All the smoky flavours of a super easy home made BBQ sauce are infused into these vegan Bean and Lentil Tacos!

I stuff my face a lot.  A LOT.  The joys of food blogging means there’s always something different to cook/eat.  Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t all vegan chocolate cake and bbq bean and lentil tacos.  Well I mean it kind of is.  But it’s also knowing what’s going to work – so that I save myself some drama, time and ingredients.  It’s about the endless washing up, the pulling strange positions to get the exact right photograph so that you, dear reader, want to make the things we bloggers have toiled over.

But yes, some days it is all barbecue tacos.  And chocolate cake 😉

And boy did I stuff my face with these.  The combination of meaty textures (sans meat ofc), rich barbecue sauce and bright fresh pea guacamole made me want to just funnel these straight into my mouth one after the other.

Don’t be put off by what looks like a shopping list of ingredients for this tacos recipe.  If you really want to buy the bbq sauce instead of making your own that’ll halve the list, but I’ve always found with most overly processed things they have their own list of (sometimes unpronounceable) ingredients and they usually lack any flavour.  And I dislike bland food even more than I dislike washing up 😉

And because I’m using only the finest ingredients for the ‘meat’ in these barbecue tacos I really wanted to do them justice.  If you’ve followed us for a while you’ll know how much of a fan of Hodmedod’s we are.  It’s been a wonderful partnership getting to know and use incredible ingredients that they collect and distribute from some amazing British farms.  And every year they keep bringing us even more variety.

One of my very favourites is their umami paste.  It brings true depth of flavour to so many things.  We add it to chilli, lasagne, shepherd’s pie and vegan meatballs.  And of course these tacos!

How to make vegan tacos

Start by cooking the haricot beans and lentils separately to the sauce.  They take a reasonable amount of time to cook and because home made barbecue sauce is unctuous and sticky, it’ll likely burn before the pulses are cooked.  Not a good flavour.  Or smell.

How to make your own barbecue sauce

The sauce itself couldn’t be simpler.  Saute your onions, garlic and pepper till just soft then add the rest of the seasonings and spices and a dash of water to bubble all those flavours together.  Chuck in your cooked beans and lentils and voila, taco filling full of deliciousness!

How you serve your vegan tacos can be a very subjective topic!

I’ve gone for cooling minted pea guacamole as the base.  I’ve put a brief description of how to make this in the recipe notes but since I posted about this on Instagram stories a couple of weeks ago I’ve had lots of comments asking for the full recipe so I’ll do that as a separate post.  Because I’m currently smearing this pea guac on pretty much everything right now.  It’s so easy and mostly the same as an ordinary guacamole.  Boil some petit-pois peas then mash half with an avocado, a clove of crushed garlic, lemon juice and salt and pepper.  Then stir in some shredded fresh mint (just 3-4 leaves), sliced spring onions, cumin and the rest of the peas.

You have my permission to go forth and smear!

For the extra topping I’ve just gone with some diced bell pepper and red cabbage for crunch and shredded basil because I love basil.  Would have it on cornflakes if that wasn’t weird.

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