Vegan Bodybuilding & Fitness

Thought it sounded good so i made a sandwich(daves killer bread) with quinoa, olive oil and spinach, and it turned out to be really good!

I did a random sammich with a similar thick, seeded bread, some sweet yellow onions sauteed in light oil until golden brown, and fresh red swiss chard.

Baby Herc

Random Sammie Number 2: Same bread lightly toasted, homemade spicy white bean burgers, romaine lettuce leaves, Vegannaise, yellow mustard, sea salt.

Baby Herc

Those both sound really good! I will have to use some swiss chard from my garden and try to replicate that first one... And what's in the white bean burger? If you mind sharing cause' that sounds like it would be a lot better than a Boca haha

It's way better than Boca because it's a basic recipe that you can build on to make as spicy as you want in any direction: Indian curry, Mexican chipotle, Italian garlic, etc.

First, I'll teach you to create a sauteed onion topping that will make you never want to leave home. I got some tips from a sous chef friend of mine and, man, she was not wrong. I make a large amount each time so that there is always some on hand for the sammich du jour.

You're gonna need to master the pan flip so that you can turn things without using a spatula. Take a cold frying pan and put about 1 C. of dried beans or rice in it to practice. This guy is good but the YouTube video won't embed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noizuQwvL0M


CARAMELIZED ONION SAMMICH TOPPING

Okay, get this stuff ready:

Large nonstick or stainless steel frying pan or saute pan (at least 10" wide) with round, not vertical, sides
Very sharp chopping knife
Canola oil
Huge sweet yellow onion or two small/medium sized ones
Mustard powder (not bottled mustard)
Black pepper grinder
Garlic salt
Cayenne pepper powder
Sea salt, fine

Turn the large burner on your stove top to Medium-Low and let it heat up for a few minutes. Caramelizing is not frying, it's a gentler process at lower heat.

While you're waiting, peel the onion and chop it up into 1 centimeter chunks (about 1/3 inch). These will get smaller as they cook.

Add 1/4 C. canola oil to your pan and let it warm for 30 seconds. I know it seems like a lot of oil but the onion is going to soak it all up. Canola oil is essential for caramelizing onions, something to do with the chemical reaction and such. It's a sous chef thing but it's true. If you don't usually cook with canola oil, buy a very small bottle just for this.

Toss in your onion. It should make a very soft hissing sound but not loud. If it's loud, turn down your heat a tiny bit. Every stove is different.

Shake the pan to spread out the onion, then flip it a few times to coat every piece with oil.

Sprinkle on your spices: a few turns of the pepper grinder for a medium-sized pinch, a large pinch of garlic salt, a tiny pinch of cayenne pepper, 1/4 t. of mustard powder, and however much sea salt you prefer. You can tweak all this in the future to suit your tastes. I know the mustard sounds like a weird thing to add to onions but trust me, it's what they add to fried breaded onion rings and it will bring that rich breaded goodness to your pan without tasting like mustard at all. The garlic salt is crucial to dance with the onions but don't add too much--garlic always wins. Use garlic salt (the kind without the parsley in it) instead of fresh garlic to keep it subtle for this reason.

Watch your onions closely as they caramelize, flip them every 30 - 60 seconds. Your goal is to brown them evenly and SLOWLY on all sides instead of letting one side get too dark. How long you caramelize is purely a matter of taste. If you remove them from the heat while they're still yellow, they'll just taste like cooked onions in oil. If you let them get slightly brown to medium brown, the sugars in the onions will start doing their magic and create a chemical process that tastes freaking amazing: caramelizing. I like to go all the way and take it to the medium to darker brown stage when it starts to look and smell like barbecue (Oh, baby!) You can taste it as you go along to decide how you like it. This is a process that requires practice but once you get it perfect for you, you'll never forget how to do it.

Tip some of your hot, sweet, carmelized onions right onto lightly toasted bread and let them cool for 30 seconds, then top with swiss chard leaves, the other slice of bread, and dig in. If you get a high-protein bread, you can call this lunch and be done with it. Or, you can slip a vegan burger in there. The spicy Boca burger goes well with this, as I recall. Other ways to stack up your sammich with this is fresh rings of red pepper, heirloom tomato, some avocado, thinly sliced raw zucchini, etc.

Pour the rest of your onions into a well-sealed plastic container and store in the fridge for a few days (it won't last very long--Yum!) It freezes very well, too, and goes well in chili, stir fry, soups, etc.

Do yourself a favor and wash the pan right away while it's still warm. If not addressed, caramelized onions turn to wood glue overnight in the open air.

Baby Herc

Thanks for the info. I will attempt to make that this weekend even though it's way beyond what i normally make in the kitchen(i.e. many steps), it sounds so good i will have to! haha. And i was looking at your website, it looks like you have done some really breathtaking(pun intended) hikes... I'm trying to explore more of the Northwest this summer and get in as much hiking as i can.

Many steps, sure, but the whole thing takes 10 minutes. Seriously, you can do this. It's like driving a car: lots of rules and gears and things and yet you can do it all without thinking after awhile.


Thanks. I have quite a few adventures I still have to get posted. I recently did Silver Star Mountain in southern Washington, that's going up next. You're pretty high up there in the state but you're closer to Hoh than I am, so I'm jealous.

Baby Herc

Thinking of random sammies... I am craving a sauteed bbq onion sammy on ezekiel bread

Ok, I timed it this morning and a light caramelization takes 10 minutes while the darker stuff takes about 15. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a sammich to nom.

Baby Herc

I'm starving! This thread is making me drool. Wasn't the quinoa sandwhich messy, like didnt all of it fall out of the sandwhich or did the olive oil help it stick to the bread?

Yeah, it was a little messy but i used a paper towel to keep as much of the quinoa in as i could and i think the olive oil helped

Ah! The old paper towel trick, nice.

Recipe for the bbq sauteed onion sandwich?

Super simple toast 2 slices bread, saute onions to desired tenderness, covert bread in favorite bbq sauce and pile on onions. Made this growing up when food was slim pickings.

@Baby Herc, ran across this sign on a hike in the Olympics made me think of this thread haha