In the latest episode of The Glen Merzer Show, Glen Merzer sits down with Chef Mark Cerkvenik, founder of Let's Eat Great Food, a food-for-life instructor and advocate for healthy living. The conversation is filled with humor, cooking tips, and most importantly, the recipe for a Polish vegan sausage that’ll satisfy both plant-based eaters and curious meat lovers.
A Sausage with a Secret Ingredient
Glen opens the episode with playful banter, teasing Mark about making a sausage on a vegan show. But Mark reassures listeners: “We’re using vital wheat gluten—no animal products, no oil, and all the flavors you’d expect from a Polish sausage.” Vital wheat gluten, often used in making seitan, brings that chewy, meaty texture that many people crave, without compromising plant-based values.
“This isn’t just about taste,” Mark explains. “It’s about replicating those familiar textures and aromas we loved growing up, but in a way that aligns with our health and ethics.”
The Recipe: Beans, Garlic, and Tradition
Mark emphasizes the importance of cannellini beans to add texture and even mimic the look of fat within the sausage. The recipe calls for 12 cloves of garlic—“a Polish sausage needs to pack a punch,” Mark insists, showing off his garlic-smashing technique. Glen jokes, “Do you have a patent on that?”
Mark’s version also offers flexibility. You’ll find options for both Polish seasoning and a Cajun-inspired andouille version in the show notes. Inspired by Chuck Underwood’s recipe from Brand New Vegan, this sausage isn’t just for vegans—it’s a dish anyone can enjoy.
Why You’ll Love It
Whether you're a long-time vegan or just looking to reduce your meat intake, this recipe offers a bridge to plant-based living. As Glen says, “There’s no downside to trying it—unless you’re gluten-free, of course!”
Tune in to The Glen Merzer Show for the full conversation and detailed recipe. As Mark reminds us, “You’ve got to cook if you want to thrive on a whole food, plant-based diet!”
Get the recipe and watch the full episode: Chef Mark Cerkvenik Makes Polish Vegan Sausage!
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DISCLAIMER: Please understand that the transcript below was provided by a transcription service. It is undoubtedly full of the errors that invariably take place in voice transcriptions. To understand the interview more completely and accurately, please watch it here: Chef Mark Cerkvenik Makes Polish Vegan Sausage!
Glen Merzer: Welcome to The Glen Merzer Show. You can find us across all your favorite podcast platforms. You could find us on YouTube and please remember to subscribe. You know, there are actually millions and millions of people who have not yet subscribed. I don't know what's wrong with these people, but there's no downside to subscribing. So please subscribe. And you could find us at RealMenEatPlants .com. special guest today is, look at that cap he's got, the Glen Merzer show. What a coincidence. What a coincidence. My guest today is my friend and celebrated cap wearer, Mark Cerkvenik He is a food for life instructor with PCRM. He is a very healthy chef, cooks healthy food and he leads a building health communities pod in the south suburbs of Chicago. And we got a problem here. We got a problem here because Mark is going to be making a recipe for us today. And there may be a little bit of tension. There may be a confrontation. Mark, I lost a lot of sleep last night. Because the problem is that Mark wants to do a sausage recipe and Mark, this is a vegan themed show. You're to offend a lot of people by making sausage and I don't want to get angry about it, but I'm feeling my blood starting to boil. We cannot have sausage on the Glen Merzer show.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: Well, we're going to change that today, Glen. We're going to show you how to make a vegan sausage with a secret ingredient called vital wheat gluten.
Glen Merzer: so this is a vegan product.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: It's a vegan and this recipe is low fat. There's no oil in it, no animal products, and it has all the spices that you would typically find in a Polish sausage.
Glen Merzer: All right then. So we could put the The recipe in the show notes?
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: Yeah, yeah, you can certainly get the recipe in the show notes. The recipe will have a couple of different versions. One is the version with the Polish sausage seasonings and the other is for an andouille sausage. So the original recipe is from a gentleman by the name of Chuck Underwood. He has a website, I think it's called Brand New Vegan.
Glen Merzer: Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Chuck Underwood? That doesn't sound Polish.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: Yeah, well, his recipe was for the Andouille sausage. OK. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mine, the one that I'm making today is a Polish sausage, but I'm not Polish either. I'm Eastern European.
Glen Merzer: that's close.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: Yeah, Slovenia. I'm within a stone's throw of probably kind of like when you like from Slovenia, it's kind of like going to Wisconsin if you go to Poland, you know, from Illinois.
Glen Merzer: Yeah. All right.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's funny that you mentioned pension because part of making this meal, part of making this dish is building the tension in the gluten. So that is vital wheat gluten anyway.
Glen Merzer: All right. Now, for those listeners who are gluten free, this ain't the recipe for you, I guess.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, I don't know. I don't know if there is a product that you could make that, you know, if you're gluten free. So... The funny thing is, the vast majority, here's a real, you know, just kind of incidental note. So back when there was, when we had COVID, remember that nasty virus when it shut down the world, basically. Yeah, wife and I were working in a vaccination clinic. So we're not physicians or anything, but we were doing like registration for vaccinations.
