Carro Bacon Recipe (Vegan + GF) (2024)

For those of you who asked for this recipe on our Instagram, today we will share a recipe that will knock your socks off. It's called Vegan Carrot Bacon, and it is delicious. I know what you're thinking: "Carrots? BACON?" Trust me, it works!

Tarah, this crispy and Tasty Carrot Bacon recipe makes a fantastic side dish. It is incredible what we can do with a bit of imagination!

You think of the shape, the color, the textures, the flavors, and get into the creating lab! I love that process.

That's how we came up with this Carrot Bacon recipe. It's the perfect way to add a little bacon flavor to your breakfast without switching out your morning favorites.

Plus, sneaking some vegetables into your diet first thing in the morning is a healthier alternative. Give it a try, and let me know what you think!

We wanted to achieve the smokiness and crispiness of bacon, so this is how we did it!

🧾 Ingredients

Apart from large carrots, to make this delicious bacon recipe, our choice of spices and liquids for the marinade is:

• Gluten-free soy sauce (or coconut aminos)
• maple syrup
• onion powder
• garlic powder
• smoked paprika
• balsamic vinegar
• black pepper

Optionally sesame oil or olive oil, is good if you want to make really crispy bacon. Remember, vegan bacon doesn't have the fat; that's why carrot bacon recipes usually add some oil to make it crispy.

However, if following a WFPB diet, you can skip the oil, the vegan bacon just won't be as crispy.

🔪 Instructions

This is how to make a carrot bacon recipe: you first create a marinade with those spices that will make us think of bacon.

Our choices of spices and liquids for the marinade are soy sauce, maple syrup, onion powder, garlic powder, smoked paprika, balsamic vinegar, and black pepper.

With this Vegan carrot bacon recipe, you could play around with the ingredients. For example, you could optionally you could replace the balsamic vinegar with liquid smoke if you want a piece of full-on smoky flavor.

However, I prefer to go for balsamic vinegar since liquid smoke contains harmful carcinogens. So, if you use it in your kitchen, make sure you do it in moderation.

Preheat the oven to 350 ºF (175 ºC).

Start by making the marinade for your vegan bacon, mixing up the gluten-free soy sauce, smoked paprika, garlic powder, onion, powder, balsamic vinegar, and maple syrup.

Peel the carrots and simply slice them as thinly as possible, making carrot strips. Ideally, you would use a mandolin, but a sharp knife and good precision also help. You can also try a vegetable peeler.

You then want to marinate the sliced carrots in the mixture. Use a shallow dish; otherwise, the tops and bottoms of the carrots won't get enough juice. Place carrots in, and let them marinate.

Proceed with baking marinated strips, using a lined baking sheet with parchment paper to handle the carrots easier.

Halfway through, once the carrots start bubbling. Flip the carrot slices with your kitchen tongs and add any remaining marinade. Ensure you close the oven while you do that, so the oven doesn't lose its temperature.

An air-fryer also works very well.

💡 Tips and notes

Be aware that these are carrots and not bacon, of course. So, you may want to call the carrot chips instead.

When we are in the process of leaving animal products behind or simply eating healthier, we need to adjust our tastebuds. But hey! It is all for a good cause, the animals, the environment, and our health!

For example, bacon has much unhealthy saturated fat that provides many flavors and substances you don’t want in your body!

Method

Instead of using a regular oven, you could make this vegan carrot bacon recipe air-fried. I do not own an air fryer, but the marinade and method are entirely applicable for an air fryer.

Extra crispy

Add olive oil, sesame oil, or peanut oil to the marinade.

Flavor

If you want the carrots to have a more intense flavor, you can marinade the carrot strips overnight and/or add liquid smoke into the marinade. Coconut aminos, and liquid aminos, make great gluten-free replacements for soy sauce.

When you make carrot bacon is important to watch out for the oven closely after you turn the carrots; you might burn the strips! Look!

🥢 How to serve

Eat your plant-based bacon as you would typically do with bacon—either side by side with your tofu scramble (see tofu scramble recipe), sweet potato breakfast hash, Vegan BLT, or inside of any sandwich or veggie burger. It makes a great side dish in general.

🍶 Substitutions

• Carrots - well, although carrots are the stars of this recipe, you can use the same principles with other root vegetables such as sweet potatoes, beets, and yams. Simply cut them thinly, ideally with a mandoline.
• Aminos - you can dissolve yeast marmite in water to add more umami to your veggie bacon.

🥕 More carrot recipes

Carrots are always present in our kitchen, either as maple bacon carrots or in many other ways.

We make them in all possible ways, including juicing, where we have some favorites like the delicious Carrot, Apple, and Celery Juice; our hydrating Carrot, and Cucumber juice is another great way to use carrots.

Then we love making soups, and the Carrot and Ginger Soup is our indisputable favorite, head to head with the Curried Sprouted lentils soup, which also features delicious carrots.

We also love having carrots as a main dish, like in our Savory carrot tart, next to a nice green salad, or enjoying something more exotic like the Miso Maple Glazed Carrots, which have become a Holiday dinner classic.

We even make pesto out of carrot tops, it is delicious, and it is a great way to reduce waste. What otherwise would have finished in the compost bin becomes a delicious pesto sauce.

If you love carrots, you will surely love our 1-pot carrot cake, made with our go-to gluten-free flour blend, for a healthy treat or breakfast.

⭐ If you try this recipe, let us know! 💬 Leave a comment, rate it, and don't forget to tag us @ourplantbasedworld on Instagram. Cheers!

📋 Recipe