About us
We do things differently.
Most tempeh in the world is fermented in plastic bags. We ferment ours in stainless steel pans, allowing the mycelium to grow upwards freely in thick, fluffy layers, instead of it being blocked by a layer of plastic sitting on top of it.
We love fresh tempeh and want to help make it a staple food for families across America. It’s environmentally sustainable, probiotic, prebiotic, easy to cook, and packed with protein, minerals and soluble fiber. It makes beans more digestible because they have been pre-digested and broken down by the mycelium, which grows from the culture we inoculate it with, one that originated on the inner leaves of teak, waru and banana trees in the jungle.
From the beginning, in 2017 our tempeh has been all organic, and we have run the company in the most environmentally friendly way possible. Inspired by Gunter Pfaff’s innovative water bath incubation method, we switched over in 2018 to using this technology (after a year of trying the plastic bag method), being delighted with the results!
John, dedicated tempehst for HVT, and vegan for over a decade.
Our Whole Story
Back in 2009, Katherine Fleissner, who was running a wholesale vegan pastry company near New York City, met Jessica Childs, who was making and selling fresh, fluffy tempeh out of her Brooklyn apartment, after learning how to do this at the then-thriving Natural Gourmet Institute. Katherine fell in love with this thick, vital cousin of the pasteurized, vacuum-sealed tempeh found readily in any health food store. In the back of her mind she thought making tempeh seemed like an even more satisfying form of “right livelihood” than making holistic vegan desserts, being something “cruelty-free”/plant-based that one can eat for any meal of any day. A little seed was planted in her mind.
Then fatefully, five years later, both of these women happened to move within a mile of each other in the foothills of the Catskill mountains! Jessica founded a new incarnation of the tempeh business in 2017, called Tempeh North, and Katherine ended up partnering with her, before she took over the reins entirely the following year, and then Hudson Valley Tempeh was born.
Katherine, native Manhattanite-turned-Catskiller
Watch this video to see Jessica making tempeh from back in the day.
You can even try to make some at home using her instructions! (Jessica is using the plastic bag method.)