What I’ve noticed from going vegan in the summer time is that not all recipes are good for you just because they’re vegan. A lot go heavy on the oils and other fats to replace things that can’t be used. I follow this great blog called the Fat Free Vegan and what I love about it is that she doesn’t cook with any refined fats (oil, margarine or shortening). As I was looking back through some older recipes I stumbled upon this one, which contained one of the greatest finds ever for me… a dry roux!! A roux is the base for a lot of creole/cajun dishes and having made seafood gumbo many-a-times I was familiar with the normal process of making it which requires you to constantly whisk either oil or butter with flour FOREVER until it turns the perfect shade of brown. This then serves as the thickening agent in your gumbo later on. For this recipe, you obviously can’t use butter and she doesn’t use oil so she just dry cooked the flour and blended it with vegetable broth and voila! It wasn’t quite as good as a real roux but it was definitely delicious all things considered. Étouffée is a french word that translates to “smothered” and is usually a stew-like seafood dish made with crawfish and andouille sausage served over rice. This recipe takes out the seafood and uses soy sausages and is really delicious! CLick here to get the recipe and see how it’s made!