Glen Merzer: By the way, I should warn you whenever you say the word COVID, I have a tendency to sneeze.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: You have to sneeze?.
Glen Merzer: Yeah, try not to say that word to us, but go ahead.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: Say what? COVID?
Glen Merzer: Yeah, when you say the word COVID, I don't know if you noticed, but I sneezed.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: I didn't notice.
Glen Merzer: Yeah. And so whenever you say COVID, I'm going to sneeze. I don't know why that is. It's just a thing that happens.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: OK, I won't say COVID too many times.
Glen Merzer: OK, go on.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: I'm wiping my nose now. that? But so we were working as vaccination clinics. We were doing like the registration. So we take people's names and addresses and their demographics and everything. And pretty much everybody that was born in the seventies and earlier had no allergies. And people that were born in the eighties and later had some form of allergy. They're just very kind of incidental information. But I just found that really fascinating. We know We know from population data that the incidence of gluten intolerance and allergies to nuts and all that has been building over time. And that all kind of connects with this healthy lifestyle and that the proliferation of highly processed foods in our society really creates all types of health issues in addition to allergies and so forth. You know, gluten, you know, it's rare, it's the rare person that has celiac disease, most people have a, have an intolerance to gluten in terms of their feeling bloated, you know, and they just don't feel well. And it's, you know, it's the type of thing where I don't recommend you eating these sausages every day. But, you know, one of the things, especially as we transition to this, to this lifestyle of whole food plant based that or vegan, that we want some of those same textures and some of those same flavors that we had when we weren't. So growing up Eastern European background, Polish sausage, Italian sausage, and we're all parts of our diet. And so when I found this recipe, I thought it's a real winner and it's really flexible. It starts kind of the base of the product is vital wheat gluten. And vital wheat gluten is basically, take the wheat berry, if you will, and take the endosperm, take the endosperm out, process it, soak it, process it, and then dry it out, and then grind it, and it turns into this flour, right? And you'll see some bread recipes actually that are higher in, that are lower in gluten. bread recipes that are made with whole wheat and rye, they'll call frequently for like about a teaspoon of wheat, of vital wheat gluten added to the, to add that elasticity. That's what gives bread that elasticity, right? Gives the bread that tension and that ability to rise. So as the CO2 is released from the, from the digestion process of the, of the yeast eating the sugars, right? Yeast eating sugars, the, the, the off product is CO2. That's what makes the the bread rise, it kind of pushes it up and you get a nice rise. So we're going to use vital wheat gluten. I recommend Anthony's. not, I get nothing for Anthony. I get nothing from Anthony. I don't even know Anthony, but I use Anthony's vital wheat gluten. And we can get this at your favorite online retailer. It's non -GMO, it's organic, and you get it in a big bag like this. And it's pretty reasonable. I a big bag like this is about a, 12 bucks or something like this. And this is four pounds. And this will last you many, many, many recipes. All You ever used vital wheat gluten, Glen?
Glen Merzer: No, I've eaten foods with vital wheat gluten, but I've never cooked with it.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So probably any type of seitan is typically that vital wheat gluten, right? So we're actually going to a...vegan restaurant in Rockville, Illinois. It's called Pig Something, Pig Emporium or Pig Something. Do remember the name of that restaurant? My wife's gonna look it up. a lot of recipes, a lot of dishes that are made with this vital wheat gluten. anyway, so we're gonna start with beans, beans, beans, beans. First of all, what we have is we have a cup and a half of white beans. These are Cannellini beans and And I've got just a little bit of the cooking juice in there and we want to mash those up. So this recipe is really about not only the textures, but also what it looks like upon being cooked and when you cut into the sausage. So the thing that we want to do here is smash these beans up. When we can leave some of these beans whole, Because what'll happen then when the beans are in the sausage itself, we'll see that there'll be like little specks of beans in there and almost still kind of looks like the fat that was in, you know, like in that traditional sausage. Yeah. Yeah.
Glen Merzer: So we don't have to recapitulate the fat from the Yeah. But it's the...
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: It's the look of it that we're trying to mimic here and the texture. So it's going to give that really kind of chewy texture. So we want to get it to kind of like a mash like that and then kind of put that aside. So the next thing we do is I think any good Polish sausage is going to have a lot of good, a lot of garlic in it, right? I mean, you're going to want to really taste that garlic. So this recipe calls for 12 cloves of garlic. And so I've got some peel here. I want to show you one of my little chef's tricks. So used to be a professional chef too. We used to do tours throughout the United States for folks. And you kind of get really good at doing this after being a professional and having a process, you know, typical week tour for folks when we'd make all these meals, we'd have about 88 different recipes for a week, right? Somewhere between 65 and like 90 recipes during a week. you had to get pretty good. Most of the times I would get these garlics peeled already. But for those of you that have fresh garlic in your house, I'm going to show you a really easy way to peel this. In fact, I had a student tell me it was worth her $25 coming to one of my classes just to learn how to peel a garlic because she'd spend an hour sitting in front of the TV watching her favorite show and peeling a head of garlic. But really easy. Really easy. All you got to do is here's a clove of garlic and you got that little root down there. Yeah. So just cut that cut that end off like that. Right. And just take your knife, hold your knife on top of on top of the garlic clove and smash it down and watch the way it just jumps out of the.
