The Vegan Thread

I made breaded grapefruit-peel steak last night and it was damn good.

It's an old Cuban recipe from times of hardship. The few accounts I found of people trying to make it today all said they couldn't quite get rid of the bitterness. But I gave careful thought to the marinade, using flavours that are known to counteract bitterness (turmeric, paprika, tomato puree, a little toasted sesame oil added in to the olive oil, sugar, salt). At step 5, instead of using vegetable-chicken broth, I pre-marinaded the steaks in something else well known for removing bitterness - milk (oat milk in my case but I bet diluted coconut milk would work a charm).

I used my hands to carefully remove the whole peel from each the inner fruit, rather than cut it along the segment boundaries and then cut those in two, so that I could have four larger pieces rather than a lot of smaller ones.

Texture was great (probably wouldn't be if you're not careful to squeeze the excess moisture out at each step), flavour was good. My partner yummed it up and found it hard to believe me when I told her, halfway through the meal, what it actually was. No grapefruit bitterness detected while eating, although there may have been a slight aftertaste (she said no, I thought there was but I'd also been carefully sampling bits of peel at various stages so it might just have been left from that).

I found the marinade gave plenty of taste so I didn't miss the faux-meat flavouring, but the rind should soak up your not-meat flavouring of choice. I liked the steaks much more than the typical meat-replacement because the texture was, well, real and had a proper consistency.

Would recommend, will certainly make again at some point.