I’ve been working on an alternative to Beyond Meat Breakfast Sausage, which I love but is a little pricey and sometimes hard to find. We try to avoid processed foods, so a homemade version checks many boxes. This fantastic recipe by Michaela Vais at ElaVegan based on walnuts, beans and oats got us most of the way there — the consistency and texture are perfect, but the taste was just a little too bland for us. Our palates have grown accustomed to much spicier cooking. So, I revved up the spices a lot. Maybe I doubled them. 🙂 I added Sriracha and nutritional yeast flakes. I’ve added mushroom seasoning or mushrooms a few times. I switched from white beans to pinto beans.

After the first time, I stopped mixing the chia seed binder separately. It’s an AMAZING binder, but I didn’t enjoy incorporating the chia cement into the rest of the mix. Skipping the outer foil wrap when steaming seemed to make no difference. Dry sautéing the beans before mashing them worked well as an alternative to baking them. Sautéeing the cooked links with a touch of vegan butter, maple syrup and Sriracha make them brown, crispy and delicious.

Photo by Melissa Di Rocco on Unsplash