This. Is. Happening. Well, only if you make it happen. Over at UnTurkey HQ, we’re taking a hiatus from the cooking, but not from the tech support. Post any questions you may have, and your call will be answered in the order received.

Links, links, links:
The original UnTurkey recipe.
Cooking notes and special modifications.

Fight the (Tofurkey) power! #OccupyUnTurkey!

Yep, this is still going on. And it’s better than ever.

Click here for the original UnTurkey recipe, and check out our cooking notes to make sure it’s extra perfect.

Year five! Let’s do this!

Here we are again, UnTurkeying it up again for Thanksgiving 2009. Making the UnTurkey has become a tradition for us, something we really look forward to every year. Last year we posted some modifications to the recipe that made the UnTurkey kick unholy amounts of arse, so check those out if you’re cooking it this year.

Let us know if you made the UnTurkey!

Believe it or not, we are back. And just in time to start your UnTurkey planning for the 2009 holidays. No way are we going to let a hosting mishap doom the the Western world’s vegans to a lukewarm, rubbery Thanksgiving with a lukewarm, rubbery Tofurkey.

So we’re back and better than ever (well, okay, mostly the same as ever), with the original UnTurkey recipe and our garish yet comforting red and green holiday theme, as your sherpas through the wilderness of turkey-shaped vegan food pods.

Click here for the original UnTurkey recipe!

We tried out some modifications this year, and the unflesh came out so tender and perfect that I wanted to jot some notes down before forgetting. If you have any notes of anything you tried, feel free to leave them in the comments.

- We poured one full cup of yeast spice mix in with the gluten flour (NOT in with the liquid). We used the bulk gluten flour at Rainbow instead of the usual Bob’s Red Mill.
- We replaced two cups of water for the gluten with two cups of veggie broth. We also added two Tbsp of tamari.
- We used the cheese cloth (rather than the baking-only modification).
- We poured in 1 and 1/3 cup of yeast spice mix in with the gallon of water.
- We wrapped the UnTurkey with three sheets of yuba, by first laying the yuba on top of the margarine greased cookie sheet.
- After boiling, we basted the unflesh (under the yuba) with a paste of yeast mix and olive oil.
- After covering with yuba, we basted again with yeast mix, olive oil and white wine.

Okay I think that’s it. More updates as they happen. And yes, we’re still on cam.

We’re getting started in a few minutes!!! The plan is to have everything done by 7pm PST. Already made: the light yeast flavoring powder, and s5’s World Famous Cranberry Sauce (recipe too secret to post here, sorry!).

We’ve set up a cam if you want to follow along at home. Can’t promise we’ll be interesting, but we’ll definitely be cooking! Music in the background is SomaFM’s Xmas in Frisko.

UPDATE: It’s going well. The rolled up UnTurkey is on the boil, about an hour in. The stuffing is done, and we’re moving on to our other dishes before we wrap up the UnTurkey with yuba.

Yep, we’re still here, and we’re still going to make it again for the third year in a row. And we’ll post another round of pics along with any improvements or new techniques we pick up along the way.

So stay tuned! And if you end up making it for your Thanksgiving feast, let us know, and remember to come back and post your own pics.

Click here for the original UnTurkey recipe!

This Thanksgiving s5 and I made our second UnTurkey. We changed the quantities of spices a little, but otherwise we stuck to the recipe you see here. It was definitely better than the first one we made last year, but I think it could have been better with even more spices. Here’s what we did differently:

- Made a double batch of the Yeast Flavouring
- Used double the amount of spices in the actual UnTurkey and triple in the basting mix
- Substituted 1 cup of veggie broth for water in the UnTurkey, and added a fair amount of soy sauce
- Basted the inside of the UnTurkey before we wrapped it in yuba

Next time I make the UnTurkey I plan to:

- Use three times the amount of spices in the UnTurkey
- Not knead the gluten dough so much – I hear this can make the UnTurkey tougher

Here’s our pictures from this year!

It’s been a year since we posted the UnTurkey recipe and we’ve had a lot of great feedback, including the creator of the Unturkey, Miyoko Schinner, who gave us her blessing and even left some tips on how to improve the recipe. Unfortunately, the UnTurkey isn’t back on the shelves, and there’s nothing really great to replace it, so it’s definitely UnTurkey time again!

Here are some pictures we took last year while making the UnBird. You can find the full set over at Flickr. Hopefully the photos can shed a little more light on the process, and address people’s questions about the Yuba skin (also known as “Bean Curd Sheet” – we get it at an Asian supermarket).

Happy Thanksgiving and remember, the UnTurkey will never die as long as it lives on in our hearts and on our holiday tables!

Well folks, if you’re reading this, it’s because you’ve heard the rumors that Now & Zen / Green Options is no more. We have no idea what happened, other than that they closed up shop, stopped answering the phone, took down their website, and disappeared off the face of the earth. Maybe if they had – crazy, I know – made some kind of announcement or something, vegans everywhere would have rushed to help them out. Instead they disappeared without a trace, and right in the middle of the holidays no less. (Hey, not that I’m BITTER or anything! I’m sure they had a really good reason, or something.)

So anyway, faced with the prospect of never having another UnTurkey again, we here at UnTurkey.org decided to take matters into our hands. Information wants to be free and all that, so we tracked down a used (and grease splattered) original Now & Zen cookbook and did what comes naturally: we started a blog.

After all, why not? The cookbook is out of print, and the company is out of business. No one is going to be making money off of this, so why not open source the recipe? Don’t get me wrong, I’d LOVE to call Green Options and ask them permission to distribute UnTurkeys, but “this voice mailbox is full, goodbye!”

And besides, for some of us, the UnTurkey has become a holiday tradition, and you just don’t fuck with people’s holiday traditions.

That said, if you love this recipe, please buy Miyoko Nishimoto Schinner’s new cookbook, The New Now and Zen Epicure: Gourmet Vegan Recipes for the Enlightened Palate.

(Disclaimer: We’re not associated with her or her book publisher in any way. We just love her recipes, and we’re peeved that we can’t get them in frozen form anymore!)

Okay, so on to the recipe.

First thing you should know is that the UnTurkey is actually five (5!) recipes. And we’ve lovingly transcribed them for you. The recipes posted here all link to each other, so just start with the first one and click through. Or, they’re all linked here for your convenience.

The Great Gluten Turkey: The fake bird.
Great Gluten Dressing: The delicious stuffing.
Gravy for Mock Turkey: The creamy gravy.
Light Yeast Flavoring Powder: A base ingredient.
Homemade Gluten: The other base ingredient.

Oh yeah, and we haven’t had a chance to actually cook the UnTurkey, since we wanted to get the recipe out there before Christmas, and cooking this looks like it will take at least a day or two. When we do, we’ll post pics and any pointers we pick up along the way, and we hope you will too.

Happy cooking!