Who knows about cooking with tempeh? I was going to try to make vegetarian chili

[rhett o rick]

and try tempeh for the first time. However, my groc store only had, tempeh that says it's marinated (must be soy sauce from the ingredients). I am afraid that the soy sauce may not work well with chili seasonings. Any help appreciated.

[Warpy]

1. I like the unflavored stuff better, myself

Your best bet for this stuff is to crumble it and fry it with the onions and garlic, then build your chili on top of it. Keep tasting it. Chances are the soy sauce will be pretty subtle and your chili won't taste weird. Tempeh itself has little flavor.

My own veggie chili was bean based but I usually threw in some bulgur wheat for bite. People swore they were eating meat, it was weird.

And don't get me started on food companies that "improve" good, basic foodstuffs by "enhancing" the flavor with shit you don't want in your recipes.

[rhett o rick]

2. Thanks for the tips. I will have to try bulgar in my chili some time. I eat is some times for

breakfast. I saw a recipe for using tempeh in chili and they pre-cooked the tempeh by boiling. That might dilute the soy sauce marinade. I would prefer to fry as long as the soy sauce doesn't dominate the taste.

[Warpy]

4. You're right, boiling might work better to dilute the soy

but my best guess says you're going to have to balance the flavors a little differently to cope with it because it's not going to go away completely.

Tempeh is your basic moldy soybean, the white mycelium holding the whole thing together being what traps the marinade and makes it so hard to get rid of completely.

One way I loved it is sliced on the diagonal and seasoned with a tiny amount of liquid smoke, then pan fried. It made for a great fake BLT.

[rhett o rick]

6. I am anxious to try it. We are slowly moving away from meat. Rarely eat beef.

I do have to have my corned beef once a year. So we are always looking for ways of getting our protein.

[Warpy]

7. I eat it twice a year

I crave it when it gets cold in the fall and remind myself why I don't eat it as a main event. I also do a vat of Bolognese sauce and freeze it, spaghetti and sauce you can stand a spoon in being one of my favorite I-don't-wanna-cook meals.

Tempeh and seitan are two really good transition foods, the seitan fooling even meat eaters when they're eating it in a spicy sauce. The latter is easy to make at home. The former should be left to experts with clean, temperature controlled commercial growing units. Homemade tempeh can go very, very wrong.

Try a good health food/whole food store, they usually have several varieties One I particularly like uses chickpeas, it's very chicken-y.

IMO, soybeans are at their best when fermented, like a lot of stuff we eat. I do love tofu, though.

[rhett o rick]

8. I made my chili and used the tempeh and it worked out very good. I boiled the tempeh, drained it

and added it to the chili near the end of the process. It helped thicken up the chili. I made cornmeal waffles and put the chili over it. Very good. Thanks for the help.

[Blue Owl]

3. Last time I tried it I had a tempeh tantrum

n/t

[rhett o rick]

5. In Arizona? nm