Glen Merzer: Whoa. How about that? Isn't it like just like you have a do you have a patent on that technique, Mark?
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: Well, full disclosure here, I learned this from one of my favorite chef celebrities, Jacques Papin.was on PBS. yeah,
Glen Merzer: I hope he's a vegan.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: He's not. is not a man. I know by no means is he a vegan. Yeah, he's kind of a classic French French chef.
Glen Merzer: But I was in the heck with him.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: Yeah, yeah, I was you know, I was one of those those dorky young young guys, young kids back when I was in my 20s. Started watching all these cooking shows him and. I'm start dating myself now. Julia Childs, right? watched Julia Childs? And let's see, who else? The Galloping Gourmet, remember the Galloping Gourmet? know, remember those words. Remember those words and the Frugal Gourmet.
Glen Merzer: Yeah. None of these people were vegan, right?
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: None of them were. was no such thing.
Glen Merzer: the heck with all of them.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: I mean, back then, Glen, do you remember like in the 80s and stuff, it was like you start hearing about the veganism and you will you had to you had to do this mix of making sure you have the right amino acids and you had to the right mix of foods and and all we know not we know now that as long as you need a colorful diet of plants. You're going to do fine so so again to pop that guy out of out of the little husk there cut the end off and. And away you go so. One of the things I tell my students too is that the thing with vegan being a vegan and being specifically primarily whole food plant based is that you've got to cook. There's just no way. There's no way you're going to be able to eat like this and not cook, especially if you're trying to do no oil or low oil and little to no salt as well. So you got to cook. So you want to learn some of these tricks here. One of the other things I tell my students are is that you want to give some other tools. This is a bench scraper, and I'm going to show you how this can save you a lot of time. It helps scrape the food up off your bench, off your work area, and also has a little ruler here too, one to six inches in the case that you're wanting to cut something with specific size. So again, You know, you could do this technique with cutting garlic with any size garlic, kind of the bigger the easier, but you can do it with one of these small little guys too. Again, you're just going to cut that root end off, smash it down, and it jumps right out of the husk. So there's no reason not to work with fresh garlic. And the other thing that you'll always want to do is is work with fresh ingredients as well, right? Work with very fresh ingredients. Well, what's your favorite fresh vegetable to cook and to eat?
Glen Merzer: I would say, It might be, Asparagus,
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: I love asparagus. Yeah. Good. Yeah. Good time to be here in the Midwest for asparagus is what like May, right? Although we did go to this Italian restaurant on Saturday with some friends and they did have some nice asparagus. They put on our pasta for us. So what you want to do with these 12 heads of garlic, 12 cloves of garlic, not heads, God forbid you use 12 heads of garlic, 12 cloves of garlic, is to chop them up really, really fine. Because you don't want big chunks in your sausage, right? All right. So then what we're going to do, and I'm going show you how you use this wonderful bench scraper. You take your bench scraper and line up all your garlic. It's probably a good half cup of garlic there and that's going to go into my into my beans. Alright. Alright, you with me?
Glen Merzer: I'm with you.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: Alright, alright.So, next what we're gonna do is I'm looking at my recipes here. We're gonna add three cups of vegetable broth. So now this vegetable broth I've made with some homemade vegetable powder. And I can give you that recipe too if people wanna make their own vegetable powders. You can include that in show notes. But we're gonna put those three cups of... vegetable broth in there. You could make your own vegetable broth or you could use those little bouillon cubes. The only problem with bouillon cubes is that there's a high amount of salt in those, so it's going to be a little bit harder to fill the salt.
Glen Merzer: There are also boxes of vegetable broth available in grocery stores.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: Yeah, that's a really good one. And I think there's one called Just Bouillon or something like that. That's a good one. Again, lots of salt. And so if you use something with salt, like one of those bouillon products with salt, you're gonna wanna cut back on the salt in your recipe. So the next is, this recipe calls for six tablespoons of soy sauce. Again, I've left the recipe as such. I'm gonna cut back a little bit on the soy sauce, because I'm gonna put some salt. Glen, do know the flavor profile with soy ads when you add it to a dish like this? What's the flavor profile that you get in addition to salt?
Glen Merzer: you've stumped me. You're going to make me look stupid on my own show. Okay, the flavor profile. Let me just take a wild guess. It tastes like cranberries.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: Tastes like cranberries. Wrong? No, no, no. You're… Here's a big college word for you. Umami.
Glen Merzer: Okay. Umami.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: Umami. So it's going to add that umami flavor, that kind of meaty, that meatiness, that savory meaty.
Glen Merzer: Don't say meatiness on this show.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: I'm sorry. What can I say instead of meaty?
Glen Merzer: You know, we don't use the word meaty here.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: We don't use meaty. We don't use.
