Easy Tempeh Bacon Recipe

I had a date. An actual date, with an actual human man, the first in — I'm not going to calculate how long, because the number would be embarrassing. His name is Jason. He's a paramedic. We've been orbiting each other in the Anchorage medical world for two years, the way that ER nurses and paramedics orbit — handoffs in the bay, brief conversations over trauma, the professional intimacy of shared emergencies that is not the same as personal intimacy but looks similar from the outside.

He asked me for coffee. I said yes because I was tired of saying no to things that weren't the ER. We went to Kaladi Brothers — Alaska's coffee chain, the local answer to Starbucks — and talked for two hours. He's from Anchorage, born here, which makes him a rare Alaskan — most people arrive from elsewhere, drawn by the oil or the military or the particular madness that makes a person choose a state accessible only by plane. Jason is homegrown. He talks about Alaska the way I talk about Filipino food: with love and specificity and the casual expertise of someone who's never known anything else.

I didn't tell him about the PTSD. Not on the first date. I told him I cook Filipino food and write a blog. He said he'd read it. He said he'd tried adobo once at a Filipino restaurant in San Diego and loved it. I said, "Restaurant adobo is to my mother's adobo what a photograph is to a sunset." He laughed. I liked his laugh. It was unrehearsed, surprised, the kind of laugh that comes from the gut and doesn't apologize.

After the coffee, I went home and made tocino — Filipino cured pork, sweet and red, the breakfast meat that goes with garlic rice and eggs the way longganisa does but with a different personality. Tocino is sweeter, less garlicky, cured in sugar and annatto until the meat turns a deep rose-red that looks artificial but tastes like someone loved you enough to marinate pork for three days. I ate the tocino with rice and a fried egg and sat at the table and thought about Jason.

I'm cautious. Dr. Reeves would say appropriately cautious, which is therapist-speak for "your caution is proportional to your history." I've been alone for a long time. Alone by circumstance and then alone by choice and then alone by habit, and now a paramedic with a good laugh is drinking coffee across from me and I don't know what to do with it except make tocino and think. The thinking is part of the process. The tocino helps with the thinking.

I made tocino that night because my hands needed something to do while my head sorted through the coffee and the laugh and the two hours that felt shorter than they were — but I know not everyone keeps annatto and three-day patience on hand, and the spirit of the thing is really about a sweet, savory cured breakfast meat that asks something of you while giving a lot back. This tempeh bacon scratches that same itch: it marinates, it crisps, it turns a deep satisfying color in the pan, and it gives you just enough to think about while you cook so you don’t have to think about everything else. Serve it with rice and a fried egg and whatever is quietly occupying your mind.

Prep Time: 10 minutes + 30 minutes marinating | Cook Time: 10 minutes | Total Time: 50 minutes | Servings: 4

Ingredients

8 oz tempeh, sliced into thin strips (about 1/8-inch thick)
3 tablespoons soy sauce or tamari
1 tablespoon maple syrup
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
1 teaspoon liquid smoke
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 tablespoon neutral oil (for the pan)

Instructions

Make the marinade. In a shallow bowl or small baking dish, whisk together the soy sauce, maple syrup, apple cider vinegar, liquid smoke, smoked paprika, garlic powder, and black pepper until fully combined.
Slice the tempeh. Cut the tempeh into strips as thin and even as you can manage — about 1/8-inch. Thinner strips crisp up better and absorb the marinade more thoroughly.
Marinate. Lay the tempeh strips in a single layer in the marinade. Turn each piece to coat. Let sit for at least 30 minutes at room temperature, or cover and refrigerate for up to 8 hours. The longer it marinates, the deeper the flavor.
Heat the pan. Warm a large skillet over medium heat and add the oil. When the oil shimmers, the pan is ready.
Cook the tempeh bacon. Add the marinated strips in a single layer, working in batches if needed. Cook for 3 to 4 minutes per side until the edges are dark, the surface is caramelized, and the strips have crisped to your liking. Watch the heat — the maple syrup can burn quickly.
Rest and serve. Transfer to a plate lined with a paper towel for a minute, then serve immediately alongside garlic fried rice, eggs, or wherever a savory-sweet cured meat would be welcome.

Nutrition (per serving)

Easy Tempeh Bacon Recipe — The Breakfast Meat That Helped Me Think