Hello all,
I’m entertaining a bunch of friends and making a big pot of chili, only most of them are vegetarians so I’m adapting my recipe to suit them. I have done this before, substituting a soy product that looks like crumbly ground beef that you can buy in the frozen food case–Morningstar Farms makes one, and Boca Burger does too. It always comes out well, and my fellow carnivores often don’t notice the difference! But that stuff is expensive, and you don’t get very much in a package either.
So today I went to my local Wild Oats market and got two pounds of dry TVP (textured vegetable protein, right?) from their bulk bin. It cost about the same to get two pounds of that stuff as 12 ounces of the frozen stuff. Now what do I do with it? Do I have to reconstitute it in water, or just throw it into my chili mixture dry? I’d hate to ruin a big batch of chili, but this stuff didn’t come with preparation directions. What’s a meat-eater to do?
I never reconstitute TVP before adding it to stuff; it usually just sucks up the water of what I’m cooking. I usually have to add a little extra water tho’. Word of warning, it doesn’t really taste much like the Morning Star or Boca Burger crumbles. Those products have stuff added to them to make them taste more beef-like. TVP doesn’t really taste like anything. I occasionally use it to add a little extra protein without altering the flavor of whatever I’m cooking (I used to add handfuls when I was a poor student and lived Rice-a-roni). But when I make chili, I use the faux burger crumbles.
Thank you! I figured I would try it this time and see what happens, but I feel better after reading your post. I try to do a nice smoky/tangy chili with bell, jalapeno, and chipotle peppers, Vidalia onions, tomatoes, beans, a bottle of beer, a bit of chocolate, and various herbs and spices. Hopefully all those flavors will be enough, and the TVP will just add texture and mass to it.
I’m a vegetarian who’s used both dry TVP and frozen “veggie burger” crumbled bits. For chili, especially if you’re going to be cooking it for a decent amount of time, you don’t have to reconstitute the dry TVP. The dry stuff isn’t always pre-flavored (unlike the frozen burger crumbles), but with something as flavorful as chili that shouldn’t be an issue. When it’s cooked, the TVP will be little chewy bits, kind of like the very tiny pieces of ground beef after it’s cooked.