- What's up LIVEKINDLY Family, it's Ri,
AKA Plant-based Princess,
and on today's episode of Eat Kindly with Me,
I'm gonna show you how to make vegan soul food.
So, for me, soul food is very similar to comfort food.
It's a type of food, you take one bite of it,
and it just automatically takes you back to an experience.
So, culturally, soul food was originated by my ancestors
back when they were on plantations, doing slavery.
My ancestors were literally given the scraps of food,
so they made do with what they had,
and they called it soul food.
And those same traditions carried on throughout
our culture. So this isn't talked about a lot,
but even though veganism is pretty much dominated
by whiteness it actually is a part of black culture,
it's apart of African culture.
So before slavery, Africans, we actually ate
primarily plant-based diets, and it took me
a long time to learn that information,
because, like I said, it's not talked about often.
And when I learned that, it really empowered me.
I feel like I got my power back,
because as I've mentioned before,
going into veganism I was discouraged,
because I did not see that representation,
but finding out that information,
that my ancestors were plant based,
it really just gave me that extra push
and just like, oh, you were meant to do this,
you were meant to be this.
Also, I love, I didn't know I love
fried chicken as much as I did,
until I ate fried mushrooms.
Black History Month is super important,
and I love it because that encourages me
to dig deeper into my history,
and just to learn more about myself,
because the more I found out, and learn, about my history
I learn about me. For all my people of color,
do not only celebrate who you are
during Black History Month,
celebrate your blackness 365 days of the year.
Today we're gonna celebrate by making some vegan soul food.
So, I started off with by making my instant-pot
red beans and rice. So red beans and rice
is actually something I didn't grow up eating,
I've recently fallen in love with red beans and rice.
So, after you've let your beans soak overnight,
you want to pour your beans in your instant-pot,
and then fill it up with water,
where there's about two inches of water over your beans.
You want to let that pressure cook for about 20-25 minutes.
So, in the meantime you want go ahead and dice up
half of an onion, about three stalks of celery,
honestly, on the garlic, just go crazy.
I usually use about five to six cloves of garlic,
but, I usually just go crazy, but that's just my preference.
And then about three quarters of a bell pepper.
Then you wanna just dice all that up really, really finely.
And then by the time you get done dicing everything up,
your beans will be done.
You wanna pour all of that in the pot,
along with about one teaspoon of garlic salt,
a tablespoon of smoked paprika,
a tablespoon of onion powder, garlic powder,
a tablespoon of coconut sugar,
(calm music)
Oh, yeah, and a veggie cube. Key.
Mix that up very well, and then we're gonna pressure cook
for about 20 more minutes. Honestly, after that
you are done, just let it naturally release,
I usually wait for about an hour.
So, just let everything sit and mix well together.
So, the next thing I like to do is make the collard greens,
because it's the next thing that takes the longest.
The first thing you wanna do is turn your stove on
medium heat and add a little bit of grape seed oil.
I love grape seed oil. I would say about a tablespoon,
and then you wanna go ahead and chop up a half of an onion,
about four to five cloves of garlic,
and one tomato. Dice all of that up pretty finely,
and then add it to that pot we just added oil to,
and saute all of that until it is translucent.
While that is cooking, we're going to chop up
our collard greens. First, you want to take the stem out,
and then chop it all up pretty finely,
into pretty much bite-sized portions.
Your veggies are pretty much sauteed at this point,
and you wanna go ahead and add the collard greens to the pot
and I kinda just let it sit in there for ,like,
two to three minutes that way it wilts just a little bit.
And then I go ahead and add my veggie broth,
and then I go ahead and add about a tablespoon of
garlic powder, a teaspoon of smoked paprika
because you don't really need a lot of smoked paprika,
it's pretty pretty strong.
A tablespoon of onion powder, and then you wanna add salt.
A little shake of salt and pepper.
Mix it all up, stir it all up pretty pretty good,
and let everything come to a boil.
And once it has come to a boil,
you wanna go ahead and add a lid to it,
and then turn it down to a simmer.
Now, I let my collard greens cook for about an hour or two,
honestly I feel like the longer you let them sit in that pot
and just let all the flavors mix together,
it's just for the best.
But, you know you can't let it cook forever,
so I would say about ,at least an hour, an hour and a half.
So, after I finish cooking the collard greens,
I like to go ahead and go in with the cornbread.
Cornbread is literally that ,like, so good.
Have your oven heating to 350 degrees Fahrenheit
fore you even start prepping the cornbread mix.
For the cornbread, you wanna go ahead and put
one and a half cup of yellow cornmeal in a bowl
and followed by one cup of spelt flour.
Now you can use pretty much any flour you want,
I just prefer spelt flour.
Then you wanna go ahead with
three teaspoons of baking powder, a little shake of salt,
about four tablespoons of coconut sugar,
and mix all of that together really really good.
So, then we're gonna ahead
and go in with the wet ingredients.
Six tablespoons of applesauce,
one and one eighth cup of plant milk,
six tablespoons of melted vegan butter,
then we're gonna mix all of that
together really really well.
Pour that cornbread mix into a pan,
about an eight inch square pan lined with parchment paper,
or you can coat it with oil
just so the cornbread doesn't stick.
I like to use parchment paper just because
it's just easier, like even in the cleaning process
it's just so much easier.
I usually cook it for about 25 to 30 minutes,
and you're good.
When it's done I love to put more butter on top of it.
The star of the show for me
is pretty much the fried mushrooms.
It's just so heavenly, I can't even describe.
You wanna start off with your wet batter,
and your dry batter.
So, the wet batter, you're gonna use
one cup of flour, along with a tablespoon of garlic powder,
onion powder, about a half teaspoon of salt,
and a little pepper.
And then you wanna add about a cup of water.
Now when it comes to adding the water,
I like to add a little bit at a time,
because I like my batter to be kinda thick,
because the thicker your wet batter is,
that's the crunchier that your fried mushrooms
gonna get.
The dry batter is pretty much similar to the wet batter,
except you don't add water.
You add again one cup of flour,
a teaspoon of smoked paprika, a teaspoon of garlic salt,
a tablespoon of onion powder, garlic powder,
and, of course, a little pepper.
And then you wanna mix all of that up very well.
So we're gonna go ahead and prepare our mushrooms.
I notice a lot of people use oyster mushrooms
to mimic the fried chicken texture and shape,
but I personally like shiitake mushrooms.
Now you can keep them the size that they are,
or you can cup them up, it just depends on how big
that mushroom is.
For me, sometimes I'll cut them up,
or sometimes I'll leave them as they are.
Dip your mushrooms in the wet batter,
get everything evenly coated.
And then transfer it over to the dry batter,
and then go ahead, again,
get everything coated up pretty pretty good.
You wanna go ahead and add your mushrooms to a pan
with grape seed oil and you wanna put this on
probably, like, medium to medium high heat.
You wanna let them cook for about five minutes, if that.
But, I would just say pay attention to the color of it,
you wanna make sure it's just golden brown,
and then once you take them out,
you wanna put them on a plate
that is lined with a paper towel,
so the paper towel can catch the grease.
Once they are finished, I like to go ahead and season
them again with garlic salt, because that's it for me.
That is pretty much how we make our vegan soul food.
If you guys miss anything,
the recipe will be in the description box below.
Have you guys ever had vegan soul food before?
Comment down below, let me know.
What are you guys excited to try from today's recipe?
I really hope you enjoyed today's video,
just chatting with me and cooking,
and just getting to know me a little bit more.
Anyways guys, like I said it was fun hanging out with you,
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and I will see you next time, bye!