Recipe Review: Smoky Vegan Carrot Dogs from Brand New Vegan

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MEET THE KROCKS: We are a married couple who started on a life-changing whole food, plant-based weight loss journey in June 2018. To date, we have lost over 260 pounds combined and we aren’t done yet! Read Our Story

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It has been almost a year since we started this whole food, plant-based journey! One of the things that has helped keep us on track is discovering other blogs and YouTube channels from people who are following a similar lifestyle. It is one thing to read books by plant-based doctors, but these are “real” people putting this lifestyle into practice every day and there is so much to learn from them as well!

One of our favorite bloggers is Chuck Underwood of Brand New Vegan. His website and YouTube channel were a HUGE help when we first started out and had no idea what we were doing! His site features delicious vegan recipes that make following this lifestyle a lot less overwhelming. Trust us, you’ll want to check him out 🙂

We saw his recipe for Smoky Vegan Carrot Dogs a while ago and knew we had to try them out at some point. So, over Memorial Day weekend, we gave it a shot! Watch the video above to find out what happened. Be sure to check out the original recipe on Chuck’s site.

Prepping Your Carrots

This recipe definitely gets high marks for being super easy! All you need to get started are carrots and the marinade ingredients. We already had everything required on hand.

The carrots can be boiled and marinated in the fridge for several hours OR you can put them in your Instant Pot!

We used the Instant Pot and Chuck recommends leaving them in there for an extra hour to marinate after the pressure has been released.

After a few simple steps, we were ready to move on to the grill!

Firing Up The Grill

We have access to a grill on the top floor of our apartment building, so we decided to finish our carrot dogs off up there! We did get a few weird looks, but mostly everyone was just curious and amazed.

Since the grill we have access to is shared with everyone else in our building, this was a great opportunity to test out our new grill mat (see below under “Featured Products” for more info). The mat worked pretty well, but be careful if it is windy – it might blow away before you get your carrots on!

We were hoping to get better grill marks on our dogs. The grill we used wasn’t cooperating, so we aren’t sure if it was the grill’s fault or the grill mat. On the packaging of the grill mat, it says you can still get grill marks, so we will definitely have to try again.

Also, since we had the grill mat, as we were adding additional marinade to the dogs, all of the excess just crusted up on the mat itself (instead of falling through the grill). It was pretty messy in the end, but clean up of the mat actually wasn’t too bad. It is also dishwasher safe, so we threw it in there afterwards.

All in all, our dogs looked and smelled pretty tasty!

But Do They Taste Like Hot Dogs?

Here’s the thing. They are still carrots. BUT – I have no idea how Chuck did it… when we opened that Instant Pot after marinating the carrots, it smelled exactly like hot dogs. It was crazy. Further proof that Chuck is a genius 🙂

After they were grilled, they even looked like hot dogs! Then, when you put them into a whole grain bun and add some sautéd onions and mustard, it makes quite the tasty meal.

Overall, this recipe turned out amazing. You aren’t going to fool anyone into thinking these are actually hot dogs, but they have a really great flavor and it is a fun thing to do when everyone else is out grilling! We added some grilled corn, but next time we might try eating it with some grilled veggie kabobs. We will definitely make these again – probably for the 4th of July.

Be sure to check out BrandNewVegan.com for the recipe!

Featured Products:

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Instant Pot 6 Qt 7-in-1 Multi-Use Programmable Pressure Cooker
Grill Mats (Set of 2)
OXO Good Grips Silicone Basting Brush
Kuhn Rikon 6-Inch Balloon Wire Whisk