Jamaican Jerk Tofu – a Vegan Recipe

If you fancy Jamaican food, but don’t want to do anything with meat, here is a brilliant alternative that can satisfy your taste buds. 

Jamaican food isn’t really about heat – it’s about creating a distinct and heavily spiced flavor array, and so, our today’s recipe- Vegan Jamaican Jerk Tofu will be a delicious combination of organic vegetables and eye-water spices. Let’s begin. 

Kabob Ingredients

1. 3 oz. packages of tofu
2. 1 15 oz. can organic pineapple
3. 1 medium organic red pepper
4. 1 medium organic yellow pepper
5. 1 medium organic orange pepper
6. 8 oz. package organic portobello mushrooms
7. 1/2 organic onion

Jamaican Jerk marinade ingredients

1. 1 cup organic, packed brown sugar
2. 6 organic garlic cloves
3. 4 Scotch bonnet peppers
4. 2 bunches organic green onions
5. 1 Tbsp organic ground thyme
6. 1/2 cup organic allspice
7. 1 tsp organic cinnamon
8. 1 teaspoon organic nutmeg
9. 2 Tbsp. organic soy sauce
10. Salt and pepper to taste

Serves six

Procedure 

1. Dump tofu in a large shallow dish. Use a clean fork to punch holes into the tofu, which will allow them to absorb more marinade. In traditional Jamaican cooking, the meat (here, we are using tofu) is rubber and scored with the sauce for more flavor.
2. Drain excess juice from pineapple, please reserve juice in a bowl, and add drained pineapple to tofu. 
3. Chop portobellos and pepper into thin bite-sized chunks that will quickly stay put on a skewer.
4. Slice the cut onion vertically into neat wedges. Add portobellos, peppers, and onion to the pile of tofu.
5. Chop thyme and green onions. Add green onions, thyme, and all other Jerk marinade ingredients to a blender; puree until evenly smooth.
6. When chopping the peppers, don’t forget your rubber gloves, and properly wash your hands afterward. And whatever you do, please don’t rub your eye! You can reduce the peppers’ heat by discarding the seeds and decreasing the number of peppers you use.
7. Likewise, you can quickly turn up the heat by increasing the amount of peppers and retaining the seeds. You can add a spoon more of soy sauce, or even some of the reserved pineapple juice, to make the marinade more fluidic if you like.
8. Pour the marinade over the tofu and cut vegetables. Traditional Jamaican Jerk cooking calls for marinading for at least 12 hours, then cooking very slow over a charcoal fire.
9. But if it’s a cold winter or lack time/patience, you can marinate the vegetables and tofu in the refrigerator for around 45 minutes. Then carefully place them on skewers and broil them until the tofu and vegetables’ edges are crispy and beginning to blacken.
10. You can also experiment with using various kinds of organic produce. Try mangoes, tomatoes (cherry tomatoes)–whatever you like.
11. To make this meal genuinely traditional Jamaican, serve the kabobs with a side of stiff dough bread. Beer is optional.