Cured sausages made with non-meat ingredients

[chappie]

I was recently in a convenience store, searching for a semi-nutritious, low-"Points" snack (as I have been using the Weight Watchers app successfully for a month with dual goals of weight loss and improving my eating habits). I found a product by Krave that was a single-serve snack sausage made with both pork and black beans. This came a few months after I discovered and became slightly obsessed with Duke's smoked sausages, another snack-aisle product, made with better ingredients and methods than your Slim Jims and other junk.

 

It all got me wondering if there was a way to make a cured, smoked sausage from beans, tofu and other non-meat ingredients, with or without any meat at all. Both options appeal to me. I like the idea of pork with other ingredients, but am also interested in the possibilities of a non-meat product with similar smoky, spicy flavor and comparable texture to a dried, smoked meat sausage. Any ideas where I can look? Most searches for black beans and sausage turn up recipes for those two items combined in a dish (which is, of course, delicious). I'm wondering about methodology and any other attempts to do this.

[scubadoo97]

I just Googled vegetarian sausage and got quite a few links.  One using mushrooms and lentils

[Martin Fisher]

Making Healthy Sausages by Stanley Marianski  and Adam Marianski

[Martin Fisher]

The Art of Making Vegetarian Sausages by Stanley Marianski  and Adam Marianski

[Kerry Beal]

8 hours ago, scubadoo97 said:

I just Googled vegetarian sausage and got quite a few links.  One using mushrooms and lentils

Very punny!

[Kerry Beal]

One of my favorite butchers told me tales of a potato sausage his mother used to make that sounded to die for - I think that pork fat may have played a big part in it though.

 

 

[Martin Fisher]

The idea and/or the 'necessity' has existed for a very long time. 

 

Source: The Bean-Bag, 1920

Edited June 21, 2018 by DiggingDogFarm (log)