Chili lemon seitan fajitas.

Need something to do with that steamed "chicken" seitan loaf you made? Try these! The chili & lemon pair nicely to give the seitan a rich flavor, that is warmly rounded out with the addition of a little garlic, cumin, and cayenne. These have a very bold flavor all on their own- I swear, you won't even miss the cheese!

Ingredients:
1 loaf "chicken" seitan
2 bell peppers (color of choice)
1 medium/ large onion
2 tsp minced garlic (in olive oil)
2 tbsp olive oil
1/4 c lemon juice

Spice blend:
1 tbsp chili powder
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp salt
1/8- 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper (depending on how hot you want)

Directions:

1. Mix all ingredients from the spice blend together well. Slice the seitan loaf into 1/4" strips, then turn the strips on their side so they are laying flat and slice them up the middle long ways so they are half as thick. Set aside.

2. Start heating the oil in a large pan over medium/high heat. Add minced garlic, and stir occasionally so it won't burn.

3. Chop your onion to thick slices. When the garlic is sizzling in the oil, add onion. Stir occasionally so it won't burn. while you clean and chop your peppers into chunky strips.

4. Once the onion is starting to go translucent, add the peppers to the oil. Cover with a lid and sautee for about 5-7 minutes, stirring frequently. A little browning on the veggies is fine, but you definitely don't want them to get too browned. Veggies are ready for the seitan to be added when the onion is completely translucent, and the peppers have begun to soften.

5. Add the seitan strips, and stir occasionally. Cook until the strips are a little browned. About 6minutes. (cook for 3, then stir to flip the seitan over, and cook for another 3.)

6. Add lemon juice, and stir around well to deglaze pan. Add spice blend, and stir well again. Be careful not to end up with large clumps of spice & lemon stuck to the veggies & seitan. You want it to be pretty uniformly coated. You can add a tbsp of water or 2 if you need to to get it this way. Reduce heat to low, cover and let cook for about 5 more minutes, stirring occasionally.

7. Remove from heat, and serve with flour tortillas, or on large romaine lettuce leaves (if watching your calories).

8. Get out the tequila, margaritas, or mexican beer & ENJOY!

~ Jamie Monster~




Seitan sliced into fajita sized strips.



The onions have gone translucent, and the peppers are just starting to soften- time to add the seitan!



After adding the spices, & everything is mixed up & ready to serve.


Ready to NOM, served on romaine lettuce leaves instead of tortillas. (you can use tortillas, though.)

Sausage of intensity!

There are quite a few recipes out there that use the seitan steamed sausage method, and every one I have tried has always turned out GREAT! After getting bored in the kitchen one day, decided to try making my own, and a rich, bold, and intense flavor is what I really wanted. These sausages definitely hit the mark with a heavy kick of red wine, sun dried tomatoes, roasted red pepper, and a little bit of heat from red pepper flakes. These are great sliced up and sauteed in a little olive oil with some sweet onion, garlic, and zucchini served over some whole wheat pasta, or garlic cous cous, as well as lightly browned on the grill and served to your vegetarian and vegan comrades at your next BBQ

Materials needed:

Blender (immersion or standard)

a large mixing bowl (2 if using immersion blender)

a rubber scraper

a fork

steamer basket, or electric rice steamer

tin foil

Optional- a kitchen chopper (like the slap chop)

Wet ingredients:

½ cup canned beans (white beans, black beans, black eyed peas, pinto beans, etc)

2 tbsp vegan worcestershire sauce

2 tbsp tomato paste

1 tsp Liquid smoke

1 tbsp olive oil

2 tsp balsamic vinegar

½ c vegetable broth

½ c full bodied, dry, red wine (I used a Spanish Grianza)

Dry ingredients:

1 ½ c vital wheat gluten flour

¼ c nutritional yeast

2 tbsp garlic powder

1 tbsp sweet paprika

2 tbsp dried Italian seasoning

1 tbsp fennel seeds, lightly crushed

1 tsp crushed red pepper flakes

½ tsp salt

Other ingredients:

¼ c sun dried tomatoes, finely chopped

¼ c roasted red peppers, finely chopped

2 tbsp dried onion flakes, reconstituted with ¼ c hot water

Directions:

1. place all wet ingredients in the blender pitcher, or in a large bowl. Puree together until completely smooth.

