Recipe: Vegan Salisbury Steaks (Nut Free)

 

Of all the things I've personally veganized, I may be proudest of this Salisbury steak. Sure, there are those who want to veganize a salmon filet or make other more highbrow foods (and I love that they've given me recipes to do that!), but there's something so deeply comforting about a hamburger-style steak swimming in gravy. This is homey food. It's also cheap food, relying primarily on wheat gluten, oatmeal, TVP, and veggies, though I don't know exactly what it would cost you to make it because it's entirely possible you won't have all the ingredients on hand. Still, nothing in this is a particularly pricey item, and you may have most of it around anyway. (I know it's a long list of condiments, but you only use a bit of each one.)

There's an irony in veganizing Salisbury steak. Dr. James H. Salisbury would probably roll over in his grave, since he developed the dish to promote a meat-based diet (a precursor of today's "carnivores," I suppose). His recipe didn't involve gravy, either, and he wasn't exclusively promoting a hamburger-style steak. He was just into steak. In his book, The Relation of Alimentation and Disease, he even suggested that people snack between steak meals with more steak--steak five times per day. He didn't allow much else in the diet but coffee and tea, though he did allow a few condiments and celery "as a relish."

America has long since moved beyond Dr. Salisbury, so now you'll expect, with the name "Salisbury steak," to get a hamburger steak in a deep brown gravy, in spite of his ideas. My own consists of homemade TVP and wheat gluten-based hamburger steaks in a tomato mushroom gravy, though if you're not feeling up to making the steaks themselves, or you haven't started early enough (these don't require that much hands-on time but you will need to start them several hours ahead), you can just slice a cooked Beyond Burger horizontally and drench that in the gravy. It'll still be good.

Go on, you know you want some!

This recipe was developed through experimenting with other recipes I found for similar things, though I could not find a vegan Salisbury steak recipe I liked, so I made my own. This recipe was most inspired by this vegan recipe for hamburger steak and this non-vegan recipe for Salisbury steak with mushroom onion gravy. 

I'm not making enough for an army here so I am giving you a recipe that will make three steaks. I realize it's strange to have a recipe that makes an odd number of servings, but that's the way I have found it works best for me personally. You can double this recipe, though, so long as you have a steamer and a skillet big enough to accommodate six steaks.

Vegan Salisbury Steaks with Tomato Mushroom Gravy
Serves 3

For the steaks:

3 1/2 tablespoons + 5 teaspoons water, divided
1/4 teaspoon Marmite
1/8 teaspoon gravy browning
6 tablespoons TVP
1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil
1/3 cup finely chopped onion
6 tablespoons finely chopped mushrooms
2 tablespoons finely chopped bell pepper (any color)
1 1/2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 tablespoon barbecue sauce
1/4 teaspoon vegan Worcestershire sauce
2 tablespoons oat flour (you can blitz oatmeal in a food processor to make your own oat flour)
2 1/2 teaspoons nutritional yeast
1/2 cup wheat gluten

For the gravy:

1 tablespoon vegan butter
1/2 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 medium onion, sliced
4-5 mushrooms, sliced
1 tablespoon tomato paste
2 tablespoons flour
1 2/3 cup vegan beef-style broth (I make mine with Better than Bouillon No Beef stock concentrate) or vegetable broth
1/3 cup red wine
Black pepper to taste


Step One: Make the steaks

Mix your 3 1/2 tablespoons water, Marmite, and gravy browning in a small saucepan. Bring to boil and turn off heat. Stir in TVP, cover, and set aside for 15 minutes.

Heat oil in a skillet. Cook finely chopped onions, mushrooms, and peppers for about 10 minutes or until softened and the mushrooms have started giving off their liquid.

Put the rehydrated TVP and vegetables in a bowl along with soy sauce, tomato paste, barbecue sauce, Worcestershire sauce, and 5 teaspoons of water. Mix well, then add oat flour and nutritional yeast, and stir again. Finally, add wheat gluten and mix it in. It will seem dry, but keep going and you'll end up with a sticky mass that will hold together a bit.

Divide your mixture into three equal parts. Shape these parts into thin oval patties. Wrap the patties in parchment paper, then in aluminum foil. Ensure the bundles are secured tightly, then steam in a steamer basket for 40 minutes, turning halfway through. If your steaks are more than one layer deep, also rearrange them so the ones on top are on the bottom for the second half of cooking time.

Remove steak bundles from the steamer basket and allow to cool to room temperature, then refrigerate until ready to make your gravy. Ideally, they'll be refrigerated long enough to fully chill (at least a few hours), which improves the texture of the final dish.

Step Two: Make the gravy

Unwrap steak bundles. Melt butter with olive oil in a skillet over medium heat. Brown the steaks in this butter and oil mixture, about 2-3 minutes on each side. Remove the steaks and transfer to a plate.

In the remaining fat, cook onions until translucent, then add mushrooms and brown them. When the veggies are about done, add tomato paste and mix well, about a minute or two, until it darkens a little. Add flour and whisk in and cook. After the flour loses its raw whiteness, slowly add the broth and wine a little bit a at a time, whisking well after each addition.

Simmer this mixture, stirring occasionally, for about 5 minutes. It should start to thicken, but will still be thinner than you'll want it to be in the end. Add the steaks and cover them in gravy. Simmer the steaks in the gravy over medium-low heat for about 15 minutes.

Serve with mashed potatoes, noodles, or rice and veggies of your choice. Enjoy!