Have you seen the cooking with booze challenge I just posted on the YouTube channel?! The concept was just about using all the leftover booze you have lying around after the holidays and New Years. But cooking with booze is fancy AF and I love it. If done correctly, it really adds great flavor to dishes. It also sounds fancy when you tell people what it is!
These spiced rum jerk sunchokes with rice & beans are a perfect example of something fancy made with booze. Check out the challenge video below or keep scrolling for my contribution.
Sunchokes will change your life. They also might give you a lot of gas... just FYI... or so I've been told haha!
This dish was inspired by a meal I ate in Vancouver and it is supposed to mimic a jderk chicken style dish! I'm pretty impressed with how this turned out and I can't wait to make more hearty meals with this root veg.
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spiced rum jerk sunchokes with rice & beans
Hearty sunchokes make the perfect replacement for the chicken in this jerk-style dish with rice and beans!
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Servings:
Ingredients
rice & beans
- 1 C long grain rice
- 1 ½ C vegan chicken stock (or low-sodium vegetable stock)
- 4 green onions, finely chopped
- 3 garlic cloves, minced
- 1 ¼ C full-fat coconut milk
- 1 teaspoon fresh thyme
- 1 ½ C cooked kidney beans
- juice of 1 lime
jerk sunchokes
- 10 large sunchokes
- ½ C dark spiced rum
- ½ small yellow onion, roughly chopped
- 1 hot pepper (banana, scotch bonnet or habanero)
- 2 to 3 garlic cloves
- ¼ C loosely packed brown sugar
- 2 tablespoon ketchup (or tomato paste)
- 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
- ½ teaspoon cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon ginger
- ¼ teaspoon nutmeg
- ¼ teaspoon all spice
- ¼ teaspoon smoked paprika
- ¼ teaspoon cayenne (optional)
- 1 C vegetable oil, for frying
Instructions
- Cook rice in 1 ½ cups of water or low-sodium vegetable stock - or as per the instructions on your rice package. I added 1 vegan chicken bouillon cube to the water instead. Bring to a boil and simmer for 10 minutes or until the water is absorbed. Turn off the burner.
- Prepare the sunchokes by scrubbing them with a brush to remove any excess dirt. Leave them whole and with the skin on. Add them to boiling water and cook for approximately 15 minutes until fork tender. They should still have some firmness to them and not be too soft. Drain them from the water and run under cold water to prevent further cooking. Pat them dry with paper towel or a tea towel before frying.
- Heat 1 cup of vegetable oil in a wide flat bottom pan or cast iron skillet to 365°F. Once the oil is hot, smash the cooked sunchokes slightly with a potato masher so that the skin breaks a little revealing the starchy insides. Fry a couple at a time for 3 to 4 minutes, flipping half way through, until the skin looks brown and crispy. Remove with a pair of metal tongs or a slotted spoon allowing any excess oil to drip off over the pan. Then place onto paper towels.
- Once the sunchokes are fried, prepare the spiced rum sauce and preheat the oven to 425°F.
- In a small sauce pan, simmer the spiced rum for 3 to 4 minutes to cook off the alcohol. Then add to a blender along with the roughly chopped onion, garlic cloves, and a piece of your hot pepper. Add a small amount of the pepper and then adjust to your spice level by adding more once the sauce is blended. I used a banana pepper which is more mild, and used about ⅛ of the whole pepper. Also add brown sugar, ketchup, apple cider vinegar, and the spices. Cayenne is optional. I used it because I was using a milder pepper, however a habanero or scotch bonnet pepper which is traditionally used is much much hotter so be careful! Blend this sauce until smooth.
- Place the fried sunchokes onto a parchment lined baking sheet spaced slightly apart. Brush them with a good amount of sauce and try to push some of the excess underneath the sunchokes on the bottom. Bake for 10 minutes. Then baste the tops again, flip the sunchokes and baste the bottom with more sauce. Bake again for 10 minutes.