Glen Merzer: And when you say COVID, I sneeze.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: I won't say the C word. All right. So I just went ahead and put like three tablespoons of soy sauce to put the umami. I'm not going to say the word on Glen's show. All right. So the next is a fennel. So we're going to throw two tablespoons of fennel powder in there or rest of the fennel seeds, fennel powder is fine. I've got this all pre -measured. It's just makes it lot easier for me as I'm done rolling here. So, and then we're gonna put some dried basil and dried oregano, kind of the classic, classic dried herb flavor here. This is, as you'll notice, you'll probably wonder, boy, sounds, why are you putting oregano and basil in a, a Polish sausage recipe against the herbalness, is that herby? If we were to leave out some of the smoked ingredients that I'll talk about in a couple, minute or so here. we'd be moving more towards that kind of the Italian sausage. That's how flexible this recipe is. So our basil is gonna go in there, our oregano, nutmeg, we've got a half a teaspoon of nutmeg.
Glen Merzer: There's nutmeg and sausage?
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: Sausage, isn't that amazing? Yeah, yeah, I actually looked up recipes for classic Polish sausage. And yeah, nutmeg was a common ingredient. in Polish sausage, yeah. And red pepper flakes. So, Gwen, do you like hot foods, medium, or are
Glen Merzer: Pretty mild. I'm a little bit on the wimpy side.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: You're a little bit on wimpy side, okay. So this is something, folks, that you could certainly leave off altogether, but I'm going to put about a teaspoon of red pepper flakes.Like if I was making these just for my wife and I, probably go more towards a tablespoon, because we like a little bit spicier, especially.
Glen Merzer: How do they make these red pepper flakes? How do they make them?
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: So there's going to be a certain type of pepper. So maybe an ancho pepper or guajillo pepper.
Glen Merzer: Somehow, what, dehydrate them?
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: And they dehydrate. They'll chop them up or take the seeds, chop them, know, chop up parts of them and then dehydrate them. And then you get your red pepper. So it's kind of a generic name. There could be a lot of different peppers in red pepper flakes. What else is in this? Let's see, caraway seeds. So we get that nice caraway smell. I just love the smell of caraway seeds. I wish we had the ability to smell this, smell so many spices. We're gonna put some caraway seeds.
Glen Merzer: I would have to upgrade the zoom plan.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: Yeah, you ought to. Maybe next year, right? For 2025. We'll put a little bit of salt in there. That's a tablespoon of salt. That's why I cut back on the soy sauce a little bit because I am putting salt in there. A little bit different flavor profile. We are making between 10 and 12 sausages out of this and they're pretty good size sausages. So this salt's going to get spread out. If you are salt free, you can leave the salt out altogether, which is, which would be absolutely fine. We're going to put a tablespoon of black pepper in here and then some liquid smoke. So liquid smoke adds that smokiness of the Polish sausage smokiness, if you will, to it.
Glen Merzer: Now, how do they make this liquid smoke stuff?
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: So they make the liquid smoke by basically taking like mesquite or oak or some hardwood and burning it, catching the smoke, you know, and then when the moisture in the vessel, if you will, they're, wherever they're smoking, know, burning the wood, injecting some steam in there. And then when it all condenses, the combination of the water and the smoke condenses, they pull that off and they get get liquid smoke.
Glen Merzer: I like the taste of liquid smoke, but I hope they don't start any forest fires.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: Yeah, right. Well, they you know, and some people don't like that like that taste. you know, if you like the taste, you want this a little smokier, the recipe calls for one and a half teaspoons, you could add a little bit more. If you don't like it, could
Glen Merzer: do we know anything about the health consequences of liquid smoke?
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: Yeah, I've gotten that. I've had that asked quite a bit in, sure.
Glen Merzer: My questions aren't original.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: They are not original. No, no. I've yet to hear an original question from you, Lance. No, I've been asked that before. And, know, you're not pulling off any of the carcinogens, you know, from the smoke at all. So you're not inhaling the smoke into your lung. you're just getting the flavor. And it's all processed and flavored and purified and everything. So what you're getting is that smoky flavor.
Glen Merzer: Can I ask you, Mark, what is your shoe size?
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: What does it have to do with?
Glen Merzer: Well, because you said I never ask original questions. There wasn't a very original question. I don't think you've ever been asked that before.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: I have not been asked that. Well, I'll take that back when I go buy shoes, I do.
Glen Merzer: Yeah, that's true.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: Yeah, so that was just red pepper. I'm sorry, smoked paprika. So again, adding that smoky pepper.
Glen Merzer: Don't lie to us now.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: No, I will never lie. I'll do a lot of things, but I never lie. All right. by the way, my shoe size is 11 and a half for dress shoes and 12 for gym shoes. So.
Glen Merzer: Whoa, those are big, feet you have there.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: Hey, do you know? Did you know that your feet actually get bigger as you get older?
Glen Merzer: I think I have heard that.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: Yeah. Yeah. I think I started out my feet were like size 10 when I was like in high school.
Glen Merzer: Really? And you're up to 11 and a half, 12?
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: 11 and a half to 12 depending
Glen Merzer: You must be ancient.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I can't wait till I'm like 80. I'll have like size like 27 shoes like Cheyenne and O 'Neill does, you know? Gravity is a bugger, isn't it?
Glen Merzer: Yeah. Now, what's that you're drinking?
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: this is water. okay. Yeah. I'm thirsty. That's an original question. I've never gotten asked that question.
Glen Merzer: Okay, good. So that's two.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: You got two.
