The ingredients for the veggie scrapple (as best as I can remember them) are: onion, garlic, celery, bell pepper, black-eyed peas, corn meal, oatmeal, salt, pepper, cayenne, onion powder and vegetable stock. As I mentioned, it's been awhile since I've had scrapple, so the ingredient list did not raise any red flags-especially because you never know how separate ingredients may come together to form an entirely different whole. On Sunday, I bought the ingredients we didn't already have and then whipped it up. The thing is, it's one of those recipes which you have to make a day in advance, and well, for me, that's often too much planning.įinally, this past weekend, I decided to go for it. As soon as I saw the recipe for vegetarian scrapple, I was intrigued and have been meaning to make it ever since. It's divided up into sections: African recipes, Caribbean recipes, African-American recipes, and Southern recipes. The focus of the book is recipes (traditional and modern) from Africa, America, and the Caribbean.
(That being said, fake sausages can fly for meat eaters, because it's often about the seasonings, rather than the actual meat ingredients).Īnyway, a few years ago, the Main Squeeze got me a cookbook, Ethnic Vegetarian, for Christmas. If you can clearly remember what bacon tasted like, then the fake stuff is so not going to cut it. I will also be the first one to tell you that it helps to have distance from the real deal to appreciate the fake versions. They are a key part of my weekend breakfasts. I love Morning Star Farm's veggie links, patties and bacon. So, I'm one of those vegs who is happy to try out fake meat products. I became a vegetarian, because I could no longer rationalize eating animals (I'm a huge sap), not because I didn't think they were tasty. The thing is, I became a vegetarian* about 20 years ago, so no more scrapple for me. Personally, I think that if you eat sausage, you have no business being skeeved out by scrapple.Īnyway, I'm originally from Maryland and grew up eating and loving scrapple. But for those who did not grow up eating it, I guess it can be kind of scary. It's formed into a block and then sliced and pan fried until crispy and brown on the outside.
For the uninitiated, scapple is simply leftover pork bits combined with cornmeal and seasonings. If you are from the Mid-Atlantic region, you should be familiar with Scrapple.