Photo: Umaro Applewood bacon
Our Top Three Vegan Bacon Recipes
Whether you want it healthy, extra crispy, or a weirdly good wildcard (trust us), each of these recipes you can make at home will level up your bacon game.
Bacon is as much about taste as texture and its no surprise that getting the crispiness of bacon in another form is the equivalent of achieving bacon nirvana.
Whether you’re aiming for a crispy snack or looking to top off your whole grain pancakes with a few slices of heaven, we’ve looked for the highest rated vegan bacon recipes from our favorite vegan recipe developers and one wild harvested foods purveyor and shortlisted them for you.
Each of these recipes shines in a different way - we’ll let you decide the best version for you!
And if you’re in a pinch or want to indulge without the prep, you can always purchase our vegan bacon from Whole Foods, Amazon, and Walmart.com
one crispy, one healthy, and one weirdly good bacon recipe
Easy button: Umaro’s Applewood vegan
bacon is ready to crisp and serve
1. Rice paper & tofu skin bacon
This recipe is adapted from @Veganhackspod and uses rice paper to sandwich a thin strip of marinated yuba (tofu skin) inside the rice paper, then fried in a skillet. This has the effect of giving both a crispy fat outside and a firm, meaty inside to the final product. You can improvise with the marinade to add a spicy kick or dial up or down the smoke.
If you can’t find yuba sheets dry or fresh (we like Hodo brand), you can easily substitute thinly sliced firm tofu.
Makes 8 strips of bacon
Ingredients:
4 sheets square rice paper
1 package tofu skin (yuba)
2 tbl soy sauce
1 tbl sugar or maple syrup
1/2 tsp smoked paprika
few drops liquid smoke
Directions:
Cut rice paper into 2” wide strips. Cut yuba into slightly narrower strips to fit inside the rice paper strips with about a quarter inch margin. Mix together soy sauce, vinegar, and sugar and soak the yuba skin in the marinade for about 30 minutes.
Once the yuba has soaked up the marinade, sandwich one piece of yuba in between two moistened strips of rice paper, pinching the edges to get the rice paper sheets to stick to each other and hold in the yuba.
Add oil to a frying pan, and fry on medium-high heat until browned and crispy. Yum!
Hodo’s yuba (tofu skin) makes
for a tender and firm bite.
2. Crispy carrot bacon
Your air fryer is going to be your best friend for this recipe. Adapted from @tabithabrown, this one definitely falls into the “healthiest” vegan bacon recipe. Carrots have the perfect texture and a hint of sweetness to give you something approximating the bacon experience while also getting your serving of veggies checked off the box. This recipe doesn’t have oil but you can add it to the marinade to amp up the crispy.
Ingredients:
2 carrots, sliced thinly with a vegetable peeler
2 Tbl maple syrup
3 Tbl soy sauce or liquid aminos
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp onion powder
1/4 tsp smoked paprika
1/4 tsp black pepper
1/4 tsp liquid smoke
Directions:
Mix marinade ingredients and soak carrot strips for 2 minutes. Fry in your air fryer at 380 degrees for about 5 minutes or until crispy.
3. Fried dulse (red seaweed)
Believe it or not, fried dulse tastes weirdly like bacon.
Dulse is a type of wild red seaweed that grows on the rocky shores of Nova Scotia and is hand-picked off the rocks and sun dried by local foragers. Fried dulse is eaten by the locals like a potato chip.
This is the easiest of the three recipes to prepare and the most intense flavor-wise. If you haven’t tried it yet, fried dulse bacon should be on your bucket list!
Ingredients:
Dulse from Maine Coast Sea Vegetables
Olive oil or other oil for frying
Directions:
Unfold your chunks of dulse into thin strips before frying. The more thin and flat your strip, the better the result. Fry in a skillet or in an air fryer until golden brown. Enjoy!
