Adherents of a healthy diet and animal advocates have long learned to do without meat products, creating dishes that are similar in taste to vegetable products. A striking example of this is sunflower seeds, from which they prepare not only mayonnaise, the basis for the cake, but even raw sausage.
The recipe for pea sausages has been wandering around the Internet for a long time, but many skeptical people bypass it, believing that there is nothing to replace meat in them - taste will still give a substitute. Those who accidentally managed to try vegan sausage from peas know that this opinion is erroneous: it is really difficult to distinguish from ordinary doctor's sausage, which is often used to prepare various salads. Usually, chickpea or pea flour is used in the sausage recipe, but sometimes it’s just mashed from boiled legumes, as well as flakes and chopped (chopped into small pieces) of them.
Composition: ingredients and proportions
In the original vegan recipe, agar-agar is used to give the sausage elasticity, but if eating animal products is not essential, then you can use ordinary gelatin. All that is needed by prescription in pea sausage:
- one and a half glasses of water;
- 1/2 tbsp. pea flour;
- some raw red beets for juice;
- 10 grams of agar-agar;
- three cloves of garlic;
- 1/2 tsp. nutmeg and coriander;
- 1 tsp. salt and black allspice;
- 25 grams of odorless vegetable oil.
Stage one: preparation
The first step is to decide what will be the form for the future pea sausage, since the mass from which it will be prepared is somewhat liquid in the warm form. It is convenient to use a regular plastic bottle with a narrow top with a neck cut off, some use wide glasses for cocktails or other similar containers. The agar must be soaked in a small amount of water several hours before the sausage begins to cook, because it should swell well.
In a small saucepan, mix pea flour and water, adding it a little, so that it is convenient to stir the lumps: they should not be. Put the saucepan in a water bath and after the mass boils, boil for about ten minutes, stirring constantly: the mass will thicken and may burn. Peel the beets and grate on the finest grater, and then squeeze the juice from the resulting mass through a piece of gauze tissue: about 1 tbsp will be needed in total. l freshly squeezed juice. Warm lean oil in a frying pan with spices and garlic crushed in a press until a characteristic smell of spices appears. Then send them to the pea mass, which has already reached the condition.
What's next?
When the flour boils the right time, add agar to it and boil for another two to three minutes, and then remove it from the heat. Add beetroot juice and mix thoroughly using a blender.
The mass should be a perfect homogeneous consistency, so no need to spare time. Next, we form pea sausage: we fill the finished mashed potatoes in a plastic form, making sure that air bubbles that spoil the uniform structure of the product do not come across. To do this, you can lightly tap the bottle with your hand or simply press pea puree with a spoon, squeezing the air. To level the top, tighten with cling film and send the mold in the refrigerator for several hours.
It is better when the workpiece stays there for at least six to eight hours, then the aroma of spices will open as much as possible, giving the sausage the necessary aroma and flavor.
Whole pea variety
Not everyone succeeds in acquiring pea flour for sausage, so ordinary grits can be used as a simple option, because in each supermarket peas are sold in the form of halves or even crushed into pieces. With such a main ingredient, the proportions for cooking sausage from peas will be as follows:
- 300 grams of pea groats (whole is better not to use, boil too long).
- 1 tbsp. l freshly squeezed beetroot juice to give a pink touch to the product.
- 2/3 tsp. grated nutmeg and coriander. It is these spices in combination with garlic that give pea sausage a “meat” taste.
- 3-4 cloves of garlic.
- 1 tsp without a hill of black pepper and as much salt.
- 1 tbsp. l vegetable oil.
- 3.5 tbsp. water.
- An incomplete tablespoon of gelatin soaked in 150 ml of cold water.
Step cooking
Peas should first be soaked in a large amount of water, preferably at night, so that it swells well. If crushed beans are used, the soaking time can be reduced to 4 hours.
Next, the beans are washed under running water, filled with clean water, according to the recipe, and boiled over low heat until porridge. It is sometimes important to stir the contents of the pan, as sometimes boiling peas stick to the bottom. When the mass is well digested, add swollen gelatin to it. Turn off the fire of the stove, knead the workpiece until the gelling substance is completely dissolved, and then add the oil heated with spices and garlic, salt and beet juice to it, beat thoroughly with a blender until smooth. Move the mass into a plastic mold, tamp with a spoon and send to the refrigerator for storage. After a few hours, you can taste the vegan sausage.
Reviews of meat-eaters about the finished product
If you show the inhabitants a recipe with a photo of pea sausage, then they unanimously say that this is a hoax: in the photo there is an ordinary boiled sausage, and it is impossible to make a product of such a texture from peas. But what will their surprise be like if you immediately present the finished product by cutting it into slices.
Many vegans conducted interesting experiments on their meat-eating friends several times: they gave them a taste of pea sausage without warning what it was from, and in response they received a surprised question: “Have you started to eat meat?” When it is mentioned that sausage is made of peas, there is no limit to the surprise of tasters, because it really does not differ much from the original. The recipe immediately goes like hot cakes and continues to spread with amazing speed. The vegans themselves suggest that if you cook such sausage not from peas, but from chickpea flour, it turns out even tastier, since peas have a harsh taste, which chickpeas and flour do not have.