5 High Protein Vegan Sandwiches!

Today I'm showing you five high-protein vegan sandwiches. While not everyone needs to eat high-protein, if you're building muscle, or older than 65 years old, or even just want to stay fuller longer, these can be some great options. The first sandwich we're making is a caprese sandwich that's made with tofu instead of mozzarella, because let's be honest, mozzarella doesn't have much of a taste anyway. I'm using super firm tofu so I don't have to press it. We'll just pat it dry, and we'll just go ahead and slice it about the size of our sandwiches. Not too thick, not too thin, about four for a block. Place these slices either on a pan or inside your air fryer, and then we'll season them just slightly. I'm going to just quickly spray the tofu with some cooking spray, and that makes it so it crisps up really well in the air fryer or the oven. And then I'll add some Italian seasoning and some salt. And then I'll do it again on the other side. All right, there we go. We'll air fry this for 10 minutes at 400. Our mozzarella cheese is done. By mozzarella, I mean tofu. While the tofu was cooking, I toasted up part of a ciabatta baguette, and we'll use that to assemble the sandwich. Now every good caprese sandwich comes with some yummy pesto, and today I'm going the easy way out, and I just bought this pesto from Trader Joe's. It's vegan, and it is delicious. We'll take the pesto and spread it on both ends of our sandwich bread. Then we'll add our tofu and tomatoes. If you want to go extra, you can also add in some sun-dried tomatoes. I found this oil-free version of sun-dried tomatoes at Trader Joe's, and I was so happy. I'm going to add just a little extra flavor here. Then we'll add some basil. You can also add some arugula as well. And then the key ingredient, balsamic glaze. It makes all the difference. So we're just going to glaze over that tofu, our balsamic glaze, and then put our sandwich together. Yum. Look at that. That looks so good. I am excited for this. Packed with flavor. Super delicious. The balsamic glaze is so good. I love it with the pesto. It's going to be super filling too. I'm a fan. Super good. Next, I want to show you how to make your classic PB&J more high protein. It's easier than you think, and it tastes just as good. We'll start off with a fourth a cup of powdered peanut butter. Any brand works. A fourth a cup. Then we'll add a fourth a cup of unflavored vegan protein powder. We'll mix that in. Then we'll add in a fourth a cup of some plant-based milk. This is soy milk. We'll mix that together. It's pretty dry, but then we need some real peanut butter to make it actually taste like peanut butter and spread like peanut butter. I'm using crunchy peanut butter, but any variety works. We're going to add a half of a cup of peanut butter so that it actually tastes and feels like peanut butter. You can also add a little bit more milk if you want to be able to spread this to thin it out a little bit. It all kind of depends on your protein powder, how thick your protein powder is. Just one tablespoon at a time. All right, now we have our high protein peanut butter. Let's spread it over some toast. This sandwich is really good for teenagers who just don't get full on one peanut butter and jelly sandwich. So this way, they will get full with this much protein in your peanut butter. Another great option is to put peanut butter on some bread and add some banana. I always love a good peanut butter banana sandwich, and this is no exception. Sometimes instead of bread, I'll do it with rice cakes, and my kids like it when I add some mini chocolate chips to these too. It's super yummy. I love a good peanut butter banana and chocolate. The classic PB&J. This is really good. You would have no idea that there's all this extra protein in there. It tastes the same. It's really thick, which I really like. If you have a bunch of leftover protein peanut butter and you don't want to use it for sandwiches, you can just add some maple syrup to it and then add chocolate chips. I like mini chocolate chips. And then turn it into little mini balls and put it in the fridge. Next, let's make a BLT sandwich. And instead of bacon, we're going to use soy curls and make them taste like bacon. We're going to add all the ingredients to a pan, but we won't turn on the stove yet. So you'll add a fourth a cup of soy sauce, plus an eighth a cup or plus two additional tablespoons. Now we'll add a fourth a cup of apple cider vinegar, a fourth a cup of maple syrup, a fourth a cup of water, two teaspoons of liquid smoke, and two teaspoons of any type of steak seasoning or burger seasoning. Kind of want that same flavor, even though these are still vegan. They just have the seasons. So two teaspoons. Any type of steak seasoning that you like works or grill seasoning. Now we'll take two cups of these soy curls and let them just sit in these seasonings for about 15 minutes. All mixed in there. So you're going to want to add four teaspoons. It's not just a little bit. It's kind of a lot. Four teaspoons of smoked paprika to all of this too. You want to get that smoky flavor. So we can't forget the smoked paprika. Smells smoky. It smells like bacon, honestly. Okay, now you can tell that it has absorbed most of that liquid. And now we're just going to heat it up. We'll just put it on high. And we'll just heat all of it up over the