Glen Merzer: Let's see how many original questions you could... Okay. So we're going to put that in there. And now we're going to add nutritional yeast.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: Okay.
Glen Merzer: Okay. Here's a...You know, I have an opinion about nutritional yeast.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: I'm sure you do.
Glen Merzer: I think it has an unfair name. It's called nutritional.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: Right.
Glen Merzer: You shouldn't be able to put that in the name of your product. Well, be like saying, let's have some health giving bananas, you know, it's or let's have some miraculous goji berries. It's putting the adjectives in the name. In the name. Nutritional yeast. saying, hey, we're nutritional. I don't think they should be allowed to do that with all respects to the yeast.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: Did you see what I just did? What'd just do?
Glen Merzer: Did you screw up the recipe?
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: No, I just lost my fork.
Glen Merzer: you don't want to bite into a Polish vegan sausage and bite into a fork.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: No, it's like something like there's a bad joke in there somewhere. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to wipe my fork off. So OK, even professional chefs make those mistakes. So yeah, well, you know. So here's a question and it's an answer you already gave me to another question. Yeah. What flavor profile does nutritional yeast add to a dish like this?
Glen Merzer: OK, well, you're this one must be cranberry.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: umami. umami.
Glen Merzer: it's a trick question.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: I know. I'm sorry. Twice.
Glen Merzer: Twice. Umami. All right.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: So, you know, you know, there'll be another question here. Yeah, I know. It's coming up.
Glen Merzer: It's coming up. It's coming up.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: All right. So I added nutritional yeast. By the way, while you were while you're quantificating about nutritional yeast, I also added some coriander which I've that's again, I'll under...
Glen Merzer: Pontificating is a little bit of a charge term for what I was doing.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: So boxing?
Glen Merzer: No, that's also a charge term.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: Sharing your infinite knowledge and opinions?
Glen Merzer: Yeah, that's more like it.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: Okay, that's better.
Glen Merzer: All right, so we're stirring this with a fork.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: We're stirring this with a fork and there's a reason. So I don't want it to clump, right?
Glen Merzer: Is because you don't have a spoon?
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: Well, it's actually easier with a fork because you're going to want to aerate this. You're going to see what's going to happen here in a second. You want to aerate and mix the vital wheat gluten in.
Glen Merzer: All the spoons are in the dishwasher, aren't they?
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: Well, that too. And it's just easier because my whisk gets all gloved up here. So remember, one of the things that I talked about early on was that we want to cook. We're going to have to cook if we're going to be vegans, right? Especially low fat, low salt eating, right? So I'm looking for ways to save myself time to make things more convenient for me. One of the most Here's a big college word for you. Enervating things, enervating. Yeah. Right. What does enervating mean?
Glen Merzer: Is this another question?
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: It is. I like asking you questions.
Glen Merzer: Enervating would be depleting energy, right? Depleting energy. Yeah.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: Frustrating. Right. Things about working with vital weak fluid is it's really sticky and it's messy and it's gluey. It's almost like vital wheat gluten.
Glen Merzer: Come to think of it, that's another product with an adjective, vital wheat gluten. It calls itself vital. The yeast calls itself nutritional and the gluten calls itself vital. yeah. Why are these foods giving themselves adjectives?
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: Well, think so. You want the technical reasons?
Glen Merzer: Yeah.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: Okay, so nutritional, it's called nutritionally because there's brewer's yeast, there's baker's yeast, right? So brewer's yeast, if you brew beer, right, there's certain strains of yeast that you'd only brew beer with. You wouldn't want to use a baker's yeast in a brewer in a beer recipe. Likewise, if you're making bread, you're going to, or a cake that needs a rising agent like a yeast, you're going to use baker's yeast.
Glen Merzer: Right.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: Nutritional yeast has no rising agent properties, right? There's no lying yeast in nutritional yeast. It's just all about nutrition. It's all about...
Glen Merzer: Well, they should just call it eating yeast.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: Eating yeast. Yeah, but then, then it kind of sounds gross.
Glen Merzer: Well, I mean, they're giving themselves a very favorable adjective.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: They are. Nutritional.
Glen Merzer: Right.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: And then you got the gluten calling itself vital.
Glen Merzer: So vital. So why is it called vital?
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: Because only the gluten is extracted from the flour. there's no
Glen Merzer: What are you, a PR agent for these groups? I'm You're a shill, aren't you?
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: I am.
Glen Merzer:You're a shill for the gluten and the yeast industry.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: I am. I am.
Glen Merzer:You're just excusing their You're excusing. You're excusing their -
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: Hey, don't get me started on the food industry, We won't talk about some of the food industry's shell games they play with people and why we're so sick, fat and unhealthy as a country here.
Glen Merzer: It's like if you said, would you like some vital wheat gluten or some indispensable tofu? I don't think you should have an adjective in your name.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: But you do use soft
Glen Merzer: Soft, Soft is a descriptive. Silken tofu. There's soft, there's firm. But there's no name like indispensable tofu. But there's nutritional yeast and vital wheat gluten. Is there another one like this that's interesting?
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: I don't know.
