If you are staying away from animal food products, you can quench your craving for meat simply by getting your hands on vegetarian jerky. However, this chewy treat does not come cheap! So if you feel that it’s time to tighten the purse strings, continue reading. Below you will find an easy recipe for coming up with your very own vegetarian jerky.
Mushroom — this is the secret ingredient to making the perfect vegetarian jerky. It’s just like the real deal texture-wise, and that’s why it is commonly used for making all sorts of faux meat products.
Certainly, it’s also something that you can rely on for whipping up vegetarian jerky with your own two hands. And because it’s produced in your kitchen, it’s not as expensive as the kind that you can readily buy at your favorite supermarket. By learning how to make vegetarian mushroom jerky from scratch, you will be able to save a fortune!
The best mushroom for the job? Porcini! That’s because it is big and its flavor is robust, allowing you to come up with vegetarian mushroom jerky that can easily give supermarket-bought vegetarian jerky a run for its money.
Logging online, you may come across so many vegetarian jerky recipes. However, many of them can be daunting most especially for someone who is not only a vegetarian but also suffers from some form of gluten intolerance, sensitivity or allergy as they contain flour or vital wheat gluten.
But the recipe below is completely gluten-free, allowing you to munch on vegetarian jerky that won’t later on give you all sorts of unfavorable digestive problems. Snacking on your homemade vegetarian jerky is simply guilt-free.
Now let’s take a look at the recipe so that you may start making your first batch:
Ingredients:
10 pieces porcini mushrooms
8 tablespoons of maple syrup
8 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar
6 tablespoons of soy sauce
6 tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon of chili powder
1 teaspoon of smoked paprika
Directions:
-Place porcini mushrooms in a colander and rinse thoroughly under running water. Give it enough time to drain.
-In the meantime, grab a mixing bowl. Combine maple syrup, apple cider vinegar, soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, chili powder and smoked paprika. Stir very well.
-Once porcini mushrooms are dry, chop them up into 1/2-inch thick strips. Place the sliced up porcini mushrooms in a large mixing bowl.
-Pour the marinade that you have earlier made into porcini mushrooms. Use a basting brush to help ensure that all porcini mushrooms are covered in it.
-Cover the mixing bowl with cling wrap and stash it in the refrigerator. Let it stay there for at least 12 hours. It’s for this reason why it is a good idea to marinate porcini mushrooms the night before.
-Once you have given porcini mushroom enough time to marinate, have your oven preheated to 50°C, which is equivalent to 120°F.
-Meanwhile, transfer marinated porcini mushrooms one by one onto a large baking tray. Make sure that no two pieces are overlapping for even cooking.
-Place the baking tray in the oven. Allow the oven door to stay slightly open.
-Usually, it will take around 10 hours before your homemade vegetarian mushroom jerky becomes chewy. But check your masterpiece every 30 minutes or so to make sure that it won’t end up bone dry.
-Once you are happy with your vegetarian mushroom jerky, transfer the baking tray onto a wire rack and let completely cool. Once cool, you may start consuming it. Stash remaining in a resealable plastic container and keep in the refrigerator for longevity.
