Vegan Sausage — The One That Doesn’t Try Too Hard to be Meat.

 People often tell me they could never give up meat or dairy — as though eating vegan means eating less flavourful food. But I’ve found the opposite to be true. A well-made vegan meal can feel deeply hearty — rich with colour, texture, and scent. The plate becomes a landscape: roasted golds, bright greens, smoky reds, all layered with the depth of spices and the grounding feel of warmth.

When I start planning a meal, I don’t just scan the pantry for ingredients; I think about colour, texture, and the season we are in. What do our eyes need before our bodies even taste it? If it’s hot outside, I lean toward cooling foods — crisp cucumbers, mint, light grains. If it’s cold, I bring out warmth — a stews with cayenne seasoning or slow-roasted root vegetables. It’s a dance between opposite qualities, what Ayurveda calls the gunas — the qualities of nature. My husband, my daughter, and I each bring our own blend of those qualities, so every meal becomes an act of balancing all three of us in one dish.

I was on a mission to make a vegan sausage that didn’t fall into the usual traps: no tofu, not rubbery, not dry, and definitely not mushy. I wanted something satisfying — hearty enough to hold its shape, flexible enough to take on whatever mood or season I was in.

That’s how this vegan sausage came to life. I wanted something that held its shape, had a satisfying bite, and welcomed whatever seasonal or personal mood I wanted to customize it to be. I wasn’t looking to mimic meat — just to build something nourishing, flavourful, and full of options.

You can lean it toward chorizo by amping up the smoked paprika and cayenne, or make it “Christmassy” with sage, rosemary, and even add grated apple. Once you’ve done it once, you’ll see how easy it is to adapt.

Ingredients

• ½ onion
• 1–2 cloves garlic, mashed
• 1 cup gluten-free oats (I like to lightly toast them first)
• ½ cup walnuts
•  1 can cannellini beans, drained and rinsed (15 oz)
• 1 tablespoon tamari
• 2 teaspoons smoked paprika
• 1–2 tablespoons red pepper antipasto (the kind that includes hot peppers, eggplant, cauliflower, celery, carrots, onions)
• Option 1: parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme, black pepper (to taste)
• Option 2: more smoked paprika, ground ancho or cayenne pepper, cumin, dried oregano, freshly ground black pepper (to taste)
• Option 3: 1/2 apple grated, plus toasted sage leaves
• 2 tablespoons olive oil (this is to sauté the onion and garlic however you may use more in the batch if the mixture looks too dry)
• 3 tablespoons ground chia seeds
• ¼ cup water

Directions

1. Sauté onion and garlic in olive oil until soft but not brown. Add your seasonings (Optional #1 or #2 or 3# plus smoked paprika) and stir for about a minute to release their fragrance.
2. In a food processor, pulse oats and walnuts together until roughly ground. Add the white beans and pulse again.
3. Add the onion-garlic mixture plus the tamari. Pulse to blend — it should be cohesive but still textured.
4. In a small bowl, mix water and ground chia seeds. Let it sit for a minute to thicken, then add this plus the antipasto to the food processor and pulse to combine.
5. Divide the mixture into four even balls, then roll each into a sausage-shaped log.
6. Wrap each log tightly in parchment paper, then in foil.
7. Poach the wrapped sausages over gently simmering water covered with a loose lid for about 35 minutes.
8. Let them cool, unwrap, and slice diagonally.
9. Fry the slices in a bit of olive oil until golden and crisp on the edges.

 They keep well in the fridge or freezer and reheat well in a skillet or oven. 

I serve these with options: 

1. Roasted potatoes (I’ll give a recipe for those one day), and sautéed kale, caramelized red pepper and a tahini green peppercorn dipping sauce 
2.  Mustard and sauerkraut for a rustic meal
3.  You can crumble one into pasta sauce,  or tacos
4.  They are really good for breakfast with silken tofu hollandaise sauce

A Note from the Kitchen

Cooking, for me, is an extension of practice. It’s where my awareness influences creativity — a place to rehearse balance in small, sensory ways. The way a spice blooms in oil, the way a texture forms in your hands as you roll it, the quiet poach of water on the stove.

When we cook this way, we’re not just feeding the body. We’re training the senses to listen — to the season, to the ingredients, to the people we feed, and to ourselves.

During our yoga practices, we don’t aim to escape the senses — we begin by enlivening them. Practice invites us to notice: the expansion of the breath in the ribs, the sound of the exhale, the texture of the mat beneath the feet. Through this attention, the senses become sharper, clearer, and more of the centre is felt.

Even with all that sensory attention, I still miss the mark sometimes. There are nights when I step back from the counter and realize I’ve made a dinner that’s entirely beige—soft tofu, pale grains, roasted roots all blending into one neutral landscape. It’s not exactly the meal that hums with light or colour or nourishment. And yet, that’s part of practice too. We don’t always get it right. Sometimes awareness simply shows us what’s missing. From that noticing, the next meal becomes a little more alive—spice wakes up, colour returns, and the plate once again feels like the earth after rain.

As awareness refines, we begin to sense not just what we touch, but how we touch it. The difference between seeing and truly perceiving. This is the early stage of pratyahara — the withdrawal of the senses — not by dulling them, but by gathering them inward, absorbing them. We learn that we can feel everything without being pulled in every direction.

It’s a kind of training for life: to participate fully in the world, to taste and see and listen deeply, and yet to remain steady. The senses stop running the show and start serving awareness instead.

In the kitchen, this feels the same — tasting as you go, noticing scent, texture, sound — not to chase sensation, but to be present within it. Each sensory detail becomes a small doorway into awareness.