Vegan Smoked Salmon + Cream Cheese // Recipe Test

Testing out 2 recipes for vegan smoked salmon, and making homemade cashew cream cheese. Note: Both recipes include liquid smoke, but I forgot to mention that in my voiceover! Ooops. 🙂

things i used in this video:
blender: http://amzn.to/2z2lLp7
sprouting lid: http://amzn.to/2iAnZG5

My Vegan Fish Tacos Recipe Test:

//The Original Recipes:
—–Carrot Lox:
http://olivesfordinner.com/2015/03/carrot-lox.html
—–Tomato Lox & Cashew Cream Cheese:

Vegan NY Style Bagels With Tomato “Lox” and Cashew Cream Cheese

My Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/sarahsvegankitchen_/

Music:
“Buddha” – Kontekst

Howdy welcome back today I’m going to be doing one of my favorite types of videos which is a recipe test this is actually going to be a three for one so I’m going to be testing out two different recipes for vegan smoked salmon or LOX salmon

Used to be my favorite food so I’m really hoping that one or both of these recipes turns out well and I’m also going to be finally trying out homemade vegan cashew cream cheese I found a couple different versions of vegan smoked salmon and I couldn’t decide

Between them so I tried out a carrot and a tomato version I’m going to link both of the original recipes down below if you’re curious the carrot version I actually made a couple days ago because the recipe recommends that you let it marinate for several days for the best

Flavor and then the tomato one I made earlier today and now I’m just going to walk you through the steps that I took I took three large carrots rinse them then I poured a layer of sea salt into a loaf pan laid the carrots down and they were

Still wet then added more salt until they were completely covered then I bake them at 375 degrees for a full hour and a half gave them a couple minutes to cool slightly then I turned everything out into a baking dish chipped away at the salt crust to remove the carrots and

Then the recipe says to peel the carrots but I was having trouble doing that without the carrots starting to fall apart so I ended up leaving the skin on I sliced the carrots into strips of different sizes transfer them into a Tupperware then I mixed together olive

Oil soy sauce a little bit of vinegar and then I stirred that into the carrot strips cover them and let them marinate in my fridge for three days total for the tomato locks I started by slicing an X on top of four roma tomatoes I boiled

Them for just about a minute to separate the skin from the flesh I shocked them in an ice bath and pulled off the skins next I cut them in half and scooped out the seeds and the extra juice with my fingers I mixed up some soy sauce olive

Oil and the recipe calls for kelp powder but I looked and I couldn’t find that anywhere so I cut up a sheet of nori mixed it all together coated my tomatoes in this mixture then the recipe says to let it marinate for 30 minutes minimum I

Ended up letting mine sit for maybe two hours finally for the cream cheese all I did was soak two cups of raw cashews overnight I drained them and blended them in my Vitamix I did add a bit of water to get it to blend more easily but

Next time I probably won’t add the water just so that I can get a thicker end product after was completely smooth I took some pre-made vegan yogurt you want to make sure it’s unsweetened and unflavored I added a few tablespoons of that as well as some sea salt pulsed it

Just to combine everything and poured it into a clean mason jar I used a sprouting lid so that air would circulate and I let it sit out at room temperature for 3 full days to culture you can culture it for just one or two days if you like it just gets more sour

The longer it sits out so I’m going to start out by trying both of the smoked salmon recipes with all the fixings on the bagel because I feel like that’s what really counts the complete picture now I’m saying because I never used to eat smoked salmon just on its own now

This is how I always you see my smoked salmon on an everything bagel which is the best type of bagel in my opinion nice layer of cream cheese some sliced cucumber minced red onion or shallot a little bit of dill and fresh cracked black pepper and then a squeeze

Of lemon juice over the top just to brighten everything up going to try out the carrot one first Oh damn okay that’s pretty bomb but I don’t want to give you my impressions until I try the other one first so this is the tomato one I think they both taste very similar and they also look very similar to real smoked salmon when combined with the other ingredients the

Flavor is pretty similar which makes sense because both of the marinades have pretty much the same ingredients with the exception of the kelp texturally the tomato LOX still feels very much like tomatoes when you bite into it it’s really juicing the carrot ones though have a very similar mouthfeel smoked

Salmon is very like fatty sort of melts in your mouth and this does the same thing so as far as being a convincing substitute for real smoked salmon I would say the carrot LOX does a very good job you can even see the cooked carrot sort of shreds in the same way

That salmon does if you blindfolded someone and gave them this they might not be able to identify that it’s a carrot oh my gosh if you wanted to make like a vegan salad nicoise with salmon you could add some of that carrot in there it would be so good I would say

That the carrot version is for sure the winner if you’re judging by how similar it is texture wise taste wise to real smoked salmon which is not to say that the tomato version is not also delicious it’s just very obviously made of tomatoes but that recipe also has its

Merits because I did put together in like five minutes with ingredients I already had on hand and was ready within the day whereas the carrot one requires more foresight I haven’t even commented yet on the vegan cream cheese so I’m just going to try it on its own is that weird

Well it’s good it doesn’t taste like real cream cheese but then again I haven’t found a vegan cream cheese that tastes like the real thing yet you can taste the cashews when you eat it on its own but when I had it on the bagel all I

Really tasted was that nice sour sort of tangy cream cheese flavor so I think it’s a good stand-in for cream cheese in that sense this would also make a very very good vegan sour cream alternative as it’s at and cultured over the past few days it got super whipped and airy and fluffy

Which I like and I think this would make a good base for really any sort of dip that you wanted to make just add some more salt and nutritional yeast and herbs but all I’m pretty impressed with this I’ll absolutely make it again it was a very little effort I think it’s

More cost-effective than buying the store about versions and also of course much much healthier for you that concludes our recipe testing for the day I hope you enjoyed this video let me know if you try out any of these recipes and I will see you all very soon