Sandwich Queen: Lemon Roasted ‘Chicken’ Salad Wrap

Happy Thursday! Welcome to another installment of my Sandwich Queen series – on today’s menu: Lemon Roasted ‘Chicken’ Salad Wraps! As usual, you can check out Jeff Mauro’s original recipe here – below I’ll go through my process for veganizing the dish followed by a more complete recipe.

I have to say that this week’s sandwich was a challenge for me. I haven’t eaten chicken in many years, even before I was vegan, because it simply does not appeal to me. And truth be told, the thought of chicken, even fake chicken, really makes me queasy. So I set out to figure out how to replicate chicken without using something like Gardein. Even though it was a challenge, that is one reason I started doing this column in the first place – to challenge myself in the kitchen on a weekly basis – showing non-vegans how easy it is (with a little creativity) to get the same flavors as their favorite omni dishes (without all of the murder, abuse, and such).

After further reviewing this recipe, I realized that the chicken actually ended up getting shredded, so I knew I could get away without having something that looked-like a chicken breast. When I read the word ‘shredded’, the first thing that popped into my mind was jackfruit, as it’s a regular vegan substitute for pulled pork. I just so happened to have a can of jackfruit in my pantry from several months ago and I’ve been itching to put it to use – call it an aligning of the culinary stars.

If you don’t have canned jackfruit on hand, you can find it at most grocery store that have an extensive Asian section, otherwise you can check your local Asian market (be sure to get the kind in water, not syrup). Additionally, if you are not a jackfruit fan, you could use a different vegan chicken substitute.

So the main challenge, the chicken challenge, was solved – I knew the jackfruit would shred easily and I knew that I could impart the flavors of the lemon and herbs via pressure cooker (though I’m certain there are other ways to do so as well).

On to the rest of the dish. For the salad, rather than use a non-dairy yogurt, I decided to skip it altogether and just add more of my vegan mayo. I used a white onion instead of a red one, simply because of my own personal preferences and I used sprouted grain Ezekiel tortillas rather than whole wheat ones – but again, you can change this up depending on your preference.

After all was said and done, these wraps turned out great. They don’t necessarily taste like chicken, but they have a great chicken salad style texture and the flavors are rich and comforting. Vegans and omnis alike will enjoy these tasty wraps – you could even bring the wraps, jackfruit salad, and toppings to a Spring picnic!