Courtney Uncooked Episode 15_ Dacia’s Walnut Street Tacos
Intro: Courtney…Courtney Uncooked. I’m Courtney Uncooked cause that’s how I like my food. The vitamins and the minerals, you know they all get through. Absorbed into the body so that nothing gets lost when you start eating raw of your health you’ll be the boss. Raw vegan for my health and you know that health is wealth. To help you stay your best, we will welcome special guests. So let’s go make a recipe and have a lot of fun, your healthy living journey has just begun cause I’m Courtney…Courtney Uncooked. Courtney….Courtney Uncooked.
Courtney: Hi everyone I’m Courtney Uncooked and this is my great friend, Dacia Thorson with Honest Pastures. Your favorite faux imitation, meat vegan, plant-based company that is delicious. She’s slaying some steaks and kebabs and ribs and vegan chicken, and this girl has got it going on. So excited about this episode because she’s going to show us her delicious raw vegan walnut meat tacos.
They are absolutely out of this world and she’s showing us a bonus today of her raw vegan dill cashew sour cream, it is mouthwatering delicious. I can’t wait to show you how to make this today, but before we get started, Dacia, tell us a little bit about you, Honest Pastures. How long have you been doing this? And you know, what’s your motivation?
Dacia: So I went vegan 10 years ago and I didn’t stop eating animals because I didn’t like the way they tasted. I stopped eating animals because I didn’t want to hurt them anymore.
Courtney: Yeah.
Dacia: And in that process, I still wanted those comfort foods. So I designed a plant-based meat to satisfy that craving that you have with steaks, ribs, corned beef. And you know I’ve been an animal rights activist for 10 years too. We’ve been in business about a little over one year now and things are going fantastic.
Courtney: I’m glad to have her here today. I’m glad to have her as my friend, and of course, one of our partners on Courtney Uncooked. So definitely when you go to our website, courtneyuncooked.com and click on partners, you can get a link to Honest Pastures and learn all about her stuff. It is great. And while you’re there, make sure you remember to follow Courtney Uncooked on Instagram, like Courtney Uncooked on Facebook, and subscribe to Courtney Uncooked on YouTube and hit that notification bell so that you get my free raw vegan recipe each Monday night. Alright so we’re going to get started here and we’re going to make everything today in our Breville sous chef 16 cup food processor. This bad bad boy comes with a large cup and a small cup, and we’re going to use them both. And we’re going to go ahead and get started with the meat that we decided we’re going to put the sun-dried tomatoes in the large bowl first and get these all blended up before we add the walnut meat because we’re going to need a lot less time for the walnut meat to blend up because the walnuts are so soft where these, even though they’ve been soaking a few hours, they’re still going to be tougher to do. So I’m going to put some of the spice in there with them now to add that in there. Get that in there.
Dacia: So the spices that you’re using are.
Courtney: Thank you. Yes.
Dacia: Minced garlic, salt, a little bit of salt, a paprika, ground cumin, chili powder.
Courtney: Yep. And so I know that Dacia and I both love spicy things and so I actually tripled the recipe. If you take the recipe that I’m going to give you today at the end of the show, it’s going to have a tablespoon of paprika, a tablespoon of cumin, a tablespoon of chili powder. If you’re not into spice, back that down to one teaspoon, but you still definitely want to keep that in there because that’s going to help give it that authentic, meaty taste. All right, so we’re just going to get started here.
Courtney: Like I said, just get that nice and blended up you don’t have to have that, but you’re going to love the taste with the walnuts. As you can see, once you blend up the sun-dried tomatoes, it’s going to have almost a vegan barbecue like consistency. If you’ve ever seen barbecue jack-fruit, it looks exactly like that.
Dacia: So it still has little chunks in it, not quite a paste.
Courtney: Yes it does, and so now that that’s there, I’m going to go ahead and add both cups of walnuts, the rest of the spices and the rest of the nutritional yeast. Again, the nutritional yeast is optional, sun-dried tomato water I’m just going to add that in here. I’m just going to keep that on hand and just add that as needed here. Alright, this is always fun to do.
Courtney: We always dance when we are blending! Okay, so what I am going to do is just go in here and push down some from the sides. Although, gosh, I got to tell you that looks perfect.
Dacia: That looks pretty good. It does.
Courtney: We are going to take off this and yes we’re going to put all the taco meat in a bowl and then we’re going to use the small food processor cup and we’re going to make your dill cashew sour cream. It is so delicious. And Dacia do you know what did one nut say to the other nut when he sneezed?
Dacia: I don’t know.
Courtney: Casheeeeeew. So as you can see, this walnut meat, the consistency is absolutely perfect. It looks just like ground beef! Thank you for always reminding me to use the pulse button! I just push it on and dance and forget about it when I really should pulse it and because this is absolutely perfect. Perfect consistency. All right, so we’ve got our ground beef and now we’re going to make the delicious dill cashew sour cream, which actually takes the place of the cheese for me.
Courtney: Whenever I make tacos, I usually make a cheese to go with it as well. But now that I’ve discovered this cashew sour cream, I’m just using that no cheese. And then, of course, any toppings that you want. So this is super easy. We’ve just got a three-fourths cup of water, which I like to add first and a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar, raw apple cider vinegar and two tablespoons of lime juice.
Dacia: You can also use lemon juice if you prefer.
Courtney: Oh, okay. I’ve only done it with lime, I’ll never alter this in any way. This recipe is perfect don’t ever change anything!!
Dacia: So good.
Courtney: It is so good. So we’ve got half a teaspoon of dill here, which just makes this. And then we’ve got our cashews. Okay. So now we’ve got everything in the compartment of the small food processor. And now this, we’re not going to pulse, we want this as creamy as we possibly can, so this is gonna take a while.
Courtney: We’re just going to let it go. Okay. So over here we have all the toppings that you may want to use. And so I love tomatoes, and I have just cut up avocados here. You can make this into a beautiful guacamole, but I just prefer plain avocados, I love them. Some shredded carrots, this looks like cheese, cilantro. I love to just sprinkle some lime on the top of my tacos. Dacia loves cabbage.
Dacia: Yes I do.
Courtney: And then spring onions. You can use any kind of onions you want: purple onions, white onions. I love spring onions if I can get them. So we’re going to have spring onions today and then we’re going to wrap it all up into a romaine leaf. So I can’t wait! And as you can see, Dacia is just going to start assembling the tacos. Okay this looks really beautiful. I’m just going to pour this into a bowl. Look at this beautiful dill cashew sour cream, raw vegan, yum delicious. You can do this with a romantic leaf, you can do it with a collard, you can do it with anything.
Dacia: Okay.
Courtney: Kale yeah.
Dacia: Probably not spinach, but you could make a spinach salad and top it.
Courtney: Just look at that big sloppy walnut meat, raw vegan taco with cashew dill, sour cream cheese on the top and sprouts. And it looks like you’ve got some cheese in there and dripping on a plate. I mean, this thing looks so good Dacia.
Dacia: That’s just delicious.
Courtney: Look, show them yours. Hers is a little nicer and neater than mine but cheers to you.
Dacia: Cheers
Courtney: To health and wealth. What else is there?
Courtney: Making walnut meat tacos with my girl Dacia. These things are so good they’re gonna amaze ya. The meat was so authentic tasted like ground beef, and we saved lots of calories by wrapping it in a leaf. It was quick to make, couldn’t have been any faster. Check out her meat online just go search for Honest Pastures. No, you don’t need a stove or an oven to cook just a blender, dehydrator and Courtney Uncooked.