<< Back Biscuits and Gravy

Man, since giving up meat, one of the things that I totally miss is biscuits and gravy, especially after a night of hard drinking. Hell, I miss breakfast. You can't really go out for a great breakfast when you're vegan (unless you live in a town cool enough to do vegan brunch). You have to make it yourself, hangover be damned!

So we totally ripped off the biscuits from vegweb:

http://vegweb.com/index.php?topic=16632.0

Pretty much all of the gravy recipes we came across were based on using crumbles or sausage, then just adding flour, water, and pepper. We were aiming for a something less processed and more "from scratch" so we went with tempeh (emphasis on "less" processed). We've also been trying to reduce our intake of processed soy (fermenting is supposed to be okay, whence the tempeh) It was very tasty. The following is just for the gravy.

Biscuits and Gravy

• 1 cup water
• 1 cup non-dairy milk
• 1 cup thick roux
• 1/2 package tempeh
• 1 tbsp nutritional yeast
• LOTS of pepper
• 1⁄2 small - medium onion, diced
• cooking oil
• 3 shakes soy sauce / tamari

Cut or crumble the tempeh into small non-identical bits. If you just cube this, it seems really unnatural and makes you, the chef, seem a bit anal. Save that secret for when you cut the entirety of bites before you start eating. Observe:

In a skillet brown the onions, tempeh, oil (sunflower is a good high heat oil), and soy sauce/tamari. Every few minutes, stir the mixture up, so the tempeh gets browned evenly. Meanwhile, put about 1/4-1/2 cup flour (or potato starch, to rock this gluten free) in a cup and begin adding cold water while whisking with a fork. Keep adding water and mixing until the roux is about the consistency of cake batter.

Once the tempeh and onions are nicely browned, add in the water, non-dairy milk, then slowly whisk in the roux. Add in the nu yeast then pepper the living hell out of it. Add salt to taste, of course. Reduce heat to low and cover.