Glen Merzer: We'll have to think about that.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: So, all right. So now we're going to add the wheat gluten. OK, I'll leave the wheat. Yeah, the wheat gluten. So far I can't say the C word, I can't say the word, and I can't say the V word. Right. Or the N word, the nutritional word. Right. Can't say any of those. So now, so here's the part that if you just dump this all in and start mixing this up, it's going to be really enervating. okay.
Glen Merzer: Here we go again with the college.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: So what you want to do is type, here's another big college word, titrate.
Glen Merzer: You're going to titrate it?
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: and titrate it in. It's kind of a bit of a overuse of that word, but I'm gonna add a little bit at a time, right? And just keep mixing it. See what I'm doing? Just kind of mixing it in, mixing it in, mixing it in. And until it all kind of gets in there. And then you're gonna have this kind of big mess of glob of… of
Glen Merzer: and you got to stir all that with a fork right
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: you want to stir it with a fork why do you i'm gonna
Glen Merzer: when's your birthday i'm gonna send you a spoon
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: no see how nice this cleans up though watch this if i see see the way that's that's all under right all i do is this and it's all cleaned so it's just easier to mix and the stirring you want a big fork don't use one of those little puny forks that you eat I'm going show you all the spoons I have. All right.
Glen Merzer: Let me me test you. Do you know what you call a fork with three prongs?
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: No, it's called a runcible spoon.
Glen Merzer: A runcible. I think I'm getting that right.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: What the heck does runcible mean?
Glen Merzer: I don't know. Three. But at least it isn't so self promoting as vital and nutritional.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: It's true. All right, so what I'm doing now is just mixing mixing this all up. I gotta make a little room here. This is the fun part of the of the recipe. It's gonna get myself a little room here. I'm going clean this up a second. Move my cutting board over there. You want a nice big workspace for this. You just keep mixing this up and you're going to see some kind of bits stuck to the sides and it's okay. And now what we're going to do is turn this out onto our worktop. So here's another part that I've learned over the course of time to make this less of a frustrating process. That is the way to clean your bowl up. Because if you can see this, it's like really kind of gluey and sticky to the sides, right? So what you want to do is scrape your bowl out because if you get a dish cloth in there, it really pisses my wife off. Because it gets all dirty, right? And all these little bits get stuck in the dish rag and everything. You're on another dish anyway.
Glen Merzer: So how many years have you been married, Mark?
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: 38.
Glen Merzer: 38 years. That's back when your feet were around the size 10.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: 10 and a half. Okay. So what you want to do is scrape the bowl out and try not to use a dish rag to wipe this out. So my next thing that I would do with this is just run some hot water and soap in here just wash this out with your hand and eventually what will happen is the soap and the hot water will melt all the will melt the blood.
Glen Merzer: Now this raises the question has your wife minded watching your feet enlarge over the course of your marriage?
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: She's laughed about it. Okay. Yeah yeah you know and there used to be a time when I'd have to buy a new pair of dress shoes You know, once a year and I don't have to do that anymore because I don't have to dress up and look professional. I wear suits anymore. So, okay. shoes now, but yeah, she let she was she was laughing about until her feet started to grow and poo. I see.
Glen Merzer: So she has the same issue.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: She has the same issue.
Glen Merzer: Right.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: Well, how big do you have your feet got? What's your shoe size? I asked the hostess, by the way, either.
Glen Merzer: Yeah, I, you know, I'm staying very young. I'm still a nine and a half.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: They didn't get any bigger?
Glen Merzer: Not to my knowledge.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: All right. Well, you're you're you're lucky. Yeah. OK. So what I want to do now is just is work this a little bit and you're going to see some of the beans fly off and it's
Glen Merzer: OK. For those who are listening to the podcast and not watching it, let me say that Chef Mark Cerkvenik right now is kind of kind of molding a big, it looks almost like a bread dough on his countertop. he's doing so in size 11 and a half shoes.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: Or 12 if they're gym shoes.
Glen Merzer: Well, are they gym shoes? Chef Mark Cerkvenik: No, you know what? So this is one of the one of the magics of of doing things on Zoom. Yeah. I got shorts on. Shorts on and Docs, Doc Martens. Okay.
Glen Merzer: So for those listening rather than watching, Mark has just revealed that he's wearing shorts, which is not terribly professional. And Doc Martens. And you know, next time you're just going to have to watch on YouTube to get those exciting moments.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: I had a friend of mine that's a therapist. He's individual marriage and family therapist. And one of the first times he had a client, he saw the client in person. He kind of joked with the client. guess he had a relationship, obviously, with this client, period of time, and saw them in person and said, yeah, now that I'm seeing you in person, I guess I got to put pants on every time.
Glen Merzer: Well, I got scared when you said one of the magics of doing a Zoom. I was hoping you were afraid I was going to have...
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: I wasn't going to have a pants down.
Glen Merzer: I was hoping there would at least be shorts involved.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: No, I always wear pants. It's just, yeah, you got to look professional kind of from the waist up. Like, you know, and put the Glen Merzer podcast show. That's what I think. That's what I got. Well, yeah, that's what I got when I did the show last time with you. That's a lousy, I mean, this hat. It's very nice. Thank you. And I've gotten asked, you know, what's that? What's Glen Merzer? I said, who? I forgot I got the head on.
