Fraught with a variety of vibrant spices, flavored with the meaty char of juicy roasted red peppers, and appropriately crumbly without being too crunchy, these pecan and roasted red pepper vegan chorizo crumbles are my go-to meal when I need a bite to eat that is quick, protein-packed, and as easily paired with a salad as with a taco shell. Once you make these amazing vegan chorizo crumbles, you’ll never need to buy any pre-made taco meat from the store again!
“After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one’s own relations.”
– Oscar Wilde
Deus Ex Taco Night
If there’s one meal that has a tendency to surface out of nowhere and always save the day, it’s tacos, or some variation thereof.
Tacos are an incredibly versatile and easily customizable food thing that really only requires very few core ingredients to be satisfying: the taco, the meat, some fresh veg.
Ultimately, tacos can be loosely interpreted or deconstructed, and so naturally manifest in many different forms, such as taco soup, taco salad, taco casserole, taco lasagne..
And because of this, when the need for tacos should inevitably arise, it’s helpful to have a quick and easy go-to taco filling to accompany your particular iteration of taco. That’s where this vegan chorizo crumble comes in: to provide you that essential meaty filling for all your taco variations and all your taco needs.
“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”
– J.R.R. Tolkien
Vegan Chorizo Crumbles: What You’ll Need
I love this recipe so much, and one of the reasons is because the minimal effort it takes to make is disproportionate to the maximum amount of deliciousness and satisfaction derived from the thing itself. Plus, it’s a versatile recipe, as you can use these vegan chorizo crumbles any way that you would any other kind of taco meat.
Inspired by Isa Moskowitz – one of the O.G. vegan chefs – from her cookbook I Can Cook Vegan, I decided to create my own version of vegan chorizo crumbles using some combination of nuts, spices, and meaty vegetable.
The composition of this recipe is simple, and there aren’t many steps or convoluted instructions to follow. All you have to do is gently pulse the pecans, spices, and eventually red pepper in a food processor, and then bake the vegan chorizo crumbles for a couple minutes.
Basically, the only requirements that you’ll need for these vegan chorizo crumbles are as follows:
- Pecan halves
- Sun-dried Tomatoes & Roasted Red Peppers
- Spices
- Food Processor
- Lined Baking Sheet and Oven
“There is no love sincerer than the love of food.”
– George Bernard Shaw
Coconut Yogurt: A Creamy Binder
One of the discoveries by Isa Moskowitz, who makes a walnut and onion chorizo, was to add a dollop of unsweetened coconut yogurt alongside the vegan chorizo crumbles, as a way of binding the taco meat together, and really upping the overall unctuousness of it.
Personally, I love the tart taste and velvety texture of unsweetened and plain coconut yogurt, especially alongside these vegan chorizo crumbles. However, these particular pecan and roasted red pepper crumbles can actually stand on their own without the need of a binding ingredient like yogurt; the roasted red pepper and red wine vinegar provide enough moisture to the meat crumble to the point where it can stick together through the bake without withering away into dust.
Even so, I would recommend that if you are going to make a taco salad, do go ahead and add a dollop of coconut yogurt anyways, simply because the smooth, tart creaminess is an excellent foil to the spicy meatiness of the vegan chorizo crumble.
If you’re not a fan of coconut yogurt, but want a binder for the crumbles, then you can also use a salsa of some sort.
Also, if you’re looking for another iteration of vegan taco meat, then look no further than this Tempeh Taco Meat!
“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.”
– Hippocrates
Pecans or Pecants
Maybe for some reason you have a lifelong grudge against the pecan, or even a moderate yet perplexing dislike of them. Perhaps you once ate a pecan pie that didn’t sit well with you, or an extended family members dog named Pecan chased you up a tree when you were a child. Or maybe you’re just allergic.
Whatever your particular vendetta against the pecan, know that you can use other nuts for these vegan chorizo crumbles. While I would suggest pecan first and foremost, you can also use the more humble, earthy walnut, too. Likewise, the pistachio is likely to work in this recipe as well, but the coloring of the taco meat might be strange and something to be eaten in low light.
