over and brush the rest of the marinade over the tempeh

Turn off the stove

Return to oven and bake another 5-7 minutes

Eat as tapas, put onto pasta or pizza, or refrigerate for sandwiches. I put ours on egg salad GF pitas.

For any of you who are interested in art journaling, I recently started a YouTube channel where I make and share art as therapy. You can subscribe here.

Update! I made these again today: 1/25/22 and have added more ingredients. I have added BBQ and steak sauce. Much better today with the addition of those and cutting them thinner. Note: they still did not get crispy, but I still only baked them for 15 minutes. We were hungry… what can I say? You could continue to bake them longer to see if you can get them crunchier and let me know…

It is possible to cut them thinner, just adjust your time and watch for burning.

Pre-cooked and marinating while the oven heats up.

Baked!

Yum!

One tiny piece that crisped up! Almost burnt!

It was the maple syrup that burnt on the edges. The inner portion was still chewy!