Help with textured vegetable protein for a non vegan.

I consider myself to be well versed at technique and my methodology for cooking is based upon understanding qualities of food rather than specific recipes - not a professional, just really passionate.

While I and my family are not vegan, I do like to use more vegetable matter in my dishes. For the most part I can keep things interesting with local grown vegetables, and the occasional exotic ordered online. Never any problems. Understand the family of the vegetable, apply a technique, get interesting food. I like doing this because I note that many friends seem to see only boiled vegetables, and they are just a necessary evil rather than something to enjoy... plus, while I am not afraid of using fats, many peoples expected protein portions tend to blow the fat content of a meal through the roof.

Local Asian markets meanwhile have always carried relatively inexpensive, and fairly nutritionally complete TVP which I have considered utilizing more, both for health purposes, and because it is a more efficient way to cultivate protein in our diets.

The two problems I run into - One is that the qualities of TVP are not discussed very meaningfully. Add water, add flavor, add heat. Nothing more specific than that. How can I use it with caramelization, direct or indirect heat, how does it react to fats. This is a lot of experimentation to do, and surely it has already been done.

The second thing is that most discussion about it is just straight up vegan recipes. This hits my first problem with never discussing the how and why you get results, but it also leaves out a number of possibilities. The very first thing I did with TVP was reconstitute it with a homemade chicken stock and it was fantastic. I don't need a shame fest because I did this.

Has anyone ever seen anything about this stuff besides the limited ways I brought up? Books, websites, videos... anything would be nice so long as it's not just a recipe.

submitted by /u/duckie68
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