- [Narrator] The very thought of Thanksgiving
drums up foods worth salivating over,
like stuffing, mashed potatoes and of course,
the Tofurky?
But this Thanksgiving veggie substitute
wasn't just whipped up overnight.
It actually took years of trial and error.
So we called the guy who invented it.
(phone ringing)
- [Tibbott] I am Seth Tibbott,
and I am the inventor of Tofurky.
- [Narrator] Seth Tibbott was living in Oregon.
He was a teacher and a self-professed hippie
who lived somewhere, shall we say, unusual.
- [Tibbott] I built my own three-story treehouse
out of scavenged wood.
- [Narrator] He was also a serious vegetarian.
So serious, that he started his very own tempeh-making company.
- [Tibbott] And I made soy tempeh, five grain tempeh
and a sausage tempeh called temperoni,
and I just made tempeh for the first 15 years.
- [Narrator] But there was a problem.
- [Tibbott] Which was finding something to eat
at my own Thanksgiving.
- [Narrator] You see, at the time,
there were no main dishes for vegetarians available.
So Seth set out to solve the problem,
and it wasn't so easy.
First, he created a stuffed pumpkin.
- [Tibbott] The stuffed pumpkin was the famous one
that we still talk about.
The whole thing on the pumpkin was that
it collapsed in the oven, and it seemed
more like a side dish than a main dish.
- [Narrator] Then there was...
- [Tibbott] The gluten roast, which was really
an all day thing, took like eight hours.
Literally, it was just too tough to cut
with any kind of implement that we had,
other than a chainsaw, which we did not bring to the table.
- [Narrator] Eventually, Seth teamed up
with his friend, Hans.
- [Tibbott] He was making these tofu roasts.
Had a little bit of gravy in there with them.
We added the drumettes because we were mimicking the turkey
and marketed it under the name Tofurky.
- [Narrator] Throughout the years, the recipe evolved.
- [Tibbott] We soon realized that this is a vegan feast,
and vegan plants don't have legs.
So yeah, it's been a long journey,
a long, strange tempeh trip, as a hippie would say.
- [Narrator] And now—
- [Tibbott] Around here, we call turkey
a Tofurky substitute.
(jazzy music)