I’ve been feeling adventurous as of lately. I wanted to experiment with different flavors and one of the ways I did that was by trying to create something I have never had before, adventurous right?

I have always seen pictures of delicious looking bagels topped off with cream cheese, lox, capers and you know, the works. So I wanted to try that; it always looked so tasty but seeing that I dont eat fish, except for that one drunken night in high school but thats a different story, I thought to myself how can I get that experience without compromising my diet. I remember once seeing someone post about making lox out of carrots. As I said I have never had lox in my life so I dont really have a basis of what this thing is supposed to taste like so I pulled up the google and started doing my research. As it turns out lox is like this smoked salmon, cured in salt or something like that, honestly I dont know but it sounded like it. Anyway, I then went on this wormhole of vegan lox recipes with all these hippy dippy people on the internet and on YouTube making vegan lox out of carrots, tomatoes, eggplants and whatever other vegetable you can think of. After much debate I decided to make this vegan lox out of carrots. Supposedly what the internet told me is that carrots hold their shape better.

I started by salt curing the carrots. This is where you cover the carrots with a lot of salt mixed with a bit of sugar and whatever herbs you want, I threw some dill in between my mixture just to make it a little fancy. So then I threw these carrots in the oven to see what happened. I placed them in the oven at 350º for 2 hours and just waited to see what happened. So after 2 hours like a kid on Christmas morning i was excited to crack open this salt block surrounding the carrots. I took a crack at it and I was surprised to see how much water the carrots had lost. They were now these wrinkly flaccid things…words that I hope will never be used to describe me.

After I finished admiring the wrinkly weird texture of the carrots I peeled off the skin and then thinly sliced them so they could resemble the pieces of lox. Then in a small dish I placed the now vegan carrot “lox” to marinate in liquid smoke and a bit of apple cider vinegar. When it was done infusing in flavor I gave it a go on a bagel with all the trimmings.

Now what is the final verdict? I dont know actually because I have never had real lox so I dont know what it is supposed to taste like. This carrot substitute was tasty, i enjoyed the smokey flavor and textural contrast it provided my bagel sandwich. I was satisfied so hopefully you all are too!

If any of you lovely readers have had real lox please let me know what you think, I sometimes pretend to know what I am doing in the kitchen and hope that things work out for the best and sometimes many mistakes are made. But in the mean time I hope you all enjoy and until next time bon appetit!

Vegan Carrot Lox

Serves 4

Ingredients:

2 cups coarse sea salt

1 tbsp sugar

3 large carrots (do not peel them)

a few sprigs of fresh dill

1 TB olive oil*

2 teaspoons liquid smoke

1/2 teaspoon apple cider vinegar

Preheat oven to 350ºF

In a small shallow dish combine salt, sugar and dill. Cover carrots with salt mixture ensuring none of the carrot is touching the bottom of the dish or is exposed.

Bake for 2 hours.

Allow to cool and remove from salt block.

Peel and thinly slice carrots.

Marinate carrots in liquid smoke and apple cider vinegar for 4hrs to overnight.

Serve with bagel, vegan cream cheese, capers, onion and fresh dill.