Veggie Sausages!!!

There’s not much fake meat I can eat, as almost all of it depends specifically on wheat gluten for its texture. We’ve just experimented with a great recipe, though, that’s yielded a yummy, firm sausage with a lot of flexibility of seasoning. I’m so excited!

We have an old blender. So to puree, I had to do one ingredient at a time. With a larger capacity food processor, you could mix the ingredients while also blending them all smooth. Pureeing is optional, if you’d rather have a chunkier texture.

We can’t wait to try other seasoning combinations for other dishes. This combination complemented our jambalaya recipe deliciously; Gabe was reminded a bit of the taste of breakfast sausage. I’m told these can be frozen cooked or uncooked.

Here are some cell pics I sent to Gabe as I experimented (these are steps 3 and 4):

Vegan Sausages, version 1 (makes about 12)

(adapted from a recipe found at the Vegan and Gluten Free Yahoogroup)

2 stalks celery, chopped
1 onion, chopped
2 tablespoons wheat-free soy sauce
½ cup water
2 cups cooked brown rice (this in the blender by itself gets rather gummy)
2 cups GF breadcrumbs (I used crumbs made from Whole Foods Flax Seed Bread, chopped fine in blender)
1/2 cup chopped walnuts, minced in blender
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon arrowroot
1 tsp sage
2 tsp sweet basil
1 tsp garlic powder
Tabasco sauce to taste
salt and pepper to taste
additional tbsps of flour

1. Simmer onions and celery in water and soy sauce until soft.
2. Add remainder of ingredients. Use hands to mix well. The consistency reminded me of ground beef.
3. I decided on a “wet hand” and a “flour hand”. With my dominant hand I rolled portions of the mixture to form sausages about 1 inch in diameter and about the length of my palm. I moistened that hand before each roll. With my other hand, I rolled the shaped sausages in a bit of flour and rolled it in my hand until there was a thin coat covering each sausage.
4. Fry in a little oil until golden. They will be slightly sticky when they are first put in oil; I held each sausage in the hot oil a few seconds to let the bottom surface cook a bit before leaving them in the pan.
5. Allow to dry on paper towels.