— Toni Crawford

Making a vegan Turkey out of wheat gluten, um, is, uh, you're, you're talking about Satan, basically. Um, and the reason that people started doing that was it gave a texture really of the Turkey, and it's a sliceable kind of thing that you can slice off. 'cause you're, it's almost like a bread kind of, you know, uh, if you think about it, but it's thicker and it's juicy and has that kind of same, um, kind of thing that you can cut through in that same way. I've actually never really been a fan of the wheat gluten turkeys. Um, they get big around the holidays, a lot of people will sell them. Um, but if you're looking for a substitution that's not gluten, you might want to look to something like tofu. And if you're looking to get that same kind of texture, you might wanna try freezing tofu because you'll get that actual, the texture that instead of being like a really kind of light soft texture of tofu, new freeze tofu will become a little bit more stringy and have a little bit more fibrous, um, you know, kind of texture to it. Now, of course, you would have to marinate that tofu beforehand to be able to make sure that you would get that same kind of flavor that you're looking for, either using like a, a brine of some sort or just, you know, a marinade to be able to get that going. But, um, you know, if you're looking to do a Turkey, uh, you know, there are a lot of different ways to do it, but I typically just go outside of a Turkey instead of trying to recreate a meat protein, um, for like a holiday meal, I'll typically go with something, um, a little more tra like non-traditional. Um, so making things like lasagnas or, you know, bakes or all kinds of different things that you can be able to make off those. But if you're looking to be able to do a vegan Turkey specifically without, um, using wheat gluten, I would probably suggest going towards a tofu and then also doing a frozen version of it. Now, if you're wanting to do a loaf, that's a whole different thing where it says a vegan Turkey loaf. So if you're doing loaf, um, like kind a bread pan, kind of a style, a lentil loaf is actually a wonderful, uh, compliment to be able to make that happen. It goes great with gravy, so you can use it for holidays as well too. Um, so, you know, looking into a lot of those, we have a lentil and garbanzo bean loaf that our kids actually even love, which is great. It has a nice, um, you know, firmness to it. Uh, but it's not recreating a meat like texture. It's kinda like a meatloaf fish kind of a thing. Um, but it's definitely not, uh, like a sliceable kind of texture like you would get with the vegan Turkey. Alright, um, out of gluten, that is hope that helps Tony.