- Meanwhile, prepare the rice and beans by heating a pan over medium heat and add about ¼ cup of coconut milk to the pan along with most of the green onions (reserve some green parts to add after cooking) and garlic. Sauté for 4 to 5 minutes until softened. Then add fresh thyme and cook for another minute. Lower heat slightly if necessary to prevent burning.
- Add kidney beans, the cooked rice, the juice of ½ a lime, and the remaining coconut milk. Stir over low heat to combine well for 5 to 6 minutes. Then cover with a lid and remove from heat. The rice should absorb any remaining liquid while you prepare the sunchokes.
- Once the sunchokes are fully baked and slightly blackened, serve over rice and beans. Top each serving with more lime juice from the other half of the lime as well as the remaining green onions.
Elo
Lauren, can you link a way to cook beans in the milk, I can't find?
Khala
In the video she uses a can of kidney beans so they were already soft
Lisa
:53 into the video John mentions another challenge he won. I swear he's saying Halloween Candy, but if so, I can't find it on the blog. Looks like some general tso's vegan chicken something something. And I must have in my mouth. Please, someone, tell me what this is so I can find it on the blog. Thanks!
Jess
Made this last night and it was seriously so amazing. Maybe my fav thing I've ever made from hot for food (and all of your recipes are amazing). Thanks Lauren!!!
Melly
Would a cauliflower cut into a cauliflower steak work in place of sunchokes? I've looked in every store in my town for sunchokes but can't find them anywhere! I'm not sure what texture they have.
Khala
I just found them in Whole Foods today near the ginger and other roots
Shae
They also go by the name arrowroot. That's some of us Jamaicans call them. If you live in GTA you can get them at Oceans.
Karrin
I love you Lauren but simmering the rum almost started my house on fire. I would get rid of that step just to be safe. I thought My house was going to burn down, but after two towels and a faulty fire extinguisher, my guardian angle was able to give me the power to grab the towels and throw them out of the house. Thankfully everyone is ok. I'm still going to finish the recipe
Lauren Toyota
any common spiced rum isn't flammable - it's only 40% or 35% alcohol. it's stuff like bacardi 151 (75%) alcohol which is used for flambe - which we did not instruct - that is flammable. You have to use caution of course for any kind of cooking whether using alcohol or not. Sorry to hear that happened!
Karrin
Update: I made the recipe and put the rum in the rub without simmering it first. It turned out delicious. I'd like to mention that I cook a lot and am confident in the kitchen. I'm only saying that because what happened with the rum starting my kitchen on fire could happen to anyone. I just want to help prevent this from happening to other people. I Understand that this is a method of cooking that people use effectively. Anyhow, thanks for the recipe and keep up the great work!
Eleni
Hi! What substitute would you recommend for the rum? I know it's kind of the whole point, but I ball on a budget and don't like rum anyways, so I don't want to buy it just for this. Suggestions?
Eleni
Update: I replaced the rum with a little more apple cider vinegar, olive oil, and a bit of water and it turned out great! Probably different than the original, but I was still obsessed with the sauce! (now only if I can learn to fry things properly....)
Haley
Are they supposed to be crunchy? I cooked them for even longer than said
Nimra
I am not a native speaker. Please excuse my mistakes.
Usually I am struggling to stay vegan for many reasons. However this week I cooked up three recipes from your blog and all of them taste so amazing that it gets easier every day. These sunchokes/topinambur are amazing!
I am really looking forward to more challenges and of course your cookbook.
Love you both. ♡
Rachel
Your site has too many ads. It takes forever to load on my computer (Mac Airbook, five months old), is always constantly running/loading - even when I am on another tab, and causes the computer to run hot and slow. I know you make money from ads, but I cannot use your site because of the sheer number of them and the way it runs on my computer. It's a shame, I was interested in trying this recipe. But I cannot get it to load properly because the site preferences the ads over your content.