One trick that I would usually suggest, regardless the nut you choose for this vegan taco meat recipe, is to buy the nuts in bulk rather than a prepackaged nut; however, due to the pandemic at the moment, I’m not sure if buy-in-bulk sections are in existence anymore. Alternatively, maybe you’ll be able to find unshelled or shelled nuts at a farmer’s market near you, too.
“Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.”
– Brain O’Driscoll
How To Make These Vegan Chorizo Crumbles Meaty!
There are some plant-based foods that have a naturally robust and full-bodied savory flavor, one that can adorn a dish that much needed kick of umami goodness.
For these vegan chorizo crumbles, the unctuous umami foods that’ll elevate this chorizo to the realms of super hearty robustness are sun-dried tomatoes and roasted red peppers.
Sun-dried Tomatoes
Firstly, sun-dried tomatoes are packed with an incredible amount of flavor, and will impart a wonderful acidity along with their meatiness. Not only are they great for giving this chorizo some body and bite, but they’re also helpful aesthetically, providing the pecan chorizo with that classic rusty red coloration.
When using sun-dried tomatoes from a jar, they’ll be submerged in a thick and slick oil. It is important to press the sun-dried tomato slices between a couple absorbable paper towels to remove the excess oil from the product. This will ensure you get the wonderful flavor and color, without the unnecessary oiliness.
Roasted Red Peppers
The other ingredient that imparts an amazing meatiness and subtle spice to the chorizo are the roasted red peppers, which too can be purchased in a jar already roasted. Like the sun-dried tomatoes, they will be submerged in a liquid of some sort, but you don’t have to press them dry, unlike the sun-dried tomatoes.
The key for using roasted red pepper in this recipe is to add them roughly chopped to the food processor after all the other chorizo ingredients have already been pulsed a couple times. This ensures that you still have decently sized pieces of roasted red pepper in your vegan chorizo crumbles, and a meatier texture overall.
“Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.”
– Mark Twain
There are few food things that I would recommend more than a quick, amazingly flavorful and stupendously versatile vegan chorizo crumble like this. It’s a perfectly meaty, healthy, and satisfying accompaniment to any taco-y dish that you can think of, and really a recipe that I personally return to time after time.
Meaty Pecan & Red Pepper Chorizo Crumbles
Equipment
- Food Processor
- Baking Sheet
Ingredients
- 2 ½ cups pecan halves
- 4 – 6 (about ⅓ – ½ cup) sun-dried tomatoes, pressed in paper towels to remove excess oil and then finely chopped
- 2 garlic cloves, minced
- 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
- 1 ½ teaspoons ground cumin
- ½ teaspoon smoked paprika
- ½ teaspoon chili powder
- ¼ teaspoon garlic powder
- ¼ teaspoon ground mustard
- ¼ – ½ teaspoon salt
- ⅛ teaspoon liquid smoke
- ½ cup roasted red peppers, roughly chopped and then lightly pulsed in the food processor
For the Taco Salad
- Some plain unsweetened coconut yogurt, or salsa of your choice (or both)
- Some romaine lettuce or spinach
- Some tomatoes
- Some avocado slices
- Some tortilla chips
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 325°F.
- Add all the ingredients except for the roasted red peppers to a food processor. Pulse a it couple times to incorporate everything together.
- Next, add the roasted red peppers, and pulse a few more times. You want the chorizo crumbles to be have a nice size – not too fine or powdery.
- Spread the chorizo out on a baking sheet, and then bake it for 12 – 13 minutes, flipping the meat about halfway through the bake.
- Serve the chorizo with plain, unsweetened coconut yogurt or salsa over a salad with all the fixings, or serve the taco meat in a taco or burrito. It's really up to you!
Video
Notes
Nutrition
If you enjoyed these super easy to make vegan chorizo crumbles, let me know @thatvegannephew or by leaving a comment and recipe rating before you go.
May you have good food in good company,
That Vegan Nephew
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Delicious! Thank you That Vegan Nephew!
I used this for taco ‘meat’ & added: A
onion powder, way more of the listed seasonings & water & I cooked in the oven for at least 10 minutes longer because the pecans were still very hard after the listed cook time.
Ooo – I’ll have to try that! This recipe does tend to produce a harder textured taco meat, but I like the idea of adding water to soften it while baking. Thanks for the feedback :^)