How to Make Rice Paper Bacon
This rice paper bacon is so easy and fun to make! It requires simple pantry ingredients you can keep on hand for whenever that smoky-salty-sweet craving strikes. It’s vegan + cholesterol-free, can easily be made gluten-free, and tastes shockingly like the bacon we grew up eating. It even sizzles while it cooks! Serve it with tofu scramble for an epic vegan brunch or on a vegetarian BLT!
This post contains affiliate links. As Amazon Associates, we earn a small commission from qualifying purchases (at no cost to you). We are also affiliates of wine.com and may earn a commission if you choose to purchase through our links. Click here to read our full policy about affiliate links. Thank you for shopping our affiliate links, as it helps us keep the free vegan recipes coming your way!
We’ve been playing around with rice paper bacon for a few years now. It’s easily one of our favorite animal-free bacons and the one we turn to most frequently!
Even though we love ourselves some coconut bacon salt, this rice paper bacon is purrrrfect when you’re looking for good vegan bacon strips.
There are a ton of recipes for rice paper bacon out there, but the concept originated on the Danish blog Veganer. From there, it basically blew up the internet. Once you try it, we think you’ll understand why!
After testing and experimenting so much with different methods and flavor combos, the rice paper bacon recipe we’re sharing today has become our go-to, no-fail version that always hits the spot.
Is rice paper bacon all hype?
If you’ve never tried the rice paper bacon phenomenon before, let us be the first to tell you it is most certainly NOT just hype. This stuff really, crazily, wonderfully tastes and FEELS like bacon.
I mean…if we can turn carrots into hot dogs, why the hell can’t we turn rice paper into bacon, right?!
Let’s talk rice paper bacon ingredients:
- Rice paper: If you’ve never worked with rice paper before, fret not, friend. If I can figure it out, you certainly can. In the US, you’ll find this in the “International” section at your local grocery store. They are sold dry and last a loooooong time in the pantry for future bacon-makin’. SCORE!
- Soy Sauce + Liquid Smoke + Maple Syrup: If you’ve ever made vegan bacon before, you’ll be familiar with this combo. It’s the perfect blend of salty / smoky / sweet that totally lights up the “bacon” sensors in your brain. We also like to add some black pepper, brown sugar, and nutritional yeast to round the flavor out.
- Beet Powder: This is our own little addition we really dig. This is totally optional and doesn’t affect the flavor, but it does add a nice pink bacon-y hue that is totally killer (and also, nutrition and stuff). Alternatively, you can use beet puree by pureeing a can of sliced beets.
- Refined Coconut Oil: Make sure you get *refined* coconut oil, unless coconut-flavored bacon sounds good to you. The refined coconut oil is a great addition here because it adds a heavier “fatty-ness” to the whole she-bang that is very indicative of animal fat.
The best part about all these ingredients is they are total pantry staples! It’s super easy to keep all the ingredients on hand and grab ’em whenever the mood strikes you. Which, for me at least, is at least once a week. 🙂
How to Use Rice Paper Bacon
We use this vegetarian bacon to spice up our sandwiches and burgers, serve next to a pile of tofu scramble, or chop up and mix in with some mac and cheese.
Now, grab some rice paper, and let’s get to makin’ bacon!
When you try this recipe, we totally wanna hear about it! That’s pretty much our favorite thing. 🙂 You can rate the recipe and leave a comment below our tag us in your drool-inducing vegan bacon photos on Instagram. If you’re not already following along, we’re @theplantpowercouple with the “the”.
Enjoy!
Rice Paper Bacon
Ingredients
For the marinade
- 3 Tbsp soy sauce use tamari for GF
- 2 Tbsp water
- 2 Tbsp nutritional yeast
- 2 Tbsp refined coconut oil melted
- 1 Tbsp beet powder*
- 1 Tbsp maple syrup
- 1 tsp liquid smoke
For the bacon:
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 400F, generously grease 2 large baking sheets with refined coconut oil, and use a whisk to mix together all the ingredients for your marinade in a shallow dish or pie plate.
- Set up your assembly line: Fill a large bowl with room temperature water and set it on the counter. Next to it, place your marinade dish. Next to that, place a large cutting board.
- Take 2 sheets of rice paper and press them together. Submerge them in the bowl of water for about 15-30 seconds. This should make them adhere to one another.
- Carefully remove the rice paper and place it in the marinade. Marinate for one minute, flip, and marinate one more minute. Then, move the rice paper to the cutting board.
- Using a pizza cutter or sharp knife, cut the rice paper into 6 slices and transfer these to the greased baking sheet. Repeat this process with the remainder of your rice paper.
- Before baking, brush the excess marinade onto each bacon strip. Then, sprinkle with a bit of brown sugar and freshly ground black pepper. Bake at 400F for 3 minutes (or 4 for crispy). Use tongs to carefully flip each slice, brush each once more with excess marinade, sprinkle with brown sugar and black pepper, and return them to the oven for another 3 minutes (or 4 for crispy).**
- Let the bacon cool for 5-10 minutes before digging in (it will crisp up a bit more as it cools), and enjoy!
Notes
- *If you don’t have beet powder, you can replace the powder + water with 2 Tbsp beet puree made by draining a can of beets and processing them in our food processor until a thick puree forms.
- **Cooking times will vary depending on your oven. If your rice paper bacon still feels a little too chewy after cooling, pop it back in the oven for another 30-60 seconds.
Nutrition
This recipe was originally published on Plant Power Couple in February 2019. Its most recent update was in April 2022.
25 Comments