Vegan Bangers and Colcannon

by VIVIAN GRANT FARRELL

Colcannon and bangers together or apart are heavenly, and wonderful fare for St. Patrick’s Day. Easy to cook vegan as well.

Colcannon is mash (mashed potatoes) and cooked (boiled) cabbage mashed up together with a bit of salt and pepper. Very Irish. No recipe required on the mashed spuds, right?

Bangers is a nickname for sausages. If you grew up or spent any time at all in the UK or Eire, you will mostly likely have had bangers and mash. Bangers and colcannon is even more heavenly. Give them a try!

Vegan Bangers

Josephine Watmore’s recipe for vegan bangers was published some years ago on One Green Planet.

She introduces her post with:

There are loads of this style of steamed seitan sausage recipes floating around, and they really are my favorite way to make vegan bangers. For this recipe I changed the herbs and seasonings to make them reminisant of my old favorite — Lincolnshire sausages. These are ideal for sausage sandwiches, added to a vegan fry up or as classic bangers and mash with a rich onion gravy. I usually double the recipe when making these and freeze a bunch, that way I always have some on hand and they can be cooked directly from frozen. I sometimes think freezing them actually makes the texture even better.”

Serves

Ingredients

2¼ cups vital wheat gluten flour
½ cup nutritional yeast*
¼ cup chickpea flour
2 Tbsp vegetable stock powder
1 Tbsp garlic powder
2 tsp salt
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
½ tsp white pepper
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
½ tsp ginger powder
4 tsp dried sage or 8 fresh sage leave finely chopped
⅛ tsp allspice
2¼ cool water
2 Tbsp soy sauce
2 Tbsp olive oil

* I am not a fan of nutritional yeast and certainly did not want a whole half cup of it in anything I made, so left it out. Not so good. I remade them with 1/4 cup nutritional yeast (while pinching my nose) and used 2 1/2 Tbs of soy sauce instead of just 2. Voila! Amazingly I could not taste the nutritional yeast, even when I kept expecting to eventually. You can replace nutritional yeast in a recipe with miso or soy sauce, but that is too much sodium.

Other than the above, I recommend you stick straight to the recipe. If you don’t mind nutritional yeast, you are home free.

Oh. You will need aluminum foil, scissors and a steamer. Once you get set up, these are very easy to make.

Preparation

To make the dough, mix all the dry ingredients together in a large bowl, and all the wet ingredients in a separate bowl, then pour the wet into the dry and mix. You can use a wooden spoon for this, but I find it easier to use your hands. Mix until well combined and there are no dry patches left. Add a few more tablespoons of water if needed. Knead dough for about a minute, and set aside.
Next cut yourself 12 strips of foil approximately 9 inches x 6 inches. Take about ½ cup of dough and place in a log shape across a piece of foil. Then fold the edge of foil over the dough and roll up. Twist the ends of each log to secure each sausage. Repeat this on a new piece of foil until all the dough is used up, usually makes around 12 sausages.
Place sausages in a steamer, and steam for 1 hour. By this time they should have firmed up. Let cool slightly before unwrapping from the foil.
They can now be cooked however you desire, or place them in the fridge for later (or the freezer for even later). You can grill them, oven them, BBQ them, fry them. Cook until crispy and dark brown on the outside and hot all the way through.

Look what is coming now. Oh, yes!

Colcannon

Check out the Colcannon recipe by Healthy Slow Cooking (pictured above) who states, “The Cruciferous Colcannon is a mash of cabbage, kale, cauliflower, and broccoli. It’s naturally gluten-free and soy-free. Make it oil-free by water sautéing instead of using the oil.” That’s it, pictured above.

Back in March 2017, I posted a Colcannon recipe here on Tuesday’s Horse. Hop on over there for that recipe. There’s also a recipe link to Vegan Chocolate Stout Cupcakes with Irish Cream Frosting as well, also from One Green Planet.

Guinness

By the way Guinness is vegan. Read about it here.

FEATURED IMAGE: NEW YORK, NY — Members of the County Carlow Association ride horses as they march along 5th Avenue during the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade, March 17, 2017 in New York City. The New York City St. Patrick’s Day parade, dating back to 1762, is the world’s largest St. Patrick’s Day celebration. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)