Vegan Chef Tries Making Taco Bell Crunchwrap Supreme

Hey guys, it's me Shep, I'm going to do something a little different today. I'm going to try to make an ultimate Taco Bell Crunchwrap, but make it

vegan

. I've never actually had a Taco Bell Crunchwrap Supreme, but I have a lot of fast food. In my youth, so I know what it is, basically, you wrap a big amount of

taco

filling in one of these big flour tortillas, nice and crunchy on the outside, but then it's soft and gooey and still crunchy on the inside. Somehow, I think tasting like a hard

taco

wrapped inside a quesadilla is a very brilliant idea.

I have to give it to the fast food overlords, whoever they are, so that's what we're going to try to get right today, so I'm on the standard Crunchwrap Taco Bell website.

supreme

has like seven main components ground beef nacho cheese sauce sour cream flour tortillas toast and lettuce and tomatoes obviously those first three things aren't

vegan

so I'll have to come up with some vegan substitutes okay I've never made a vegan meat substitute ground or any type of taco meat like this, so it will be a bit of an experiment, but I have a vegan beef wellington recipe that will be a bit of a guide.

It has a really meaty flavor and has three main ingredients for the meat substitute. I have mushrooms, tofu, and walnuts, but it's very soft, so I don't want it to be exactly the same because the ground beef should have more texture. You should be able to crumble it into small pieces, so I'll try to get rid of it. tofu and instead of using lentils the lentils have a lot more texture so I think they will work better. I'm thinking what I'll do is cook these lentils and then mix them with the mushrooms, onions and walnuts. I'll make it into some kind of dough that will hopefully become some kind of mixture that I can form with my hands and then I'll finish it off by cooking it on the stove and breaking it up into little pieces. small pieces like ground beef.

I'm going to try cooking the lentils a little bit and hopefully that will give us some of that texture that we're looking for in the ground beef. I'm going to bring this stove so you guys like to see. a little better what I'm doing while I'm doing it. I don't know if you can hear me over this unpleasant noise, but we'll let this warm up first and then add Alexis, stop everything. Okay, I think the lentils are ready. I think that's enough. I think the lentils are ready. I'm going to go check them out. Alright. These lentils are a little undercooked, which is good.

These nuts probably look and smell pretty toasted. Alright. I'm going to Put this aside now we're going to use the food processor, what did you want to do with the food processor? Oh sure, I have the lentils a little undercooked, they have a little bite to them, but add them to this food processor. I'm going to try pressing these lentils until they break, that's not how you press them, the button was already pressed. I think we're going for something a little more shredded than this. I think this is good. I think We are in business, it is very beautiful.

Oh, partially cooked unseasoned lentils mashed up in a bowl. No, it's not for me. I'm going to grind these nuts to a fine crumb and you don't want the nuts to stay with a meal for too long. processor because then you will start to get nut butter that is delicious but not what we are looking for today. Now I'm going to add these mushrooms and onions and we're just going to pulse this until everything finally breaks down, I think a couple of mixes at the beginning is good and then a couple of pulses at the end, although I wasn't supposed to do that, one pulse is when you mix it continuously and one pulse is when everything is fine.

Now I'm going to add this mushroom, walnut and onion mixture to the lentils, so for the rest of this filling I'm going to add a little bit of ground flaxseed meal because I think it will be a good binder to help bind the mixture together, so I'm going to start with about a tablespoon. I'll also use some nutritional yeast, it always adds a nice depth of flavor, some nice umami notes. Let's make 3 tablespoons of taco seasoning. I thought about

making

my own taco seasoning, but it's taco

bell

. I'm not trying to be too gourmet here. just a little gourmet, not like super gourmet, start with the spoonful.

I'm also going to take some smoked paprika because it adds this nice red color, but I also like the smoky flavor of smoked paprika. I think it's great when you're trying to replicate something meaty. a little bit of pepper, obviously, we'll add a little bit of salt again, obviously, I feel like normally my hands might be easier to hold together, but you have to use your hands to do it. I think it's not bad, but it doesn't taste very meaty. like a veggie burger that's delicious but doesn't taste like meat, so what can we do? I also think you could use more taco seasoning because this taco meat tastes more like a taco than we do, but I think I need to add more meat flavors.

