vegan Peking "meat" sticks

Sorry sorry I'm trying to delete it

Sometimes I keep recipes in my bookmarks manager for years without ever making them, a very common phenomenon, I think, possibly more common than making the recipes. This is one of those recipes, because for some reason I felt certain that I did not want to try to make the recipe without the addition of sweet bean paste, a thing that I felt equally certain I did not have. (Despite the fact that many people say that hoisin sauce is a completely adequate substitute.)

Well I was looking through my large bin of dried Chinese and Korean ingredients, and lo! I had sweet bean paste, and I just got a new bag of may wah’s vegan dried pork shreds, so it seemed like a perfect time to give this recipe a try.

This recipe is basically a “six of one half dozen of the other” sort of thing, pulling from the woks of life recipe and the one that had been languishing in my raindrop since July of 2021. It’s not completely either recipe, in part because I made it, you guessed it: vegan. It’s sort of got a Peking duck flavor profile (mainly from the bean paste) but a lot of what makes Peking duck Peking duck is the texture: crisp duck skin against rich fatty duck, eaten with a cucumber in a little pancake. So this won’t remind you of that at all.

Now, I’ve mentioned May Wah maybe dozens of times at this point, but the truth is, I never get tired of it. May Wah makes the perfect weeknight food (I love using their black pepper steak to make vegan beef and broccoli, or really anything else) and they also make a lot of Interesting Vegan Options that you don’t usually see (vegan lobster! vegan shrimp! vegan chicken legs!) and the last time I went in was right around Christmas and they gave me a huge (like door sized) calendar, so I’m basically on payroll now. I would happily do spon for them, but I digress. (May Wah call me)

These are sort of a weird one though. Their dried proteins can be a bit hit or miss (sorry! the shelf stable salmon was one of the worst things I have ever eaten other than like, any Kite Hill yogurt-style product), but these are really useful (high praise lol) and also good! Do they smell a bit like if sawdust was made of feet? yes, yes they do. But they don’t taste like that, and they take a marinade like no problem. They’re terrific with a Korean barbeque sauce in gimbap! (To me.)

This recipe is actually a pretty good demonstration of my vegan cooking ethos. Throughout the process of developing the recipe (making dinner on a Thursday night before my Korean class) my entire focus was on 1. balancing the flavors and 2. adding as much oil and fat as possible. Why? Well, obviously meat interacts differently with seasonings than not-meat does. They have different properties, and so recipes that are written for meat will necessarily work differently with not meat. Sometimes this really doesn’t matter (tofu tastes just as good with teriyaki sauce as anything else does) but something that has a very dense and savory flavor can become a bit off balance without meat to even it out.

I think that’s all sort of obvious, so instead I want to focus on something that feels equally obvious, but can get neglected in a lot of western vegan cooking which is fat. I love tofu, and I actually really love meat substitutes, in part because a common feature of real meat is fat marbling, something which I find texturally so challenging. That being said, it’s not the fat itself that I am opposed to, it’s the mouthfeel.

A lot of vegan food bloggers seem as though they are opposed to the existence of fat itself, because fat is unhealthy. They are opposed to (non-whole) grains because idk, milling is unhealthy. They are opposed to refined sugars, well, you get it. Lots of people have written a lot about how this approach to food and eating is just normalizing eating disorders (food is not good or bad, etc.) but also… it yields food that is not as tasty, and makes vegan food a dry unappealing option. Tofu is a fat free food! That means that it needs a lot of fat added while it is being cooked! The same is true for the meat sticks. They just won’t be any good if you don’t find ways to add fat throughout the cooking process. Anyway, remember to add oil at every step of cooking. Get a little squirt botte, and that makes it fun, in addition to being necessary.

NB: my one note would be that I think this would have been a lot better with a little cucumber salad, but I didn’t feel like making one. You should! I think it would really round out the meal, and cut the dense savoriness of the meat sticks. There’s a reason why Peking duck is served with cucumber sticks.

Marinade:

• 6 oz dried and rehydrated may wah meat sticks I forgot to measure before they were dried sorry, but it was about a third a package?

• 2 tbs water

• 1 tbs shaoshing

• 1 tbs light soy sauce

• 1/4 tsp kosher salt

• 1 tsp sugar

• 1 tbs vegetable oil

• 2 tsp corn starch

• 1/8 tsp white pepper

• pinch MSG

Stir frying sauce:

• 2.5 tbs sweet bean paste (or hoisin)

• 1 scant tbs sesame paste

• 1/8 tsp or so (maybe less) five spice powder

• 1/2 tsp dark soy sauce

• 1/2 tbs sugar

• 1/2 tsp black vinegar

Other stuff:

• two honkin carrots

• Scallion

• more oil!

Process:

Rehydrate your meat sticks. They go in lukewarm water for about 15 minutes. While they are rehydrating mix all the marinade ingredients together.
After their first soak gently squeeze the meat sticks (sorry I keep saying “meat sticks”) to get the water out. They absorb a lot of water. No need to be fastidious with the squeezing, and do be gentle with them. I definitely could have squeezed mine out more but chose not to.

Mix reconstituted meat sticks with marinade. Set aside for 15 minutes.

While that is happening prepare other things. Mix your stir fry sauce. Julienne two big carrots (or more small carrots).

By the time that’s done your meat sticks(tm) are probably marinaded enough. Heat wok on high, until smoking (sorry noah it tastes better this way!) add oil and briefly stir fry carrots. A minute or so, just try to get them a bit brown, but don’t stress it. They shouldn’t be cooked through.

Get the carrots out of the pan, retaining as much oil as possible. Okay, add a bit more oil and heat the oil again, do NOT get it smoking this time, but you do want it quite hot. Then, add the meat sticks and whatever liquid remains in the marinade bowl. You want to keep these moving, and in contact with oil. You should see them start to brown and become thicker, less cheeto like. They will be glossy and some will be slightly browned when they are done. When you notice that one side starts sticking to the pan (is this just me?) they’re done, take them out, again keeping whatever oil you can in the pan.

Add the stir fry sauce and cook over medium heat for a few minutes until it is thickened a bit. Add the carrots and meat sticks to the sauce, cook until it is reduced and the sauce is glossy.

Add some thinly sliced scallions. Serve over rice. Yes, Peking duck or pork is usually served with moo shu pancakes, but let’s be serious here. This is being “served” over the rice that has been sitting in the rice cooker for…. 70 hours. It’s wednesday.

Do make a little cucumber and garlic salad though, otherwise it will be too thick on the palette.