Make your own vegan nuggets with chickpeas or tofu

If you are a fan of chicken nuggets, but know that the prepared products are not healthy, you can prepare a vegetarian and healthy version at home.

Chicken nuggets are the classic ultra-processed, comfortable and tasty product that children and adults love. But if you read the list of ingredients, you will see that in many cases, they include a lot of additives and unknown substances. The vegetable and healthy alternative that we propose is made with seitan, okara (the soy pulp that is left over when milk is made), chickpeas and tofu.

VEGAN CHICKPEA NUGGETS

These nuggets contain okara, the pulp that is left over when producing soy milk (you can make it at home with a Chufamix or a blender) and is a way to take advantage of it, but if you do not have this ingredient, you can increase the amount of chickpeas.

Ingredients (for a full baking sheet):

• 100 g cooked chickpeas
• 200 g okara (if you don’t have osara, you can use 300 g chickpeas)
• 100 g organic wheat gluten
• 30 ml extra virgin olive oil
• 2 tablespoons almond butter or cashew nut (optional for extra juiciness)
• 1-2 tablespoons brewer’s yeast
• Salt and pepper

For breading:

• 50 g breadcrumbs
• 20 g soybean meal or cornstarch
• 70-80 ml vegetable milk
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 2 teaspoons granulated onion or onion powder
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon oregano

Elaboration:

1. Mix gluten with yeast, salt and pepper. Crush the chickpeas and add them to gluten along with the osara, oil and almond butter if you have decided to use it. Knead everything vigorously until a uniform mass is formed.
2. Divide the dough into small pieces. The best way to do this is to form relatively uneven dumplings and then flatten them one after the other between the palms of your hands.
3. Prepare three bowls with soybean flour or cornstarch, vegetable milk and breadcrumbs, which you will have previously mixed with spices. First pass the nuggets one after another through the flour, then dip them in the vegetable milk and finally cover them on all sides with the seasoned breadcrumbs.
4. Place breaded nuggets in a greased baking dish and bake in the preheated oven at 200°C, with top and bottom heat, for 30 to 35 minutes. Halfway through the cooking time, flip all the nuggets once and cover them with a little vegetable oil with a brush if desired. The oil makes the nuggets even crunchier.

Nuggets can be consumed immediately. They pair well with sugar-free barbecue sauce or hot sauce. At the same time, you can prepare potatoes and other vegetables in the same oven. which will turn vegan nuggets into a complete meal.

If you want to make nuggets in large quantities, you can bread the nuggets and then freeze them in a tupperware. To prevent them from sticking together, freeze them a little, for example, on a plate with some distance between them and then put them in the tupperware. When you need them simply take them out of the freezer and put them in the oven, but increase the baking time by ten minutes.

TOFU NUGGETS

For homemade tofu nuggets, you need 500 g tofu, dice it and follow the same recipe as in chickpea nuggets from step 3.

It is important that the tofu is firmly firm. To squeeze excess water out of tofu, do the following:

• Freeze a block of tofu for at least six hours.
• Defrost the tofu and let the water drain.
• If the tofu is still not firm enough, you can wrap it in a cloth and put a weight on it for example (a cast iron pan) for 10 to 20 minutes. Then you can cut it into cubes and breading.

Regardless of whether you want to make vegan chickpea and gluten nuggets or tofu, breaded pieces can also be fried in plenty of olive oil in the pan or in a fryer. Make sure the oil is very hot when you add the nuggets, otherwise the breading will absorb too much oil.