stove to get it nice and crispy. All right, they are done. Nice and crispy. When the liquid is all absorbed, then you know you're done cooking them. All right, let's put together our BLT. I went ahead and toasted this bread. I'll add some mayo. Some vegan mayo. You can buy low-fat vegan mayo. I'm just using this veganese. There's so many different brands. Then we'll add the bacon. It's pretty impressive. This really does have a taste that's similar to bacon. It's not exactly the same, but closer than like my typical tempeh bacon BLT. Nice and full so you can get all that protein. Tomato. I'm gonna put some salt and pepper right here. And now let's put on the lettuce. And we'll put it together. All right, let's taste test this BLT with our homemade bacon. That's good. It's a good one. I think this is really good if you have homegrown tomatoes from your garden. It's even better. But honestly, this is delicious. I'm getting so full from all these sandwiches. Next, we'll make an egg salad sandwich made with tofu instead of eggs. We'll use super firm or extra firm tofu. And we'll crumble it just like we would for a tofu scramble. And we'll set this to the side. In a separate bowl, we'll take a half a cup of your vegan mayo of choice. You can also use hummus if you don't want to use mayo. We'll then add two tablespoons of mustard, yellow mustard. We'll add a fourth of a red onion, diced. And we'll chop up two stalks of celery. We'll add one teaspoon of garlic powder and one teaspoon of dill. Now this is optional and it just depends on your taste preferences. But I also like to add a couple of pickles and just chop these pickles up. Two to three spears is great. We'll mix all of this together and add it to the tofu bowl. Then you can add salt and pepper, more mustard, or anything depending on your taste. I'm going to add just a little bit of everything but the bagel seasoning as well. I also love dill, so I'm going to add just a touch more dill. And let's put it on our sandwich. I don't like egg salad sandwiches. I get roasted out by eggs, but I think I like this one. I like it. I love mustard and pickles and dill. This one's great. Looks good, tastes good. I'm a fan. Now remember, tofu has more protein than eggs. So this really is a high-protein egg salad sandwich. Hey, real quick. If you love these recipes, I know you'll absolutely love my vegan whole food plant-based one-week meal guide. And it's yours for free by just clicking on the link below. So make sure you grab it. Did you just finish my sandwich before I took pictures of it? Now if you just really miss deli meat sandwiches, then this last sandwich recipe is for you. You can actually make a delicious deli meat alternative by putting all the ingredients in your bread maker to make your own seitan. It's seitan, not Satan. It's made from vital wheat gluten, and as long as you're not gluten-free, it is a wonderful option to get a high-protein deli meat sandwich. Let me show you how to do it. Now before we can start making the seitan, we need to make garbanzo flour or chickpea flour. So we'll just take a bunch of dried chickpeas or garbanzo beans, and in your high-speed blender, we'll blend it together. If you have extra flour, don't worry about it. You can actually make yummy cookies with this flour too. There's a lot of things you can make with it. A key ingredient for the seitan is this vital wheat gluten. I bought it on Amazon. I feel like that was just the easiest way to find it. It's super affordable, especially considering this bag will last you a long time. We'll start by putting the liquids in first. It's two and a fourth cups water. So this is one. So that's two and a fourth cups water. You'll next add four teaspoons of vegan worcestershire sauce. So that's one, three, four teaspoons. Then we'll add two cups of this vital wheat gluten. One and two. You can tell this bread maker is very well loved. Next, we'll add a half a cup of our garbanzo bean flour or that chickpea flour. Half a cup here. And then a half a cup of nutritional yeast. Have all that extra protein from the nutritional yeast plus the extra vitamins. Next, we have four teaspoons. Yes, four. Four teaspoons of onion powder. Three and four. Two teaspoons of salt. One, two. And then two teaspoons of paprika. I'm actually gonna use smoked paprika. One and two. That's it. It's that easy. You'll close it. And then all you do is push start. And then choose your basic bread function. Just that level one. And then I have it right in the middle at the 1.5 pounds. Okay, it's been a little over three hours. Let's see our seitan. Let's pull it out. Blake, it's so yummy. So it's easy to make at your house. All right, let's slice this up. All right, let's put it in a sandwich. We're gonna use our fancy bread for this sandwich. We'll add some vegan mayo. You want mustard on your sandwich? Yeah, mustard. Then we'll add our seitan. Then we'll add some lettuce. And then we'll put it all together. Oh yeah. All right, let's try this seitan sandwich. Mom, can I try? It's really good. You guys want to take out the tomatoes? Yes. I love the tomatoes. Save some for everybody else. Did you just eat your brother's? Look how sad he is. Yes, you did. You just took a good bite out of him. If you like these high-protein sandwich recipes, I know you absolutely love my other high-protein vegan recipes. So make sure to check those out as well.