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Vegan Savs



By baconheist on 25/3/2009 0:02

Are we losing our minds? Maybe... hope not... let me explain by inserting an excerpt of a real email conversation between beefsack and myself:

From: Stephen Taylor
To: Alexander, Michael
Subject: feel like doing a sav recipe some time?

I’ve promised a mate I’d do a vegan battered sav for him…


From: Alexander, Michael
To: Stephen Taylor
Subject: RE: feel like doing a sav recipe some time?

that sounds horrendous, don't really want to do that at all :p

so I guess that kind of sums it up (except I was able to convince Mick it was actually a good idea). As much as I like eating meat (savs in particular) I don't dislike people who make the descision to not eat it, and I believe that just because they've made this decision, they shouldn't be forced to miss out on something as delicious as a sav.

This is why I didn't dismiss Cam's (a member of Canberra's, Australia's, the world's foremost 5 piece ukulele band - Ukeleus - check us out ^_^) suggestion that I should find a Vegan Sav.

If anyone was capable of making a decidedly meat based snack without any animal based products, It was sure to be beefsack and baconheist - the saviours of Herbivores everywhere!

You're probably familiar with the crowd we have cooking today: baconheist and beefsack, Chris, BeeJay, and cameos of AwesomeWolf and Mark (thanks to team beersome for lending us a kitchen).



so - the first hurdle was of course the meaty centre of a battered sav - the sav. Now, try as I might I was unable to buy a meat-free saveloy - the next best option of course was to resort to a frankfurter *shudder*. But we'll have to make do, as vegan frankfurts are practically a dime a dozen (stupid exchange rate - $5 for half a dozen).



So armed with my piggy friendly sausages the next port of call was the batter. All the batters we've used in the past have contained a whole heap of animal unfriendly products like eggs or milk.

Undeterred, we sourced a less horrific recipe consisting of nothing more than flour, self raising flour, corn flour, salt and sugar and a cup of water and a bit of oil (as if there wasn't enough oil in the cooking process...).

So happy that we were ready to get animal friendly, we started mixing. We've never been real good at using precise measurements, but we used about equal parts corn flour, plain flour and self raising flour then added a small amount (I dunno, a dash I guess?) of oil, pinch of both salt and sugar then added water and beer until it was a good battering consistency. We also mixed up a more regular version with an egg, for later use (using different utensils, of course).



We then fired up the savinator, once more, and filled it with vegan friendly sunflower oil. On a side note - it seems to be emitting less putrid smoke than when it did when we bought it from the gypsy.



Then we used a slightly different process to what we've used in the past, thanks to have2sons' tip (see them here). First, we dried off the savs with a quick towel down:


Dusted them with flour:




Gave them an initial coat of batter:


Then dropped that sucker in the fryer.


after a quick preliminary fry, we went dipped the savs again


and then fried them to perfection.


Chris inspects the end result:


Us meat eaters thought they were okaaaayyy, but the real test would come the next day when a real live vegan would sample them.

the result:


Success! They get the vegan stamp of approval...

once we had done our plant based snacks it was time to move along to some meatier morsels. what's on the menu for today?



battered regular savs:


battered cabanossi:


battered chicken franks:


some beer battered chips (another good idea for the next vegan party you throw):


and the pièce de résistance - a battered kebab!


an Ali Baba kebab - not a great kebab, by any stretch of the imagination, but "jesus kebabs" are over an hours drive away...


(the sticks are to prevent that sucker from drifting apart in the frying process)





one successfully battered kebab!









enjoyed by all!

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