I want to make a bacon for vegetarians. No really.

I'm about to try my hand at a little simple charcuterie, making bacon for the first time. I got some pink salt from The Spice House, I've got a WSM, I know where I can get bellies. I'm thinking my annual holiday party might be bacon themed, for that matter.

I have friends who don't eat red meat, and a couple who are just plain vegetarians.
I figure I can do a couple duck breasts with a very bacon-like cure and smoke for the mammal-free.

But what to do for the meatless? I'm a real-food person, so TVP, tempeh, saitan all seem pretty heinous to me. Tofu is about as processed as I'll go, but I don't think tofu really works: I can't slice it thinly, it doesn't sear well, let alone render. Fresh cheese has more fat, but still won't slice. Avocado? No. Nut-cake? too processed.

I want something fatty, umami-laden, solid and able to be crisped. An olive oil-laced mushroom terrine could be smoked, sliced and seared, perhaps.

Anybody try something like this? Google is next, but I'm sure "vegetarian bacon" will bring up a lot of processed commercial TVP crap.

I don't know how it would work in a smoker, and it's not really bacon-like in texture, but since you mentioned cheese, I'm wondering if you've considered Halloumi. It's a cheese from Cypress. What makes it remarkable is that you can fry it and get it nice and golden and crispy on the outside, but it doesn't melt.

It's actually pretty uninteresting cheese until it's fried. But maybe you could smoke it and then fry it.

Search results that aren't stupid:
Eggplant bacon using bacon salt -- sounds promising
Carrot bacon really just deep-fried carrot slices, but could be seasoned to fit.
shiitake bacon -- King oysters might work better for bacon-shaped pieces
Provolone cheese -- I guess it's a frico, or would that freacon?
red bean and buckwheat - a little too processed for my goal

Okay, it's after midnight so I hope I'm forgiven, but some things just can't be done. Good vegetarian bacon sounds like an oxymoron. Do the bacon theme for the rest and figure out something wonderful for the vegetarians.

Maybe this is why I'm a vegetarian. Even though I'm from the south and grew up loving porcine intestines, both large, hog maw & small, chitterlings, I never liked bacon. That was always a no thank you. Now a well seasoned sausage patty was an entirely different matter.

What about seaweed? I mean, kombu is pretty close in flavor anyway...maybe if it's soaked and then deep fried it would approach the right texture? Maybe some of the other ones?

mbh wrote: Do the bacon theme for the rest and figure out something wonderful for the vegetarians.

This is what we did for our bacon tasting (http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?/to ... n-tasting/). But the bacon was the only meaty thing there-- all the accompaniments were veg-friendly, especially the mimosas.

Jen

Here's an eggplant/beet one that I think you could draw some inspiration from.
http://www.yumuniverse.com/2010/07/16/raw-or-baked-veggie-bacon/

A friend of mine who went to the CIA told me about the following recipe, she is a vegetarian and uses this at the restaurant she works in. I thought she was full of shitake (pun intended) so I gave it a try and the resemblance is remarkable.

Shitake Bacon

1 container of fresh shitake mushrooms
Olive oil
Sea Salt

Cut shitake's into even pieces and place in a bowl. Pour some olive oil and sprinkle with sea salt and spread out on a baking sheet. Bake at 400 and shake the pan every 10 minutes to wrestle the mushrooms around, bake until done at the consistency you prefer, about 1 hr.

Aren't Bac-O's vegetarian? Maybe you could press a a bunch together to make fake bacon strips...

Joel - saw this in this month's Food and Wine:

Parsnip Bacon

The eggplant bacon sounds the most promising, at least theoretically. You can slice it thin, salt/drain it to fry up crisp, and it will absorb whatever smoke element you want to imbue it with---smoked salt, liquid smoke, whatever. It won't have the chew of muscle, but it'l have crunch and smoke. And maybe if you play with different thicknesses of plank, and temp./time ratios for frying, you'll find an ideal that has both crunch at the edges, and chew in the middle.
Frankly, I'm enjoying just thinking about it, purely on it's own terms.

I haven't tried a vegebacon yet, but I'm progressing on realbacon: 5 1/4 lbs of belly just bought, I've got pink salt, time to make a rub and let it sit for a couple of weeks. Now to find a couple of duck breasts for the nottheotherwhitemeatbacon.