I'm going to grab a couple more ingredients, okay, these are two ingredients that I don't use that often, but I think they'll be put to good use here, this is protein and mushroom powder, very close to a rich, savory flavor and the another thing I have here. It's this vegan beef flavored seasoning base for broth, so you're supposed to mix it with water to make a beef broth if you want to make French onion soup, but make it vegan, it actually smells quite a bit like beef. beef. Let's start with a teaspoon, it's definitely tastier. I think it could use a little more of this, although it's pretty good.

Today I will try to cook it and I also think that once it is cooked and the heat produces its chemical reactions, it will taste. Even better because the onions and mushrooms won't be raw. I think we have something good here. Sigmund A. to heat some olive oil in this pan. It smells like meat. Good. Cook this for about five minutes for Forsch. That's pretty good. I haven't had great meat in a long time, so I'm 100% sure you spilled it everywhere. You think I can see you thinking. I mean, it tastes a lot like beef and the texture is pretty good, so it's a pretty good substitute.

I will do that. Say what you're going to say, but I can hear it, it's not oily enough. I don't like very greasy things, but for the integrity of the recipe for the integrity of the fast food industry, hmmm, I'll try to grease it up here. Taco Bell uses nacho cheese sauce so I thought the obvious choice here would be my Mexican flavored cheese sauce from my buffalo chickpea quesadillas which you guys really love so that's what we'll do with cashews, yogurt coconut or any York sauce vegan nutritional yeast. water, chili powder, smoked paprika, cumin, kosher salt, black pepper, it's so good it could be a little more nacho.

Can I get one more ingredient? pickled jalapeños, they are called sliced ​​jalapeño nachos. I think they are perfect for nachos just to give it that really distinctive touch. to the girlfriend's nacho flavor, oh my gosh, I didn't think this cheese sauce could get any better, but it did get better, so I remembered that I have to use the Vitamix to make the sour cream, so I'm going to give it a little wash. This is how I wash my Vitamix. I think it's the best way. I fill it with a little water, a little dish soap, and then blend it again so that the vegan sour cream at the base is silken tofu.

I've never done. I made silken tofu sour cream but the other day I made a salad dressing like a creamy salad dressing with silken tofu and it was really good so I feel like this could work and we need some acidity in the sour cream so I'm going Add a mixture of lemon juice and apple cider vinegar along with some fine sea salt and garlic powder. Okay, let's mix this up and see how it turns out. It is very soft and creamy. It just tastes like tofu. I mean, it needs more salt and we're. a lemon juice they have more garlic powder it's a little chalky it's not good at all no this is not sour cream let's go back to the drawing board we're going to have to try something else okay so silken tofu no It worked for our creamy acid, so I'm going to use a rock cashew base instead.

I had to take a break to soak them in boiling water for an hour. The other ingredient I want to use is coconut yogurt because it has that nice flavor that you get with fermentation and that's very important for sour cream, I think so. I feel like coconut yogurt will make it much more sour cream, since I also have vegan sour cream in my fridge right now as a store-bought version, but I wanted to try

making

one. Since I know that not everyone has access to vegan sour cream or may not want to buy it, we will add the lemon juice again.

I'm considering this, but I'm pretty sure it's like 2 and 1/2 to 3 tablespoons. in this lemon, so the other thing I didn't like about the sour cream was that the apple cider vinegar flavor was quite pronounced, so I think I'm going to use something more neutral like white vinegar because it really has no flavor and Of course, I need some salt and garlic powder, so a lot of the same ingredients we're using are a totally different base, so hopefully it will taste like sour cream and not completely gross, so there's no a lot of liquid here, so it will need to be scraped off a bit. down we're going to have to add a little bit of water for this to come together well, we're going to need a little more water, a tablespoon more, okay, that's pretty good, I think we're a good place for sour cream, but As I mentioned, I also have store bought sour cream this is the tofutti brand.

