I was always intrigued by tempeh, but never found a recipe that sounds enticing enough to try it. It sounds to me like a super food: it is fermented, incredibly cheap and has a very decent amount of protein. So I was excited when I saw this recipe from Rainbow Plant Life: My new favorite way to serve tempeh. It is basically fried tempeh in a home made barbecue sauce. So I took that as an inspiration and tried the recipe with my own twist, using the barbecue sauce recipe from Laura in the Kitchen recipe).
Servings: 4
Cooking time: 30 min in the same pan (15 min if you do it in two pans)
Difficulty: easy
Ingredients
- 200 grams of tempeh
- oil for frying (I used sunflower oil)
Barbecue sauce (following Laura in the Kitchen recipe)
- oil for frying
- 1 small onion
- 2 garlic cloves
- 2 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar
- 1 tablespoon of brown sugar
- 150 ml of ketchup (I tend to use tomate frito)
- some water
- chili powder or flakes to taste
- 1 teaspoon of sweet paprika
- 1 teaspoon of smoked paprika
- salt and pepper
Directions
- Cut the tempeh in slices and then cut each slice into half.
- Fry it on medium fire with a bit of oil on each side for 5 min or until it gets a beautiful golden color.
- Set aside on a plate or paper towels.
- In the same pan (or you could have done this at the same time with frying the tempeh if you wanted it faster, in a second pan) add some more oil of your choice and add the thinly chopped onion. Fry it until it is transparent and very soft.
- You can add the two chopped garlic cloves for a few seconds.
- Add now the sugar, balsamic vinegar, chili flakes, smoked paprika and sweet paprika.
- You can pour in the tomate frito or ketchup with a bit of water, salt and pepper and let them simmer for 5-6 minutes to blend well.
- Add back in the tempeh and let them befriend for 2-3 min. And your protein meal is ready.
- You can serve it on your favorite side dish: I love it with brown rice, makes it taste nuttier and it goes very well with the slight chewiness of the tempeh. Add any toppings like edemame, pickled onion, mushrooms, herbs… I also like to serve it with buckwheat. Enjoy!
