We propose a method of constructing abelian envelopes of symmetric rigid monoidal Karoubian categories over an algebraically closed field k. If char(k) = p > 0, we use this method to construct generalizations Ver p n , Ver + p n of the incompressible abelian symmetric tensor categories defined in [5] for p = 2 and in [25,27] for n = 1. Namely, Ver p n is the abelian envelope of the quotient of the category of tilting modules for SL 2 (k) by the n-th Steinberg module, and Ver + p n is its subcategory generated by P GL 2 (k)-modules. We show that Ver p n are reductions to characteristic p of Verlinde braided tensor categories in characteristic zero, which explains the notation. We study the structure of these categories in detail, and in particular show that they categorify the real cyclotomic rings Z[2 cos(2π/p n )], and that Ver p n embeds into Ver p n+1 . We conjecture that every symmetric tensor category of moderate growth over k admits a fiber functor to the union Ver p ∞ of the nested sequence Ver p ⊂ Ver p 2 ⊂ · · · . This would provide an analog of Deligne's theorem in characteristic zero and a generalization of the result of [32], which shows that this conjecture holds for fusion categories, and then moreover the fiber functor lands in Ver p .