Vegan Coconut Bacon - Faken'Bacon

Vegan Bacon.

Yes please.

No soy.

I’m not sure how I managed to pull this one off, but these crispy little things are damn delicious. I’ve seen a bunch of recipes online for coconut bacon, but I don’t like using soy sauce, and I didn’t have any liquid smoke or sauces that other recipes called for.

My favourite meat to eat back when I was a meat-eater was bacon. It had to be crispy though, none of that soft wiggly stuff – it grossed me out. I also used to add hot sauce to bacon.

So last night, I decided to make something that would satisfy those random bacon cravings.

Coconut bacon. Coconut? Really? I’ve tried eggplant bacon at one of my favourite restaurants (Live Organic Food Bar in Toronto), and loved it. They made that stuff so delicious, that just thinking about it makes me feel like I can still taste it. I’ve tried tempeh bacon, and been sadly disappointed at the texture and flavour. So I’ve had both good and bad experience with faken-bacon.

Because the coconut shavings aren’t that big, this creates more of a smaller bacon, not quite bacon bits – but more like something you’d top a salad with, or mix into a grilled cheese sandwich (hello grilled-cheese and bacon!), or something you’d just snack on out of hand. After bringing it to work for some coworkers to try, the opinion is that the taste is good, and it reminds them of bacon chips rather than actual pieces of bacon – which I’m perfectly okay with! When I got the boyfriend to taste-test it, his response was “you have to give me more, I can’t taste it…”, and kept trying to get me to feed him more. So I’m taking that as a good sign!

On my own personal taste-test of this, I love this spice mixture. I definitely plan on making a larger batch of this stuff on the weekend, and experimenting with a few meals. (One being vegan grilled cheese and bacon sandwiches, and one being *hopefully* a maple bacon cupcake.)

[I just took a break in writing this to eat a bit of this vegan bacon, and now I can’t remember what I was going to type, so here’s the recipe.]

Vegan Coconut Bacon – Faken’Bacon

Ingredients:

• ½ cup coconut shavings
• 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil or coconut oil
• 1 generous tbsp agave nectar (replace with maple syrup if you want a hint of maple flavour)
• 1 generous tbsp garam masala
• 1 tsp turmeric
• 1 tsp smoked paprika
• 1 tsp spicy paprika
• ½ tsp cayenne pepper
• 1 tsp Montreal steak spice
• Some hot sauce of your choice (this is to taste. I used about 1 tbsp of Frank’s Red Hot Sauce, but this is fun to experiment with if you want different levels of hotness)

Method:

• Pre heat your oven to 350, and line a baking sheet with either tin foil or parchment paper
• Combine all ingredients in a bowl, and mix together until all of the coconut is covered in the tasty ingredients
• Spread everything on the lined baking sheet, as spread out as possible. Don’t overlap if you can avoid it!
• Bake for about 10 minutes
• Remove from the oven, stir it all around, and bake for another 5-10 minutes. Don’t over-cook it, and this time will depend on just how crispy you like your faken’bacon!
• Eat any way you like, and enjoy! : )