Did you know that there’s such a thing as meatless bacon? We call it “fake bacon” in our house. Or just facon.
Anyway, it’s not bad! It’s definitely never going to be confused with the real thing, but as a vegetarian substitute it’s surprisingly tasty and you can use it in some dishes in place of bacon – like this one, from the New York Times, for roasted potato hash. Here’s what we used to adapt it ourselves into something vegetarian:
- 4 potatoes
- An onion
- A red bell pepper
- Scallions
- Butter
- Chipotles in adobo sauce (if you’re wondering where to find such things, Goya is a good place to start)
- Sour cream
- A lime
- Morningstar Farms Bacon Strips
- Cheddar cheese
So first we chopped up the potatoes, half of the onion, the red pepper, and two scallions.
We mixed together the potatoes, red pepper, and onion and placed them into a cast iron skillet that we’d coated in butter. We placed this in an oven at 400° and cooked everything for 20 minutes, then turned the veggies over to roast on the other side for another 20 minutes, then turned it all over again to cook for a final 15 minutes.
While this was cooking, we made some chipotle sour cream. We chopped up three of the chipotles …
… and mixed these into 1/2 cup of sour cream, then squeezed out the juice from our lime over it all to give it a little more of a tangy flavor.
We also cooked some facon to go with the hash. We placed 8 strips of the Morningstar Farms bacon in another cast iron pan and cooked them for about 8 minutes on each side in the same oven where the veggies were roasting. Once the bacon was cooked, we crumbled it with our hands.
When the veggies were done, we mixed in 1 1/2 cups of cheddar cheese and the bacon, then placed everything back in the oven for another 5 minutes. Right before eating the hash, we drizzled it with our sour cream and spread the scallions over everything.
We ate this for dinner one night, but it probably wouldn’t be out of place for breakfast. It did take a long time to cook, but overall it was fairly simple and very delicious. Lest you think that being vegetarian means giving up bacon in dishes, this hash shows you that facon can be an excellent addition to some of your favorite foods.