Before going plant-based, my grocery list nearly always included a pound of ground beef to have on hand for an easy dinner. Now, I make this vegan ground beef, and one batch makes the same amount as 3 pounds of ground beef, but all from vegetables and seeds! Let’s do this!
Note: This post was originally published in January of 2014, with the name “Vegetable Meat Substitute.” The name has changed, but the recipe remains the same as the original – with some helpful tips, new photos, and a new video added. Hope you enjoy!
Sometimes in life you just need the old standby, the go-to, the no-brainer. When it comes to cooking dinner, this vegan ground beef is my old faithful. For the longest time I called it “vegetable meat substitute”, which it literally is, but really I was using it specifically in place of ground beef. I wanted taco meat that tasted like the tacos I had growing up, but plant-based. I wanted spaghetti sauce with that meaty texture, but vegan. I wanted my veggie burger patty to have the texture of a “real” burger, not one that had whole black beans and recognizable chunks of green peppers. Just a note, the burger recipe is coming. It’s so close.
Anyway, out of that desire for familiar food that is truly good for me and for our earth, I concocted this mixture that is chock full of plants, is totally good for you, and yet when seasoned becomes so similar in texture and flavor to its carnivorous counterpart that many a meat-eater has been fooled in the past. And not by me, but by you, wonderful people who make the recipe and tell me about it. Sneaky devils, you are.
So what’s in this vegan ground beef anyway and how do I make it, you ask?
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