The Amazing Bisquick

There are so many familiar food products out there you may not realize are vegan.  Everyone has had Bisquick pancakes before right?  Did you know the mix is vegan?  

It is!  And I use it quite a bit.  You may have picked up by now that I like foods that are versatile.  It makes grocery shopping and meal planning so much easier when you have room to play around with what you have in your cabinets.  

Today was a cooler rainy day, the perfect kind of day for soup.  As with most of my attempts at making meals for my family, this was  bit of an experiment.  I knew what I had in the kitchen and decided to could throw something decent together.  

As I've said before, I have to be a little more creative on Sundays.  When I make this soup (or I guess it was more like a stew) I would add more vegetables and maybe even potatoes as well.  For now this is what I used…

Ingredients 

•  32 oz. vegetable broth
• 1 package of Gardein Beefless Tips
• 1 cup frozen mixed vegetables (but you could use any veggie you'd like!)
• 1 cup frozen mixed peppers
• 2 cups of Bisquick mix
• 2/3 cup unsweatened almond milk
• 1 tablespoon crushed garlic
• salt and pepper to taste

I know there are rules to making soup.  I don't really know any of them.  So I'll tell you what I did since it worked for me.

I emptied my vegetable broth into a pot on the stove on high heat.  When the broth started to boil I added my mixed veggies, garlic, and beefless tips.  While everything was heating up I started my dumplings.  Bisquick boxes have directions for all sorts of fun stuff you can make with the mix besides pancakes.  I am drawn to their biscuits and dumplings recipes because the only thing I need to change in the recipe is the milk.  We use almond milk, but there are a lot of other alternates out there like coconut, cashew, and soy milk.  I mixed the almond milk and Bisquick mix together in a bowl.  Once the dough was made I dropped spoonfuls of the dough into the boiling soup.  I covered the pan and reduced the heat to medium and let it sit for about 20 minutes.  I did about of it covered and half uncovered.

What I thought would be a soup came out as more of a stew, and it was delicious!  I admit it didn't photograph well (I know how that feels), but it tasted great.  My husband really loved it.  It's definitely going to be something I'll play around with more this fall.