Vegan Tourtiere
Let's start with what a Tourtiere is! Tourtiere is actually a Canadian dish that originated from Quebec! It's straight up a meat pie, that's usually made with pork and/or beef...yuck! I don't recall ever trying a Tourtiere before I became vegan, so the first time I made the vegan version I was a little unsure what I was doing. Luckily, I had access so some pretty great non-vegan chefs to give my tests a try and tell me if I was on the right track. I was very excited to see all of your suggestions for this as a Holiday recipe so decided to write it down for you all!
I wanted to get it as close to the real deal as I could, so I chose to use Textured Vegetable Protein (TVP). TVP is super cheap, can be found just about anywhere and it very easy to work with. It's essentially a dehydrated soy product, made from soy flour. It's very high in protein and fiber, it's naturally gluten free and works great when making meat substitutes. Because it's a dry, grain-like product, it has to be rehydrated when used.
In this recipe, I use boiling water from a kettle to rehydrate it, but you can also microwave it instead with the liquid and the tvp together, covered with plastic wrap in a glass bowl for about 5 minutes.
The filling of this pie is naturally gluten free, so if you want am entirely gluten free pie, you'll just need to get or make yourself a gluten free pie crust! If you want your pie to be nut-free, feel free to swap out the pecans for pumpkin seeds!
Make your own pie crust, use the crust recipe from my Holiday Ecookbook, or heck, buy yourself a store-bought one!
Let's get to the pie!
Vegan Tourtiere
Prep time 20 minutes
Cook time 10 minutes + 1 hour
Serves 6-8 slices / 1 deep dish pie
Ingredients
-1 bottom and top pie crust *deep dish pie plate required
-3 cups of Textured Vegetable Protein (TVP)
-1/4 cup of Braggs soy sauce (or any regular soy sauce)
-2 cups of boiling water
-1 medium white or yellow potato, roughly chopped into chunks
-1 cup of raw pecans (or roasted will work fine)
-2 TBSP of vegan butter
-1 medium onion, diced
- 2 cloves of garlic, peeled and minced
-1 1/2 cups of vegetable stock
-1 TBSP of lemon juice
-1/4 tsp of liquid smoke
-1 TBSP of molasses (fancy or blackstrap)
-1/2 tsp of sea salt
-1/4 tsp of cloves
-1/4 tsp of ground nutmeg
-1/2 tsp of ground pepper
-1/2 tsp of ground cinnamon
-1/2 tsp of ground sage
Instructions
- First, pour the TVP into a medium size glass bowl. Pour the soy sauce and the boiling water over top, stir then cover with saran wrap and let sit for 5 minutes
- In a food processor, add the potato chunks in. Process on low until the potato is in pea size bits. Then, add in the pecans, process again until the pecans are in pea size bits as well. You can leave them in your food processor until we're ready to use them
-Preheat the oven to 350 F
-In a large pan, melt the butter on medium heat, then add the onions and cook until soft. Add the minced garlic and cook 1 minute
-Add the TVP and the pecan/potato mixture both to the onions and garlic in the pan. Pour in the vegetable stock and add all of the spices, liquid smoke, molasses and lemon juice.
-Let the mixture cook for an additional 5 minutes, stirring often to avoid burning. There should still be moisture in the mixture so you don't need to cook it all off.
-Turn the heat off and let the mixture cool off for about minutes
-Then, you can go ahead and add the mixture into your bottom crust - use a *deep dish* pie plate and crust. There's a lot of filling for this pie so a non deep dish might not fit it all in. If you don't have a deep dish, you could use a regular one and just eat the leftover filling ;)
-Using a fork, firmly press the filling down so it's packed in well
-Cover the filling with your top crust ad seal the edges well. Using a sharp knife, slice 3-4 slits int eh top of the crust to allow some steam out. Put the tourtiere on the middle rack in the oven and bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour, or until the crust is golden on top. If the crust is browning quicker than the filling is heating up, just cover it with tinfoil
-Let cool for 5 minutes before cutting in!
-ENJOY!
This tourtiere looks amazing! Since we've polished off all the delicious apple pie from your cookbook, our pie plate is free and we'll be making this very soon! Yum!