Vegan Pizza with Jalapeño Barbecue Tempeh!

Since it's October and I absolutely love Halloween and all things related to horror, I decided that I wanted to experiment and create my own Frankenstein vegan dish. What resulted was a delicious vegan pizza that filled our bellies.

You may be asking yourself, "What the heck is tempeh?" Tempeh is a food product that originated in Indonesia. It is a soy product that is made through a natural culturing and controlled fermentation process that binds soybeans together. It is often times used as a meat substitute for vegetarian and vegan dishes, giving whatever dish it is added to that "filling" feeling.

The pizza was actually pretty easy to make. Suzanne was in charge of the pizza sauce and dough (she found a nice recipe online that called for wheat flour and other vegan ingredients).

I was responsible for cooking the tempeh and preparing the "cheese." For the tempeh, I steamed it for about 10 minutes by pouring some water in a pan, placing the sliced tempeh in the pan, and covering it.

(When you steam the tempeh you are making it easier for it to absorb the spices and other flavors that you cook it with.)

When the tempeh was done, I drained it, put it back into the pan, and poured in the jalapeño barbecue sauce I had purchased. I also added some sautéed red onions for additional flavor. I cooked this all together for about 10 minutes - until everything was heated throughout.

When the tempeh and onions were done, we covered the dough with Suzanne's rocking sauce, spread out the barbecued tempeh and onions, and then topped it off with our "cheese." For the cheese, we used a product called Teese, a soy based cheese product that resembles mozzarella. We placed the pizza in the oven for 15 minutes at 425 degrees. When the 15 minutes were up, we cranked up the heat to 450 degrees for 3 minutes (as recommend on the Teese packaging) to get the Teese to melt even more.

Overall, we thought the pizza was delicious. I thought that the tempeh had some great flavor but the texture was something to get used to for me. The more I ate, the more I enjoyed it. While the Teese tasted good on the pizza, one of its ingredients was coconut oil, which was very present in its flavor. Our final consensus was that we would probably omit the Teese the next time we make the pizza. Like I said, it still tasted good, but the coconut flavor just didn't really jive with us on that particular pizza.

All in all, the Frankenstein vegan pizza was a success!

-Bearded Vegan