Welcome Back to YouRoots! Chef Berne is at it again and a lot of veggies were “murdered” in this episode for our enjoyment, and enjoyed they were! Joking aside, the reason for our title and us having some fun with this blog post and video is although both Chef Bernie and Conrad are plant based (you might be too if you follow us!), not everyone is and that’s ok as we are all on our own journey. We just want to remind people that some of the foods we consume in our society, at one time did have a heartbeat. Which is why it’s so important to be very mindful, appreciative and not wasteful when it comes too food.
As always, we are on a mission to help you incorporate more plants into your lifestyle and to teach you how to make nutritious wholefoods as delicious as possible. The better you can make the good stuff tastes, vegetables, the more of them you’ll eat! Always remember that the things you decide to put into your body will have a direct impact on your short and long term health both physically & mentally.
Today we did something really unique, we turned squash into bacon, it turned out absolutely amazing and didn’t take long to prep at all! The bonus with our “bacon” is that it didn’t have any sodium nitrate and was very high in Vitamin A!
We paired it with some beautiful Pomegranate and Balsamic Marinated Portobello Mushrooms & Baby Carrots and a Herb’d Couscous Salad, it turned out beautifully!
For today’s recipe, you will need the following ingredients below:
Ingredients
Pomegranate and Balsamic Marinated Portobello Mushrooms
- 2 large portobello mushroom caps
- 1 tbsp pomegranate molasses
- 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- Salt and pepper to taste
Squash Bacon
- ½ squash skinned de-seeded / cut in very thin strips (that’s the key!)
- 1 tsp Smoked paprika
- 1 tsp Garlic powder
- ½ tsp chopped fresh thyme
- 1 tbsp Soy sauce
- 1 tbsp nutritional yeast
- 1 tbsp Grape seed oil
- Salt and pepper to taste
Herbed Couscous Salad
- 1 cup couscous
- 1 cup water
- 2 tbsp olive oil
First off, preheat your oven too 195 Celsius. Take your beautiful squash and cut it in half. Skin it and take out all of the seeds. The trick with this recipe is that the squash needs to be cut very thin to simulate a bacon slice.
You should have around 20 – 25 slices. Prep a tray with some parchment. Mix all of the remaining ingredients into a bowl for the marinade. Take the marinade and brush all of the slices on both sides, as you brush them flip them.
Bake for 30 – 40 minutes until golden brown turning at least once, maybe twice depending on if you have a convection oven. You don’t want them to burn and they should take on the consistency of almost a jerky and be really chewy. If you like the crispy favlour though, then nothing wrong with them coming out a bit charred.
For the Pomegranate and Balsamic Marinated Portobello Mushroom, wash your mushrooms and slice into 1 inch pieces. Take the renaming ingredients and mix into a bowl, toss in your mushrooms and coat with the marinade. Wash your baby carrots, and heat a pan to high with some grape seed oil. Place the mushrooms in once oil is heated and cook each side for 2 minutes. Add in your baby carrots and simmer to let everything caramelize and give the carrots a chance too cook.
Very simple and tastes absolutely amazing! Next is our Herb’d Couscous, we used wholewheat as we try to keep our kitchen full of wholesome wholefoods!
You can use whatever fresh herbs you have available in your garden! We are using chives, Italian parsley and basil.
Bring 1 cup of water to a boil, add salt, couscous, cover and let sit for 10 – 15 minutes. Add in your olive oil and fresh herbs.
Time to plate your meal, we got a bit creative using some fresh swiss chard from Chef Bernie’s garden and basil. For as beautiful as this dish looks, it took no time at all, aside from the dehydration part of our meatless “bacon”.
Thanks again for taking time out of your day and we really hope that you are finding value out of our blog posts and a few laughs from our videos. Stay tuned for another weekly blog post with another great recipe.
If you have any feedback or comments, good or bad, please let us know below, we welcome all feedback as we are always looking to improve. From the both of us remember to be positive, live with purpose and eat nutritious and delicious wholesome plant based foods!