Glen Merzer: Have many people ask that question?
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: No, no, that was a lie. sorry. Most people don't even look at your head.
Glen Merzer: That's true.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: Anyways, okay. So now I've got this kind of massive dough with, and what you see in here, I don't know if you could see it on the camera, you know, it's kind of like beans in there and the garlic and And it smells, it's got that umami smell, that meat, that word smell, you know.
Glen Merzer: No smell of cranberries, I guess.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: So it's not smell like cranberries.
Glen Merzer: I guess the next time I come on you show me I need to do something with cranberries.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: Please.
Glen Merzer: All right. So now what you do is you're going to make this in, I sometimes get 10, sometimes get 12 sausages out of this. And so
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: Let's see how many we can make this time. So I'm going to cut this big loaf. So I've got this, I've got this loaf, if you will, it's, let's see, six, six in four is 10 inches long by about six inches wide and about two inches high, roughly two to three inches high. So now I'm going to cut this in half. All right, and then cut the half in half.each half and half, and then cut each of these halves into thirds, which should technically give me 12, right? But it kind of depends on how even I am. And I don't mind different size sausages, because sometimes you put these things freeze really nicely.
Glen Merzer: You're good at this. This brings back the time when you did three card Monte professionally.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: That's right. That's right. I did. one of my many careers. See that this one's a little small, so I'm probably going to combine that with another one. But I'm just going to cut these into about 10 to 12 pieces. And what happens now is we're going to roll these up into some tin foil. I've had students ask me, isn't tin foil, doesn't it cause Alzheimer's? And actually, Dr. Michael Greger has a really good blog about that, a video blog about that. And one of the things that the research has shown that is if you store acidic dishes in aluminum pans, then that aluminum gets shunted off into the dish you know, could ingest it and really the biggest source of aluminum toxicity can come from antacids. . Michael Greger talks all about this and you know, one of the things after being on this vegan diet and I'll see my wife and I have been whole food plant -based. It was just six years in February of 18. I haven't taken an antacid in over six years now. You know, he used to take them all the time, you know. So Another reason to go vegan is it reduces your need to take antacids. So then what we do is I've got some aluminum foil here.
Glen Merzer: so your point was that since this isn't acidic, the aluminum won't hurt you. that your point?
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: It would not hurt you, according to
Glen Merzer: But it might if this was an acidic dish.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: Right. Right. So if you're really concerned about it, you could wrap this initially in parchment paper and then wrap it in a tin foil. But you really want to wrap it in tin foil because what happens is, wheat gluten, this will expand under heat because we're going to steam these now in a traditional steamer for 45 minutes or we're going to steam them in a Instapot or a pressure cooker for 16 minutes. I prefer doing these in a pressure cooker because it's 15 minutes. It's very quick. I put it on, I forget. I don't have to worry about the water boiling out or anything like that. So what I'm doing now is, as you can see, I'm kind of taking them and making them into sausages. Probably about, let's see, about a six inch sausage. and rolling it pretty tight, you know, with my aluminum foil, twisting the ends and then bending the twisted ends under. So this goes pretty quick. So if you have kids, it's kind of a fun or grandchildren. It'd be fun way to spend a Sunday afternoon. I actually made a batch because we're going to try one here yesterday. So In between the Bears, the Bears game while was watching the Bears game, their first win and I don't know how many and their first win by a rookie since 2001. So we're pretty happy for the Bears. I think the Colts there in Indiana, they lost, didn't they?
Glen Merzer: I have no idea.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: You don't follow football.
Glen Merzer: I haven't watched football since Joe Namath stopped playing.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: geez. You're not missing anything, really.
Glen Merzer: You know the problem with football, Mark?
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: What's the problem?
Glen Merzer: The problem with football is you could have the most exciting play of all time. You know, there could be 30 seconds left in the game and the team with the ball is down by five and the quarterback drops back and he's almost tackled and he scrambles and he threw, He laterals the ball to his halfback, who then throws the ball down the field 60 yards, and the receiver is double covered by defenders, but he somehow leaps up and catches the ball with one hand and falls into the end zone, and it's the most dramatic ending of a football game ever. And then you hear, flag on the play, holding. And then who the hell cares if some guy was holding somebody? You know, they hold each other on every damn play anyway. That's what I hate about football, those damn flags. It's just ridiculous. Those guys who are linemen, they hold each other every damn play. So why do they choose during the most exciting play of all time to throw that damn flag and say holding. That's why I don't like football.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: Ratings. gets people to come back to the excitement.
Glen Merzer: It's ridiculous. Five yards, 15 yards, When they figure out how to do that, I'll start watching again. And then I got a problem with basketball.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: What's your problem with basketball?
Glen Merzer: The basket is too low. These guys are taller than the basket. Everybody can dunk now. They're shooting downwards.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: Right?
