What is Tempeh?

Sunday night I made a dish out of my new cookbook (that I won over at Relishments!), How to Cook Everything Vegetarian.  

A lot of the recipes in here are easy and they don’t have strange ingredients that I have to search high and low for. So far I’ve made two recipes from this, the first being Wild Rice with Roasted Winter Squash. It came out amazing and lasted me a week’s worth of lunches!

Anyway, the second recipe I tried was Tempeh with Brown Rice and Spinach.

Whenever I mention tempeh, I get weird looks. What the heck is it?

Tempeh is made from slightly fermented soybeans and pressed into a patty, sort of like a veggie burger. It has an earthy flavor, unlike tofu which has no flavor, and can be used as a meat substitute in most recipes. It is also high in protein and calcium! The particular brand I bought has 22 grams of protein per serving! It is usually found in the produce section of the grocery store, next to the faux-meats and tofu.

My dish came out really tasty–almost risotto-like in consistency but instead I used brown rice and there is absolutely no dairy products in it. It is completely vegan! I also used mustard greens in place of spinach because I wanted to use mine up.

This is an awesome cookbook and I can’t wait to try out more recipes from it.