Tempeh Bacon*
I honestly never thought this would happen!
Sunday mornings we often treat ourselves to homemade buttermilk pancakes. In the past, we would also have bacon with this and even own three different bacon flatteners to minimize our fat intake.
Over a year ago, we switched the bacon out for chicken breakfast sausage and this morning, I tried tempeh “bacon” for this first time. Yes, this is the thing I thought would never happen.
Tempeh is a soy-based product that’s made from fermented soybeans.
The pros of tempeh:
It’s a good plant-based source of protein and it’s lower in calories and saturated fats than most animal proteins.
Tempeh contains B Vitamins, iron, calcium and fiber.
There are gut-healthy probiotics in tempeh.
The cons of tempeh:
It’s a genetically modified food. The soybeans are fermented and turned into other “foods”.
Tempeh bacon is high in sodium. One serving is approximately 1/2 of the daily recommended sodium intake for an average woman (720 mg.)
It will never taste the same as pork bacon.
Given the pros and cons, here’s what I really thought of it. It looked a little bit gross when I took it out of the package, but not terribly so.
I cooked it on a dry griddle because I didn’t read the instructions on the package suggesting I use a little olive oil to crisp it up. When I tried a browned piece right off the griddle, it wasn’t bad. I will admit that I was expecting it to be much worse.
While I cooked the pancakes, I put the “bacon” under the griddle on a plate to keep it warm. This was a mistake! It got soggy and didn’t retain the heat. It then tasted really gross.
Lesson learned: keep the “bacon” in a fry pan or in the oven on low heat to stay warm until you’re ready to eat it. It really was OK when it was hot. Not so much when it got cold.
Action Steps:
If you’ve been thinking about cutting some calories and saturated fat out of your diet, consider trying a tempeh product. Lifeline is a company out of Turners Falls, MA that makes a variety of meat substitutes and many are found right in your local supermarket.
*The picture above is of generically cooked tempeh, rather than tempeh bacon, though the “bacon” didn’t look significantly different. It was just shaped into longer strips to look like bacon.
