Same!
9 Likes
Yeah, it’s also a gigantic pain in the ass to peel the chickpeas, we only do it if we want a super smooth hummus.
I should have been a bit clearer, we use canned chickpeas for dishes where we cook them further, but we use dried, soaked and cooked ones for dishes where they’re served cold, or are the primary ingredient, like hummus.
8 Likes
It doesn’t look like anyone replied to this.
I’m not all plant based all the time, I just enjoy a lot of plant based foods because they are yummy.
Jackfruit is amazing. I get a can, rinse it and shred, and heat with some kind of sauce or seasoning. The easiest thing is to shred the jackfruit and add barbecue sauce, and it’s a bit like pulled meat for sandwiches but it’s good to eat with a fork too. It could be any seasoning, really. Jackfruit is also great for tacos with some raw onion and cilantro. It would be fantastic in enchiladas.
It takes on the flavor of whatever you add to it really well, and has a nice little chew, but not at all tough.
I made a chili with jackfruit and white beans, and my SO asked if it was chicken, but we ate vegan that night!
10 Likes
Do you leave the seed pods in? They don’t bother me too much, but I’m curious.
6 Likes
Ooops–missed this. Sorry for the delay.
I buy fresh jackfruit from Asian grocery stores [in Austin there are several to pick from] and there is a learning curve. Fresh jackfruit is amazing. It was, I seem to recall, what “Juicy Fruit” gum flavor was maybe based on. Smelling a jackfruit for the incredible scent signal of ripeness, and the golden color, are only the start of the learning curve.
There is a mouthfeel to jackfruit that does resemble the semi-fibrousness of a slab of beef or pork.
If you have the luxury of getting a whole fresh jackfruit, it is fun for kids to help open it, figure out how to get the especially edible nodes out, work out the enormous seeds from the fruit, and mess around with the largest tree fruit on our planet.
10 Likes
We’ve been looking for a meat replacement for chicken tacos. The ones with peppers and onions as the main ingredient are good but the texture isn’t quite what we want. Maybe jackfruit would work. Especially if we could marinate a bunch and freeze into meal sizes
Does freezing it change the texture of fresh jackfruit?
6 Likes
Had it once (canned) as a “pork barbeque” substitute. The sauce was so good, you couldn’t tell. It was just there as a texture element to carry the sauce. Would do it again.
9 Likes
Have you tried making home made babaganoush? Similar recipe but use roasted eggplant instead of chickpeas.
7 Likes
I’ve been using beyond/impossible meat. Its got the texture and takes to seasoning well. But its pretty unnatural.
5 Likes
We’ve had pulled mushroom sandwiches. They were alright but the texture was a bit soft.
I want to buy jackfruit now
6 Likes
We haven’t done anything with beyond/impossible meat. The person who actually cooks has a dual goal of less meat and less processing. So he’s been trying to find recipes that use veg for texture.
I just kick him ideas and taste test
5 Likes
This pretty much reflects our goals as well. So much going on this year, I did not get garden in, but love cooking straight from the ground. I appreciate the idea of Beyond Meat and the like, but the amount of processing involved turns me off a lot. I have nut trees growing and can’t wait to get enough to see if I can work them into a veg cheese! Being 6b, I am a little limited in what nuts I can grow, but I have pecans, walnuts, almonds, filberts and chestnuts to play with. (Just a quick comment on that: Although chestnuts are technically nuts, culinarily and gastronomically, they are a lot closer to grains, being very carb heavy.) This year I finally got a chestnut harvest and have been experimenting with them. Maybe over the next couple years I can play with the others!
7 Likes
Well this doesn’t help much as far as replacing chicken, but everyone in the house really likes this:
(Free link)
It’s a bit better than the soy chorizo that Trader Joe’s sells - so you could just use that instead of preparing the tofu. (Turns out that the TJ’s is also gluten-free, which I didn’t remember, but that one of us needs.)
ETA:
The Beyond was better for hamburgers (we thought). Helpful hint: if you need to defrost it, don’t do it in the microwave, or it won’t hold together as a patty afterward. (Or maybe we were unlucky with this one package.) It’s great in a meat sauce for pasta (I’ve been using the simple Marcella Hazan recipe, then frying the Beyond with some onion, tomato paste, and berbere in a separate pan, then throwing it all together.)
But yeah, since it’s processed, I try not to eat it any more often than I would actual red meat.
That said, Beyond’s Italian sausage was great, especially since it’s GF which is difficult to find with veggie sausage.
7 Likes
I tried one of those at a burger place in Austin, Hopdoddy. It was too similar to beef for me as well as being squishy. I haven’t eaten beef in several decades. The smell and occasional accidental taste now makes me feel ill. The Person Who Cooks always runs the fans on high when he makes beef for himself and the little one.
Beyond/impossible meat definitely have their place. But our household philosophy is more to find delicious vegan/vegetarian alternatives rather than straight up replace meat.
I will be passing that tofu chorizo recipe to the Person Who Cooks! Thanks for the gift link 
9 Likes
Yes, there wasn’t any part of it that I felt like I needed to take out. But, I don’t recall seeing anything I’d call a seed pod. It was green jackfruit, is there a more ripe version with more seeds? The canned stuff is probably as different from fresh as any vegetable.
3 Likes
Interesting! Every can of immature jackfruit I’ve tried has had wedges that when separated contained immature seeds. They don’t shred like the rest of the “meat” and are slightly toothier. I’d love to find a brand that had less of them, if you know of one.
5 Likes
Trader Joe’s if I recall correctly. It’s also possible that I’m just more accepting of varying textures, and didn’t realize that some of the pieces were seeds.
4 Likes
I’ve eaten at a couple around D/FW, but not in Austin. I do eat some meat (as I’ve gone on before); the burgers there are very good but, my goodness, the chicken sandwiches are among the best I’ve had anywhere. Which is getting way off-topic. To bring this back into potentially useful (if not vegan) territory, I’m told that Hopdoddy’s gluten-free buns are the best around, i.e. they’re great whatever they happen to be made of, and not just as a GF approximation of a regular hamburger bun. We also found out that they’ll sell them, separately, for (I think) $1.50 or $2 apiece (but also that it’s good to call ahead & make sure they didn’t run out that day).
Ah! Now I just remembered that I did have a veggie burger at Hopdoddy’s, the first time I visited (this might’ve been 5 or more years ago). This was before I’d had Beyond/Impossible so I’m not sure whether it was vegan or not (or whether they still have them). I remember it being at least OK – my measure of a veggie burger is how good it tastes as-is, not how well it approximates a beef hamburger - because, before Beyond/Impossible, they really couldn’t IMO. (I sort of recall Hyde Park Grill in Austin also having a good veggie burger.)
Enjoy the chorizo!
5 Likes
Useful.
Note how he avoids cutting into the seed nodules or whatever they’re called.
8 Likes
And @j9c - thanks!
We had a can of jackfruit we found randomly, no fresh stuff available around here. The Mr. drained and squeezed it out then shredded it, sautéed in oil until well browned then poured over a sauce of soy, wine, and maybe some other things, cooked it down, then tossed with some tahini at the very end.
Delicious! Probably not as nice as the fresh stuff, but never having had either, it was great. I could definitely see people mistaking it for chicken in a chili.
Also, those things are HUGE! Can you imagine accidentally camping under one of those trees? Yikes.
10 Likes
