This post is at the request of my twitter/instagram friend Liz!

Tempeh is a meat substitute originating in the far east made from fermented soya beans. Fermented foods are trendy at the moment and are helpful in improving digestion and gut health.

Tempeh has a slightly nutty taste and can be marinated and used in a variety of dishes. A few weeks ago I made some tempeh bacon with shop bought tempeh.

Tempeh is made by soaking dried soya beans, cooking them, mixing them with a mould and then fermenting in a warm place for a couple of days.

This is the second time I have made my own tempeh. The first time I received a free sample from www.tempeh.info so I went back to them to buy my starter/mould this time.

This website has all the information about tempeh you need and step by step instructions on how to make it. 

I bought my dried soya beans from Tesco for £1.60 for 500g and I bought 25g of starter for about £12 (website is based in Germany so all prices there are in euros). 600g of dried beans and a teaspoon of starter makes 1kg of tempeh so it’s a lot cheaper than store bought.

They recommend you split and remove the skins of the beans which I found a bit time consuming so I wasn’t too conscientious about this.

After they were cooked I let the beans cool down then I mixed them with the starter and put them in a sealed sandwich bag and put a few holes in it. I put the bag in the cupboard next to my oven which was still warm from cooking dinner. The next day I went to my in-laws for the weekend with my fingers crossed. On my return today I was glad to see it had worked and my tempeh was done. I only made a small batch this time as I wasn’t sure how warm it would be in my absence and I didn’t want to ruin a big batch.

I’m interested to try out different versions which they have on the website and perfect my technique.

Have you tried tempeh? Did you like it? Would you consider making your own? Let me know in the comments below.

Plumes x