Yeah VESC-based ESCs can run DC motors. Basically instead of pulsing 3-phases quickly and precisely they just turn 2-phases on for x% of the time where x is the throttle. That’s an oversimplification but roughly right. The current capabilities might be a little lower since it’s a more sustained load on 2 phases instead of 3 but as far as I know it works fine and is quite easy to set up.
As for which ESC, there’s a recent post here with some info, once you skip down to about this far in the discussion