The Art of Making Vegetarian Sausages

I had this book on Kindle for a few years, decided l would enjoy a physical copy as well. Stanley M is a master meat sausage maker/writer...but l no longer eat animal flesh...so it is nice to have a credible creator to make a book that is non animal based.

It’s not really a recipe book but gives you tips and ideas on how to make vegetable sausages. I still had to do a lot of research but it certainly got my creative cooking juices flowing with great ideas

So, as a longtime vegetarian, I'm pretty fed up with the price and variety of vegetarian sausages. I'm not looking for meaty taste or texture, but I am fairly despairing of getting the shape right and by analogy, making burgers that can be barbecued without falling into pieces. Occasionally there is something that gives a full satisfying protein hit (I only rate Taifun soya 'frankfurters' which are curiouly pleasant, but are bland in texture.)Vegetarian sausage casings are readily available now, and on this site, if you've got something to stuff them with, which the book suggests at the very least can be done with a small funnel for test batches, it's all go.The authors are experts in meat sausages and approach the subject sensibly that vegetarian sausages should mimic the ability of 'meat' versions to hold together when sliced. However they champion the idea that vegetarian sausages should be unique and evolve into a delicacy, not remain a pale taste imitation of the meat version. Most sausages are filled out with gelling agents and dry fillers such as cracker meal anyway, there's not much meat in some of them.So far I've got as far as the shopping list for tofu and tomato sausages....this includes ground up crackers, carragenan, potato flour (should be starch) and guar gum. Although I'm a little reticent about alll the extra fillers, the authors suggest that these are all natural products and commercial sausages have worse gunk in them anyway.Although there's quite a lot of theory on meat sausages, which is a bit stomach turning, it is necessary to understand the physical characteristics of how things goo together (and hopefully work out how to make up some solid burgers).There's a fair few varying recipes, but I have to focus somewhere. I'm planning a mushroom variation if the tomato version works. I'm trying the Kenwood attachment, hoping that it can be mastered reasonably easily, (with scary memories of Generation Game episodes) I'll update when I've tried it.So much commercially produced food is getting blander and monotonous that when you find a well written theoretical book like this, it's worth giving it a go! There's very little information on filled sausages on the web.After finding I can speed up pasta dough with the stand mixer, I've vowed never to buy yukky stuffed pasta again as nothing compared to shredded fried leeks and grated gruyere in hand made tortelloni, here's hoping sausages will be just as successful!

This thin book is loaded with useful information that helps me understand many of the ingredients listed in commercial food, both cooked and baked goods. The writer explains them in easy to understand manner. I never thought I would get a generous load of information from a thin vegetarian sausage book. Thank god I was curious and bought the book. Now I understand better how extender, binder, starches, gums, etc. work. I can now apply this knowledge to my cooking and baking experiments, as I often do and manipulate ingredients and create food to my desire.

I was expecting a recipe book, but this is much more, and really explains the function of various ingredients and how to combine and use them. Perhaps I'll actually make use of the sausage maker now!!!