Publised on 14/09/2021. Last Updated on 14/09/2021 by Richard
Vegan corn fritters: my veganised version of the "Half-Baked Harvest" corn fritters recipe!
These vegan corn fritters are the first in my RECIPE REMIX series! The idea: I take a non-vegan recipe, do a little magic vegan dance, click my vegan leather heels together and BAM - it's vegan! This recipe is based on the Half-Baked Harvest Jalapeño Cheddar Corn Fritter recipe, which I've had my beady vegan eyeballs on for A WHILE now!
So I set myself the challenge of veganising this recipe! The veganising wasn't insanely tricky and the final product was delish and light - but it was still missing something. I'd hoped for a crispier, chewier fritter, so I made a few further tweaks to make sure the final product resembled my DREAM FRITTER.
What Needed Veganising??
The original Half-Baked Harvest corn fritter recipe contained three non-vegan ingredients: cheddar cheese, milk and egg. In the interest of not drawing traffic away from the original blog, I won't publish the original recipe here, so click here if you want to have a peek at the original. Now here's how I replaced them:
- Cheddar Cheese! Obviously you can always use store-bought vegan cheese for this, but with such huge variations across brands, I tend to avoid this option when writing recipes. Instead, I made a "vegan cheddar cheese flavour bomb paste" to add to the batter. I use this paste in any recipes that need the flavour of cheese but not the texture. It's made from miso paste, nutritional yeast and some other magic ingredients.
- Milk! In this case it's a simple substitution. However, I would say to be careful of which plant-milk you substitute. I found that oat milk picked up a bitter taste when fried, as did almond milk. So my advice is to stick with trusty soy (unflavoured and unsweetened of course!)
- Egg! As I've said a million times, eggs are tricky to replace because they are used for so many different things. In batters (like the one in this recipe) eggs add moisture, a little fat and they help bing everything together. To mimic that I whipped up something I call "gram batter". It's not made out of grandmas, don't worry. It's made from gram flour (aka chickpea flour) and it binds wonderfully! Wait until you experience this texture mama!!
What Else Did You Change??
Honestly, not much at all! Once veganised, these vegan corn fritters were PRETTY SPOT ON! However, I was missing two tiny things:
- They weren't crispy enough! I loved how chewy and delicate the corn was inside but the outside was lacking crunch! For that reason I added some cornmeal (in the UK we call this stuff polenta). I went for a finely ground cornmeal and the result was SPOT ON! Seriously, just so good!
- They weren't CORNY enough! The whole corn kernels were ace, but I wanted more golden, toasted corn flavour! Luckily, this was solved by the above hack too! Extra cornmeal means EXTRA CORNY!
So How Do You Make Vegan Corn Fritters??
As always, full recipe is below, but here's a lil step by step walk-through for you!
1. Mix together your dry ingredients!
Nothing fancy! Just a big bowl, flour, cornmeal, baking powder and some S+P!
2. Make your vegan egg!
Use a small bowl this time, whisk together some gram flour, water and rapeseed oil (or canola oil). If you find a nice, cold-pressed oil with a deep yellow colour, the mixture will even look like a whisked egg!
3. Make your vegan cheddar flavour bomb paste!
Again, in a small bowl, use a fork to mash together the miso, nutritional yeast, and remaining ingredients. It'll seem like the mixture's too thick to form a paste but bear with it. It'll come together.
4. Mix it all together!
Add some soy milk and mix everything together! Add the sweetcorn and you're done! Ready to fry and feel true happiness for literally MINUTES!
A Note On Frying
As with all recipes I've ever posted that involve deep frying, I KNOW I'll get MANY messages about making these without oil. Here's my response. Don't do it.
Obviously you know this isn't a health-food blog, and I doubt you came here for zero calorie paleo date balls, so please just trust me and follow the recipe. I don't expect you to eat fried food every day, but this recipe was designed to be fried and it won't work any other way. If you're desperate, give the fritters a shallow fry.
Need some more snack recipes!!?
You got it pal!! Why not give these baddies a try!?
Vegan Corn Fritters with Jalapeño and "Cheddar"
Ingredients
For the Egg Replacement
- 2 teaspoon gram flour (aka chickpea flour)
- 2 tablespoon water
- 1 tablespoon rapeseed oil (aka canola oil)
For the Vegan Cheddar Paste
- 2 tablespoon nutritional yeast
- 2 tablespoon white miso paste
- 1 teaspoon english mustard
- 1 teaspoon onion powder
- 1 teaspoon caper brine
For the Vegan Corn Fritters
- 130 g plain white flour (aka all purpose flour)
- 60 g fine cornmeal (aka polenta)
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon fine sea salt
- pinch ground black pepper
- 120 ml soy milk
- 325 g corn kernels (around 2-3 corn husks or one large can, drained)
- 1 jalapeño pepper finely diced
- 1 small bunch fresh chives (finely chopped)
Instructions
To Make the Egg Replacement
- In a small bowl, whisk together the egg replacement ingredients until smooth and set aside.
To Make the Vegan Cheddar Paste
- In a small bowl, use a fork to mash together the vegan cheddar paste ingredients until fully combined. Set aside.
To Make the Vegan Corn Fritters
- In a large bowl, place the flour, cornmeal, baking powder, salt and pepper. Mix to combine.
- Add the egg replacement, the vegan cheddar paste and the soy milk. Mix until just combined.
- Finally add the corn kernels, the jalapeño and the chives. Mix to combine.
- Heat a deep fat fryer filled with sunflower oil to 165c (or 330f) or alternatively fill a heavy saucepan with around 3 inches of sunflower oil.
- Once the oil is hot, carefully drop heaped teaspoon sized portions of the corn batter into the fryer. Working in batches of around 6-8 fritters, fry until golden brown then remove from the fryer and place on a tray lined with kitchen roll to absorb any excess oil.
- Repeat until all the batter has been used. Serve with your favourite hot sauce, vegan mayo or even straight up ketchup!