Glen Merzer: Yeah, they they jump up six inches and dunk the ball. And dunk the ball. It's ridiculous. Raise the basket to 12 feet. You got a good sport.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: Have you ever, you know, it's pretty amazing, though, when you think about, you know, how tall these guys are and you look at some of these players like you know, like for example, John Paxson. So I grew up, you know, in the nineties, I was, you know, watched all six bears, both championships and you know, John Paxson, he was, you know, shooting guard. He, was a great outside three point shooter and, he always looked like really short, right? he's six, three, he's like, you know, two inches taller than me. And he, you know, so you get to some of these guys and I can remember There was back in the day, this was before things change in our society. You when you used to be able to get really close to some of the players and it was a guy, Will Purdue, he was a center for the bear, for the Bulls and he was seven foot one. His belly button came up to like my nose, you know, and I'm, like I said, I'm a little bit over six foot, you know, it's just like unbelievable. And then when you stand there and you see what these guys do in terms of launching from you the top of the key there in the air from pretty much, you know, the top of the key all the way to the basket. That is pretty amazing, but they can all do it now.
Glen Merzer: Yeah. Who's the shortest player in the NBA now?
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: I don't know who it is now.
Glen Merzer: I stumped you.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: Yeah, you did.
Glen Merzer: Yeah. I remember when I was a kid, I can't remember his name, remember
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: Spud Webb was a guy. I think he played with Seattle or something like that. He was like five, six, and he was Duncan.
Glen Merzer: I remember a guy who was 5 '6", but that wasn't his name. But yeah, if you get into the NBA at 5 '6", they should just automatically, you know, make you MVP.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: Right?
Glen Merzer: That's just such a remarkable accomplishment. know. You ever played basketball?
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: Well, you know, on the street.
Glen Merzer: Yeah, I was never very good at basketball. I didn't enjoy that. I was a Bowler and a golfer.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: I've heard about your bowling.
Glen Merzer: You heard about my bowling? Yeah. I was actually, I was actually pretty good when I was younger, but I haven't touched the ball. I once, I once bowled a game where the first frame I got nine pins and every other frame after that was either a strike or a spare. So I only missed one pin in the whole game.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: Wow.
Glen Merzer: And then I retired.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: And then you retired.
Glen Merzer: Well, that's a good way to start up on the on the up note, right?
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: That's it. I'm not going to top that game. I only miss one pin.
Glen Merzer: Good. All right. So what are these what are these guys look like when they're done?
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: this was what it looks like for those who are for those who are listening and not watching.
Glen Merzer: It looks kind of like a sausage. How about that? And but it's not, you know.bad like a sausage.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: This is a vegan product.
Glen Merzer: Yeah.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: So a couple of things about this. First of all, we're going to steam these again, 45 minutes in conventional steamer or 15 minutes in an Instapot or a pressure cooker. You're going to let these cool and then you want to these in the refrigerator overnight. You could eat them the same day, but the texture just doesn't firm up and doesn't get, and the flavors don't meld. You know, I had one yesterday just to make sure it's you know, it's tasting okay. And they're okay, but they're just not firm. So when you when when they sit in the refrigerator overnight, they get a really nice firm texture. And, you know, a little chewy. And then all the flavors kind of meld and, you know, a nice garlic and I mean, it's like polisosha garlic and the herbs and get some nice spicy hot mustard with this and I mean, you're good to go. One of the other things you'll see too is kind of The texture, I'll kind of pull this apart a little bit. Yeah, it kind of rips like
Glen Merzer: like a piece of bread like a piece of fresh baked bread, right?
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: Yeah. Yeah, really good. You can eat this room temperature or you could warm it up. wouldn't put this like there's one of the recipes I've included is for andouille sausage, kind of in a traditional vegan gumbo. If you use this in a in a hot dish, I would you're going to make these out course ahead of time, I wouldn't put them in and boil them with the rest of the ingredients because it's going to fall apart. So what you do is you'd make your gumbo or what have you. And then maybe the last couple of minutes just to warm them through, cut them into slices, you know, and then put them in there and put them in the dish.
Glen Merzer: All right. Well, we'll put the recipe in the show notes. And thank you so much, Mark, for demonstrating how to make a healthy sausage.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: Healthy sausage, Polish, Italian. Look up your favorite Italian recipe. can find Italian spices. Play with the spices. You want a little bit more garlic, a little bit more heat, less salt, more salt. Now, that's the whole thing about cooking is it's experimenting and making those things according to your own personal palette.
Glen Merzer: There you go. All right.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: You have a website that people can find you at? Yeah, I do. It's letseategreat .com.
Glen Merzer: Letseategreat .com. Go to there. Check out what Mark Sirvenig has to offer. you come back on the show soon?
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: I would love to. Maybe when your shoe size is about a half size bigger?
Glen Merzer: Yeah, so probably be about another year or so. I'll be up to a 12, 12 and a half.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: OK. And yeah.
Glen Merzer: I hope we still recognize you.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: Yeah, yeah, you probably will. Yeah, and I still won't have hair. I'll probably, you know, still be bald.
Glen Merzer: Keep that cap on, Mark.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: That's right. There's a little bit too much glare there without the cap.
Glen Merzer: Yeah, minding, Mark. Keep the cap on.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: Nice cap.
Chef Mark Cerkvenik: Thanks, Glen.
Glen Merzer: All right. Well, thanks very much, and we'll see you soon. Thank you, everybody, for watching and listening.
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