Vegan Callos

First of all let me address the elephant in the room: I know. It is impossible to have vegan callos since callos are, in fact, the cow’s stomach. However, by telling you these are vegan callos you will know what I’m talking about if you are familiar with the dish.

Therefore, the flavour that I’m going to deliver in this recipe is that of the dish known as Callos but without the meat.

Now this is a very popular recipe in Galicia. You find it as a tapa almost everywhere and it is a typical meal to have on a Sunday afternoon when you go out to eat lunch with your family. We used to go to restaurants where they cooked home made food. That is, food prepared by the grandma, mum or the wife of the owner of the restaurant. Those were the chefs. And they’d put a massive pot of Callos on the table for all of us to eat. So much that there was always left overs. We’d eat it with home made rustic bread and the chef herself would come out to ask how was the meal. It was just like eating at home.

I am sorry to disappoint you on this recipe, but my mum could never cook callos successfully. Instead she preferred buying it from the bar next door, eating it at a home restaurant, at her cousin’s (who cooked them amazingly well) or as a tapa. But she never ventured into cooking them.

There is a lot of work that goes into it as the meat version has cow’s stomach and this has to be carefully cleaned and takes ages.

Nevertheless, I found a vegan version at a bar in La Coruña, Lola & Cia, which gave me the idea after tasting them. I made a pretty good copy of it by just eating them, I think, and don’t have the hassle of spending hours in the kitchen preparing them.

I truly believe it delivers the real taste of Callos without the meat and to me that is great because most of the time I just put the meat to one side and only ate the chickpeas… and I know many of you do too.

So please, enjoy this recipe that comes all the way from my kitchen to you.

You can find the step by step video to this recipe here:

Vegan Callos

Servings: 4
Prep Time: 15 mins
Cook Time: 15 mins approx
Difficulty: Easy
Rating: stars
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Credit: The Spaniard’s Kitchen

Ingredients

3 or 4 tins of Chickpeas

3 or 4 Chestnut Mushrooms

1 Onion, sliced

2 Garlic Cloves, chopped

1 Red Pepper, sliced
1 1/2 Tsp Sweet Paprika
A tiny touch of hot paprika
2 1/2 Tbs Callos Seasoning
Water from cooking the chickpeas
Salt to taste
Olive oil

Directions

1. Fill a pot with water, add salt, add the chickpeas and bring it to the boil. Cook until they are soft. Drain the chickpeas but keep the water from the cooking as we will use it later on.
2. Add oil to a pan and heat up.
3. Add the chopped onions until translucent.
4. Then add the chopped garlic. Mix.
5. Next add the chopped pepper, mix and cook until the peppers are soft.
6. If you have a good blender, you can blend half of the mix. Otherwise, set aside.
7. Add oil to a pot and heat up.
8. Then fry the mushrooms until lightly soft. Add some salt.
9. Next add the sweet paprika together with the callos seasoning and mix.
10. Then add the blended mix of peppers together with the not blended mix. Stir.
11. Follow with the cooked chickpeas and mix well.
12. Take the water from cooking the chickpeas and add until covered.
13. Add more salt if needed and mix.
14. Add a tiny touch of hot paprika.
15. Cook in medium heat for about 15 minutes.
16. Serve hot and enjoy!