Late Stage Capitalism

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Dry mix - 500g gluten flour. Onion powder, garlic powder, fennel seeds (cos i've got them), bit of msg, smoked salt, sage, vege stock powder, whatever else savoury powders I've got to mix in.

Wet mix - ~500ml water, liquid smoke, bit of red food colouring.

Combine the two mixes, I try to aim for a bit less water than needed so all the liquid smoke and red gets absorbed. Then just add little bits of water until it's all wet.

That'll make a stringy lump of gluten-ey dough. I chop that up with scissors and run it through my meat grinder.

I make two square packages of the dough, wrapped in baking paper then al foil. Then pop it in the InstantPot for 2 hours sitting on the trivet (stand) and with enough water so the package isn't actually in the water.

Once it's cooked it looks a bit like a slab of pork belly. I slice it up into 1-2mm strips and freeze. They can be fried with eggs and served on toast. I add sauerkraut, hummus and caramalised onion. And usually some more smoked salt and white pepper to serve.

Like most vege substitutions, it's bacon-ey. Close enough for me. I think pigs get some of the worst treatment of commercial farming, but it's pretty bad for all the animals.

Free range eggs too, but that's often only mildly better than caged conditions in Australia. "Free range" can mean just a biog open air pit full of chooks rather than some idilyic farm setting with happy chooks scratching about.

I've been meaning to try cold smoking the slab at some point but haven't gotten there yet.

EDIT: I did attempt full vegan making silken tofu eggs with nutritional yeast and kala namak (sulphur/eggy salt) which was okay but cost a bit more. I don't think I'm there yet, eggs and dairy substitutes don't quite cut it for me. Plus I hit pathologically low iron that I'm still struggling with.