Use this anywhere you would normally have ground beef. Top pizza with it. Throw it in your spaghetti. Stuff a bell pepper with it. Or sprinkle on top of a baked potato with Velvegan Cheese sauce.
NOTE! This recipe requires a special ingredient: Benson’s no salt seasoning blend “Masterpiece.” You can still do without it, and add your own mix of herbs and spices, but this particular seasoning makes this “ground beef” taste positively delightful.
ALSO NOTE! It’s a tedious process that takes about an hour (start to finish). But worth it.
Vegan Ground Beef
Fool your friends. It's not actually beef.
Equipment
- Food processor
Ingredients
- 5 mushrooms
- 1 onion
- 1 cup nuts (1/2 cashews 1/2 walnuts is what I usually use, but feel free to mix it up and try other things)
- 1/2 cup oats
- 2 cloves of garlic
- 1 tsp liquid smoke
- 1 12 oz can of black beans (rinsed)
- 4 tbsp Benon's Masterpiece
- Salt to taste (I like to use a dash of Kirkland's Garlic Herb blend from Costco)
Instructions
- Chop mushrooms and onion and cook on the stove-top till cooked through and onions begin to caramelize.
- Blend nuts and oats in a food processor till thoroughly chopped.
- Add cooked mushrooms, onion, liquid smoke, garlic, and Masterpiece and blend (here’s where you’ll need a spoon and occasionally stir the mixture by hand to help the food processor out)
- Add beans last and blend till thoroughly mixed (This takes lot of stopping and starting to spoon the sides and mix a little by hand). Salt to taste.
- Transfer mixture to the stove top and mash into a large saucepan. Cook on medium-high heat.
- Here’s where it gets tedious. At first the mixture will be very sticky and wet. Stay with it. Let the mixture cook on one side, then flip and cook the other side. Then mix it together, smash it down again, and repeat.
- Eventually it will become less sticky (aka more dry) and here’s where you can start to “stab” at it with your spatula and make little chunks. Once the mixture hits this point, let it cook for a few more minutes, stabbing and moving your “ground beef” so it doesn’t burn.
- Remove from heat and serve over any and everything.