Discover textured vegetable protein (TVP): tips and 10 recipes for cooking with it

Veg-what protein?

If you follow Serge the leek, you’ve probably already heard about it in his article on veggie hot dogs. Textured vegetable protein (TVP) looks like the flat cereal we’ve left lying around in the back of our cupboards for years. But it does have more potential.

Produced from defatted soy flour, textured vegetable protein is actually a by-product in the manufacture of soybean oil. In addition to avoiding waste, it’s much less fatty (and much less expensive💸) than meat!

Another case you can’t find at the grocery store?

If you’re afraid of the judgment of grocery clerks who look at you like you’re from another planet every time you reach for new ingredients, don’t worry. You can get TVP in bulk food stores like Bulk Barn, healthy grocery stores like Avril and Rachelle Béry, and even in the organic rows of IGA and Metro. If you’re afraid you won’t find it, it’s even available on Amazon.

It comes in several formats: from the finest, which gives the impression of minced meat, to one the size of a steak (a little rarer, but can be found in vegan and Asian grocery stores).

Cooking TVP in different ways depending on the meat it replaces

TVP is a bit like tofu: it doesn’t taste like much. It needs love if it’s to complement your dishes.

When rehydrated in a hot liquid, its texture is almost identical to minced meat. The advantage is that it can imitate several types of meat depending on your seasoning.

Textured beef-style vegetable protein

Textured vegetable protein can replace beef in just about any recipe. Simply soak the TVP in boiling beef broth (or beef-flavoured vegetable broth) + a few drops of liquid smoke until tender before incorporating it into your recipes. We don’t have exact measurements because it depends on the size of your grains, but like pasta, you can go by feeling.

If all this intimidates you, you can also follow one of the following recipes to learn how to use TVP to replace beef:

1. Vegetarian pâté à la TVP (in French)
2. Vegetarian tourtière (in French)
3. Tacos à la TVP
4. Vegan lasagna

Pork-style textured vegetable protein

TVP also imitates pork incredibly well and is delicious in Asian recipes. To rehydrate it, we again use boiling vegetable broth, but this time, we add soy sauce and miso.

The magic is that once you know how to make dumpling filling with TVP, you can reuse the same recipe to make egg rolls and more. You can even replace the pork with TVP in our recipe for egg rolls with leeks. The possibilities are endless!

1. Ultra-easy vegan cretons (in French)
2. Asian noodle stir-fry à la TVP (in French)
3. Textured vegetable protein (TVP) dumplings (in French)

Textured poultry-style vegetable protein

Textured vegetable protein can also be used to give the impression of ground turkey or even chicken. If you want to give the impression of chicken, it’s wiser to opt for coarser-grain TVP or even soy curls-style TVP, which can easily be purchased online. To rehydrate it in chicken mode, all you need is boiling chicken broth (veggie or not) and poultry spices.

So what came first, soy or chicken? Here are 3 recipes to match. 🐔

1. Fajitas with textured vegetable protein (TVP) (in French)
2. TVP vegan “chicken” pâté (in French)
3. Milanese-style soy protein cutlets

That’s it! Now, you can replace meat with TVP in just about any recipe.

Got the veggie bug? We’ve got tons of vegetarian recipes in the Crazy Leeks repertoire. If you’re a fan of vegan food, we’ve even got 10 tempeh recipes (in French) (for a change from tofu). And if our article of the day challenges your culinary skills too much, we’ve got 10 easy vegan recipes (in French) for you, too 😉