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Tempeh Lettuce Wraps with Peanut Sauce (Vegan)

Aug 30, 2018 2 Comments

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These colorful and light tempeh lettuce wraps are great for lunch or dinner. I like pairing the lettuce wraps with my peanut sauce to give them richness and flavor! Ready in under 30 minutes. 

Tempeh Lettuce Wraps - 30 minute meal (vegan)

I’ve been trying to figure out how to use tempeh as a filling for vegetarian dumpling recipes lately. Although I haven’t nailed down a tempeh dumpling recipe, I inadvertently discovered that ground tempeh is an excellent substitute for ground chicken in lettuce wraps. The trick was figuring out how to properly prepare the tempeh.

Tempeh is essentially a block of fermented soybeans that is quite firm and very different from the texture of meat. Although grinding the tempeh with a food processor helps break down the tempeh into smaller pieces, I still found the texture of the tempeh to be too firm. The challenge for me was to find a way to make the tempeh more tender.

I suddenly remembered a pho tempeh recipe in Andrea Nguyen’s The Pho Cookbook, where she cooked sliced tempeh by simmering them with broth. I applied her cooking technique by simmering ground tempeh in broth for about 8 minutes and was very pleased with the results. The tempeh softened, and the broth infused savory flavor into the tempeh.

Ground Tempeh
Cooked Tempeh

CAN YOU MAKE THE LETTUCE WRAPS AHEAD?

Yes! I would cook the tempeh and toss it with the cabbage, carrots, and bell peppers and keep everything in a container. They will keep for up to 3 days. When you are ready to eat, just rinse a few leaves of butter lettuce, fill them, and drizzle with peanut sauce.

VARIATIONS ON THE LETTUCE WRAP RECIPE

If you have any leftover broth from my yellow curry broth or tomato and coconut noodle soup recipes, use it to cook the tempeh! Alternatively, you can toss the cooked ground tempeh with my honey chili sauce or teriyaki sauce for extra flavor.

Tempeh Lettuce Wrap Recipe - a fresh vegan meal in 30 minutes!

Print

Tempeh Lettuce Wraps with Peanut Sauce (Vegan)

Tempeh Lettuce Wraps - 30 minute meal (vegan)

★★★

3 from 1 reviews

Try to cook the tempeh in a nonstick pan because the tempeh tends to leave a translucent filmy layer at the bottom of pan. The filmy layer will be more difficult to scrub off if you’re using a pan that is not nonstick.

  • Author: Lisa Lin
  • Prep Time: 20 minutes
  • Cook Time: 10 minutes
  • Total Time: 30 minutes
  • Yield: 8 Lettuce Wraps 1x

Ingredients

Scale
  • 8 ounce block of tempeh
  • 1 cup vegetable broth
  • 1 teaspoon soy sauce (use tamari if gluten free)
  • 1 teaspoon maple syrup*
  • 1/4 teaspoon ground coriander
  • 1/8 teaspoon garlic powder
  • 8 leaves of butter lettuce*
  • 1 medium carrot, peeled and julienned
  • 1 to 1 1/4 cups thinly sliced red cabbage
  • 1 medium red bell pepper, sliced
  • peanut sauce

Garnish

  • 1 stalk of scallions, sliced (optional)
  • red pepper flakes (optional)

Instructions

  1. Cut the tempeh into 1/2 inch cubes and transfer them to a food processor. Blend the tempeh for about 5 seconds, until you get very small pieces of tempeh. When you open the lid of your food processor, you will get a good whiff of the odor from the fermented soy beans, and that’s perfectly okay.
  2. In a bowl, mix the vegetable broth, soy sauce, maple syrup, garlic powder, and ground coriander.
  3. Heat a nonstick skillet or sauté pan over medium heat. Add the tempeh and the broth mixture. Cook for about 8 to 9 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the liquids have completely absorbed into the tempeh. The tempeh might look like it’s ready to be pulled off the stove in 5 minutes, but resist the urge to do so. When you tap the tempeh with the back of a spatula, and you can hear a sound that is similar to walking through puddles in the rain, it means the tempeh is not ready yet. You are probably a few minutes off. Once the liquid has been absorbed, remove the pan from heat.
  4. Assemble the lettuce wraps. Fill the lettuce leaves with the carrots, cabbage, red bell pepper, and some of the tempeh. Drizzle peanut sauce over the filling and garnish with sliced scallions and red pepper flakes, if you desire. Serve immediately.

Notes

NUTRITION INFORMATION: Amount for 2 Lettuce Wraps: Calories: 201, Total Fat 7.2g, Saturated Fat: 1.4g, Cholesterol: 0mg, Sodium: 539mg, Total Carbohydrate: 23.6g, Dietary Fiber: 8.3g, Sugar: 11.3g, Protein 14.1g

  • *SUBSTITUTIONS: You can substitute the maple syrup with sugar. If you are not vegan, you can also use honey or agave. You can also substitute the butter lettuce with romaine or any other lettuce variety you have on hand.

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Appetizers, Asian Food, Dairy Free, Quick Meals, Vegan lettuce, tempeh

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Tessa Daybell says

    December 9, 2020 at 10:52 am

    Good, not great. We used this as our main dish, so I heated up a few cups of leftover rice and added half of the peanut sauce to that so that we would have some carbs in the meal. It still needed more flavor. Maybe a bit more salt would have helped.

    ★★★

    Reply
  2. Judy whitley says

    April 10, 2021 at 6:42 pm

    Very good! It was great with cilantro instead of green onions. Peanut sauce seemed too thin so added more peanut butter and then it was too thick so it took some fiddling with it to get it right. Had all the same ingredients but I’m sure the ratios were off. But the finished product was awesome. The tempeh was flavorful, the vegetables were crisp and the peanut sauce finished it off perfectly. Husband added sriracha with his.

    Reply

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