After a lot of research and many failed attempts we finally created the first ever all vegan sheekh kebab. Our greatest accomplishment so far!
What made us create it?
Sure there's the Beyond Meat burger and great vegan doner kebabs out there, but what about a sheekh kebab you would expect to find on a mix grill? Juicy, succulent and packed with complex spices and aromatics in that perfect hollow cyclindrical shape? Nope we haven't seen it either.
After that mouthwatering thought we quickly got to work. We had to start with the kebab mince. It's actually quite simple. Just proteins, fats, water and minerals all in the correct proportions and structure. Sounds pretty easy, and the CEO of Beyond Meat puts it together quite well:
"Animals spend massive amounts of energy consuming plants to make protein. We start directly with the plant material and build from that". CEO of Beyond Meat, Ethan Brown.
You might find it suprising that around 70-75 percent of the world's soy is fed directly to livestock and only 6 percent of soy is turned into human food. So it only seemed right to start with protein made from soya. This along with pea protein and rice protein created a great combination of proteins with a diverse amino acid profile. The charatceristic red-ish colour comes from beets. Potatoes are added to bind the ingredients and give some stability. The last characteristic to the sheekh kebab is the tender juiciness, which mainly boils down to the fat content. In regular red meat it is usually 20% fat and 80% meat. We used a solidified vegetable fat which had a melting point similar to beef tallow. After that it's the powerhouse of spices and aromatics which make the most tastiest sheekh kebab ever!
Going Forward
At Dhil's Eats we are constantly learning to better the taste and texture of our food, so don't be suprised to see new iterations of our vegan sheekh kebab! Our next mission is to create a mince with a 3D network of protein fibres which will hopefully improve the texture!