Black Eyed Peas And Mushrooms Recipe

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Hello and welcome to Freshly Served, the healthy vegan cooking show. I’m Heather and tonight we’re gonna make a sweet and sour bean dish with some black eyed peas.

And I’m actually using some canned beans today, so I’ve got them all ready to go. There’s nothing wrong with using canned as long as you can find a good brand.

These ones, I have a nice brand I think their called Eden Organic Beans and they cooked their beans exactly how I would cook them which is with no salt and they add combo to the water to make the beans more digestible.

And black eyed peas are called peas but yes they are beans, they are like a whitish kind of bean with a black eye.

Alright, so if you watched my shows before you’ll know that I like vegetables so we’re gonna start with some mushrooms today and what I’ve done is just sliced up these mushrooms.

And what I’m gonna do is marinate them. I don’t tend to cook things unless I have to or if its winter I like to cook things more. But what I like too in summer is marinate things if I want them to become soft.

So for these mushrooms I’ve got my salt shaker which has part salt and part dried kelp which helps to give it a salty flavor without using so much salt.

And I’m gonna use some balsamic vinegar on here to bring some flavor into these mushrooms.

So what happens when you marinate is the flavors is going to infused in the mushrooms. Now the reason I used salt is not for salty flavour for this case but the salt is going to draw the moisture out of the mushrooms. So rather than using heat to do that, I’m gonna use salt.

What we’re gonna do is take a container that has a lid on it and shake it. And this one is pretty stuffed so I got to get really rough with it.

And they’ll start to shrink right away and the best thing to do is do this an hour before you’re gonna eat so then you can let these sit for an hour.

Now, we’re ready to start the sauce. What we’re gonna do is start with some water, just some basic liquid. I’m going to put in some apple cider; any type of fruit juice will work very well.

I’m going to add some tamari which is to say naturally fermented soy sauce and for the sour I’m going to add some apple cider vinegar.

Alright! And I kinda forgot what I was doing here, I want to put this actually in a pot because I’m going to heat this and I’ll just turn this to medium high. What I’m going to do is take some kuzu which is a type of arrowroot.

You can see it’s white and it’s kinda looks like little rocks. Ok. Now this is the same as arrowroot powder in its basic function. What I’m gonna do is add some water to this and make sure its dissolves here.

The function of arrowroot and kuzu is to thicken a sauce and it works with heat and so that’s why I’m heating this sauce and you’ll notice when you put it in, it’s gonna take a couple of minutes in the heat before it actually thickens.

If you don’t have kuzu available to you, arrowroot powder use just the same. One tablespoon for one cup liquid and if you can’t find either of those you can just use some flour.

And all I’m gonna do is wait for this to heat up and soon as its hot I’m gonna pour this in, stir constantly while it thickens.

So what I’m going on for the vegetables are the mushrooms which are marinating, I’ve got some carrots and I don’t peel my carrots, I just chopped off either end and then take a scrub brush like the kind I use for potatoes and vegetables keep their nutrients close to the skin so if you can avoid peeling, you’re gonna get more nutrients.

And I’ve got some celery, also good to use the celery tops. There’s a lot of nutrient in the top of the plant. There’s nutrient everywhere really, use as much of it as you can.

Green onion and I’ve got some fresh herbs. I’ve got cilantro and parsley, use whatever herbs you feel like. So just chopped this up, put them in a bowl while you wait for your sauce to heat up.

So my sauce beat me, I’m not quite finish chopping off my vegetables but the sauce was getting just to a boil so I added the arrowroot and just stir it continuously until it got to this consistency which I’m not sure if you can really tell on screen but it’s quite gooey.

You wanna wait until it hits that consistency before you take it off the heat. Sometimes it doesn’t happen right away but just wait till you get that. Beautiful!

I just want to make sure that it taste ok so it’s still very hot but I’ll take a little taste. Hmm, nice! Sweet and sour! Perfect!

Ok! So Like I said I don’t have got all my vegetables chopped up but what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna toss these beans in here, the black eyed peas because they need at least ten minutes with the sauce for the flavors to enter into the bean.

And beans are very bland on their own so it’s best to give them some time with the flavors. So I’m just gonna pour that over, toss it around a little bit and let that combine while I finish chopping up my green onions and my herbs.

Alright! See how our mushrooms are doing here and I haven’t given them quite long enough but they’re doing fine for me. I’m really not a fan of raw mushrooms but I’m ok with this kind of half stage. They’re not fully soft but they are definitely not rock.

So by raw I mean you know big flushiness. Ok! Cool!

Stir these all together and you got yourself a beautiful, healthy vegan meal. This sauce is perfect as a dipping sauce as well because it’s got that nice gooey consistency you could dip something like a fresh roll in it.

If you don’t want to cook it or if you can’t find arrowroot, you can also do it just as a thin salad dressing sauce but just keep in mind that you don’t wanna add the water because that will just make it runnier and you’ll have a bunch of liquid at the bottom of your salad.

So as this is, it’s got a nice thickness to it that’s coating all of these vegetables rather than just being a liquid and sinking to the bottom. If you did that, I’d probably marinate this salad for at least a couple of hours so that the flavors can soak into the beans and vegetables.

There you go! All set to go, a sweet and sour beans salad with black eyed peas. I hope you enjoyed it. You can find the recipe at HealthyVeganRecipes.net. I’m Heather and this is Freshly Served.