Tofu Bacon Bits Recipe | Smoky + Salty Vegan Bacon Crumbles (2024)

FAQs

What are the ingredients in fake bacon bits? ›

A blend of textured soy flour, hydrogenated vegetable oil, salt, natural and artificial flavours, vitamins, and minerals that add a hickory smoked bacon taste and texture to a variety of hot and cold dishes.

Tofu strips are marinated in a salty, sweet, smoky marinade that tastes just like bacon. This tofu bacon can marinate in the fridge for up to 3 days so you can prep this ahead of time, and cook it up fresh. Cook it in your air-fryer, bake it, or pan fry it. Perfect for a stress-free morning.

They tend to be high in sodium, but are generally healthier than animal-derived meat when eaten in moderation, as part of a balanced diet. In other words, don't base all of your meals around vegan bacon, but do enjoy it on a breakfast sandwich.

For that crunchy bacon-y topping, look no further than fried shallots. Roughly diced and mixed with salt, butter, and some olive oil, they're perfect alternatives for your usual bacon bits on salads or casseroles. If you fry them to their golden-brown texture, they'll be almost indistinguishable from the real thing!

McDonald's does not use fake meat.

SOY FLOUR, CANOLA OIL, SALT, CARAMEL COLOR, NATURAL & ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR, YEAST EXTRACT, FD&C RED NO. 40 & DISODIUM INOSINATE AND GUANYLATE (FLAVOR ENHANCERS).

This time it's for an oven-baked vegan bacon made of rice paper, crumbled tofu, vegan butter, and spices. Rice paper bacon has been on the scene for a long time — long before any commercial bacon analogues existed on supermarket shelves.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, half a cup of firm tofu offers 21.8 grams of protein with 181 calories and 11 grams of fat. Most of that fat is of the healthy polyunsaturated kind. The high level of protein makes tofu a good alternative to animal-derived meat.

Vegan bacon could therefore be seen as a better alternative to pig bacon, but that's not to say it's a healthy food product. Plant-based meats are ultra processed foods, and they also tend to be high in salt. They are, however, lower in saturated fat, and don't contain the same preservatives as pig bacon.

The significant disadvantages of Tofu may cause allergies in some people. The symptoms of soy allergies include skin rash, inflammation, itching, fainting, breathing difficulty, abdominal pain and throat swelling. In rare scenarios, Tofu may cause osteoporosis and estrogen-related cancer.

How unhealthy is fried tofu? ›

Frying tofu can give it a crispy texture, but comes at a cost – it can be high in calories, up to three times more than baked or air-fried tofu. This is because frying requires added oil as a heat conductor, which cooks the tofu evenly but also makes it absorb more oil, resulting in more fat and calories.

In case you're wondering which is healthier, eggs or tofu, the match-up is surprisingly close. If you compare them per serving (1 egg to a 3.5-ounce serving of tofu), the tofu has a similar amount of calories and slightly more protein. Here's how they stack up: Calories: egg = 78 | tofu = 70.

Coconut, mushroom, and tempeh strips become smoky, salty, crispy plant-based bacon alternatives. Beef or turkey bacon! Smoked coconut slices are pretty good.

Not to be confused with those bright red imitation “bacon” bits, bacon crumbles are real pieces of smoky, rich meat that can be stirred into mac and cheese, sprinkled on a baked potato, mixed into quiche or scattered on pizza.

Hooray Foods' plant-based bacon has less sodium and fat than real bacon but tastes a whole lot like the real stuff.

So what are these bits actually made from? They're basically just flavored soy protein chunks. The texturized soy flour gives that same meaty texture you get from tofu or textured vegetable protein. This is an easy (and most likely affordable) way to make a shelf-stable version of our favorite cured meat.

Whether vegan- or omnivore-friendly, your store-bought bacon bits are pretty much guaranteed to contain highly processed ingredients. Wide Open Eats tested three popular brands and found that even Oscar Mayer's "Real Bacon Bits" contained harmful ingredients despite its self-proclaimed authenticity.

Ingredients. Ingredients: Pork, Water, Salt, Sugar, Sodium Nitrite, Natural Smokeflavour, Dextrose, Sodium Phosphate, Sodium Erythorbate, Sodiumascorbate. We do our best to be accurate with respect to the advertised ingredients, nutritional information, product images and descriptions listed on our app/website.