Sausage Patties

Tempeh is the underrated workhorse of vegetarian cooking, dense, nutty, and perfect for absorbing seasonings. This recipe gives you two takes on plant-based sausage: a classic breakfast-style patty with sage, thyme, and marjoram, and an Italian version with garlic, oregano, and red pepper flakes that crumbles beautifully on pizza.

The critical first step is steaming the tempeh for 15 minutes. This is what separates a good plant-based sausage from one that tastes bitter or chalky. Steaming removes the slight fermented bitterness tempeh can have and opens its pores so it absorbs seasonings dramatically better.

Grating the steamed tempeh on the coarse side of a box grater gives the right textured base. Crumbling by hand leaves chunks too irregular. Food processing turns it to paste. Grating creates the sausage-meat-like texture that mimics traditional sausage perfectly.

The oil-and-soy-sauce-and-water combination is doing critical flavor work. Soy sauce provides salt and umami, oil carries the fat that fries crisp, and water helps everything bind into a packable patty. Skip any one of these and the patties either burn, fall apart, or taste flat.

For the Italian version, the flour binds tighter so the mixture can be crumbled directly onto pizza dough without falling through. The garlic and red pepper give it that classic Italian sausage punch even without any meat.

Pro Tips

• Press the patties thin (about ⅓ inch) for proper browning, thick patties stay raw in the center
• Heat the pan and oil thoroughly before adding the patties, lower temp leads to a soggy crust
• For Italian sausage on pizza, crumble the mixture raw directly onto unbaked dough, it cooks through with the pizza
• Make a double batch and freeze the formed patties, they thaw and reheat beautifully in a skillet

Variations

• Use maple syrup instead of soy sauce in the breakfast version for a sweeter, maple-sausage style
• Add a teaspoon of smoked paprika to either version for a smokier, more bacon-adjacent flavor
• Form the Italian mixture into meatballs and simmer in marinara for a vegetarian spaghetti and meatballs