I really like this, it tastes a lot like traditional sour cream, it's very good, very thick and creamy. I would choose this one because it doesn't require any work and cashews aren't cheap. You know, of course, you're going to buy this too, but I still think it's a better option, moving on to the crunchy part of the crispy wrapper, the toast shell that goes inside the flour tortilla. I bought some pre-made toast shells. They are nice and crunchy, but the problem is that they are very soft and flavorless. We're going to make our own tostadas and all you need to do is get some corn tortillas.

Soft corn tortillas. Spread them with a little olive oil. Put them in the oven at 400 degrees. Fahrenheit or five minutes, then flip them for another four or five minutes and then they should be like nice, crunchy iceberg lettuce. This is probably the only time I use iceberg lettuce when making tacos, it has that nice crunchy crunch to it, but otherwise it's pretty. It's useless, but it's good for this chopped guy, and I have a tomato that I'm going to dice and we'll also add sauce to it, so I don't think it needs too much tomato to hold its shape in a short time. the meal won't use as many vegetables, it's a last minute decision to make guacamole, but I really love guacamole.

I think everyone loves guacamole, so I thought I would make it taste better. This is a good avocado. Hey? This is the one I gave him. this one a B+ yeah I give this one like a b-minus oh it smells bad it's not a B - it's a D - OH I'm probably making too much guacamole but in my opinion there is no such thing as too much guacamole lime it feels very juicy make it juicier when you roll it kinda not much heat in a crunchy wrapper but I love jalapeños in guacamole so I feel like it's kind of central and I also have a little bit of cilantro that I'm just staring into, think cilantro, avocado, lime and jalapeno , everyone is like best friends.

Tequila is like the crazy best friend you love to have wild adventures with, but you don't always want them around. I don't want to. crazy tequila in my guacamole no thanks I'm also going to add a little bit of garlic and I'm just going to use my garlic press and finally a little bit of salt I think we're ready to put it all together taco meat cheese sauce sour cream guacamole lettuce tomato tortillas toast Let's get to it , all the components separately taste great, so I'm pretty sure they will taste very, very good together. I'm going to start by adding a little bit of this nacho cheese sauce to this large flour tortilla and I'm going to keep it as a pretty generous edge because I have to fold it over and then we're going to add some of our vegan taco meat on top of the cheese sauce without coming out of this little border that I created.

I'm going to add one of these crispy corn tortillas, put it right on top and then add some sour cream on top. I'm going to go ahead and use the sour cream I made since I made it, but I'll probably try one from the store as well. I bought sour cream and will see if there is a big difference. Now I'm going to add some of these fresh tomatoes that I cut up earlier and I'm also going to have some sauce. I think you're going to get a good flavor out of the sauce and now we're going to add some of this very gourmet iceberg lettuce, some guacamole, yeah, it looks really good and just a little bit of cilantro on top, a couple of leaves to give it more flavor. .

Now we're going to fold this and we're going to start at the bottom and then we're going to wrap it, I think it's got six sides, kind of a hexagonal shape and we're going to wrap it over the fillings and the problem is this is a 10 inch tortilla and most of the tortillas that you'll find in stores are ten inches, that's the largest size, but I feel like fast food restaurants, Mexican restaurants use huge 12 inches, which would be big enough tofill this crunchy wrap, but as you can see, we have a little problem here, so in my Crunchwrap research I discovered that you can use an extra piece of tortilla to close that little hole and it works pretty well.

I'm going to heat this pan with a little bit of olive oil, just a little bit over a seam over medium heat. upside down and cook it until crispy, flip it over and then it should be fineoh my goodness it really tastes like fast food in the best way possible which exceeded my expectations. That's some crazy magic that's so good. Honestly, like the five best things you've ever done or the other ones, my kofta, well, I don't know. Maybe I'll talk to I can't think of anything else right now You've got another bite of this So does it get an A+?

Can you turn off that camera? I want to be alone with this for a while. Hey, I turned it off.