2. Place fennel seeds in a plastic zippered bag, and roll over them with the side of a coffee mug until lightly crushed.

3. Mix together dry ingredients & seasonings in a large bowl with a fork, Make sure that everything is well blended & well incorporated together.

4. Add dried tomatoes, peppers, and onions to dry ingredients. Pour in wet ingredients and mix well together with the fork until all is well mixed (you will have lumps of tomatoes, peppers, & onion- that is OK).

5. Measure out 1/3 c of dough, and form into a log .(this will feel disgustingly close to raw hamburger- be prepared). Place the log on a sheet of tin foil, & roll up tootsie roll style. Make sure to seal the dough inside well, or it will burst out during steaming. Repeat process until all dough is finished- you should get 8- 10 sausages.

6. Steam in a steamer basket, or electric rice cooker for 50 minutes.

7. Remove, unwrap, and serve as desired.

I store these in the fridge in a sealed plastic container- they should keep for a week, but never seem to last that long! ENJOY!

Is this a brains & guts margarita for a zombie dinner party? Nope- this is the wet ingredients all blended together.



Dry ingredients mixed.


Still not brains, just the mixed dough, ready for making sausages.



Sausage log on the tin foil, ready for rolling.



All rolled up, with ends twisted tightly.



A whole batch in the steamer.



This is what they look like after cooking.



Ready to eat, served with sauteed veggies & garlic & olive oil cous cous.

ALL HAIL SEITAN! (steamer method)

Grimly already covered how to make a boiled seitan in a previous blog. Here is a method that steams the dough in a foil pack. The results are a more firm textured seitan that lends its self well to dishes like gyros, fried "chicken" strips, and fajitas, or anything else that you want a drier and more firm finished product. I sometimes have trouble getting the consistency right with the boiled seitan, this one makes it easier to get the same results time & again. If you're a seitan novice & keep failing with the boiled kind, give this one a try until you get the hang of making the dough. There are a few different variations for spices at the bottom of this recipe to try out, but also feel free to experiment with your own!

Steamed seitan

Ingredients:

1 c vital wheat gluten

1/4c nutritional yeast

1 c cold water

seasoning mixes (see additional recipes for seasoning instructions)

Other equipment necessary:

large bowl

fork

measuring spoons/cups

tin foil

electric steamer or steamer basket for the stove top

non-stick cooking spray

Directions:

Place all dry ingredients in a large bowl, and stir with a fork until well mixed. Add in cold water. Stir with fork until well blended. Knead dough about 23-30 squeezes by hand to make sure all ingredients are well incorporated. Let dough rest 10 minutes or so, and knead dough again for another 2-3 minutes to build up elasticity.

Form dough into loaf type shape, keeping the loaf about 1" thick (will rise while steaming). Tear off tin foil sheet about 12" long. Spray shiny side of foil with cooking spray. Lay seitan loaf in center of foil. Fold tinfoil up around seitan loaf making an envelope type shape (be sure to leave room around loaf to allow dough to expand while steaming). Fold and pinch outside edges of foil together to make a tight seam (middle seam should be overlapping- it is ok if they are not pinched). Steam dough in foil envelope for about 55 minutes. Remove from steamer, and allow to cool for 5-10 minutes. Unwrap finished seitan, and slice as needed for recipe.

Chicken flavored seitan= 1 tbsp prepared poultry seasoning, 1 tsp onion powder, 1 tsp garlic powder. Add 1 tsp liquid smoke flavoing to the water used in recipe. (see chili lime fajita recipe for use in a recipe. Also good on its own for making fried "chicken" strips and etc)

Seitan gyros= 2 tbsp gyro seasoning (see seitan gyros with cucumber sauce recipe).

Mexican seitan= 3 tbsp- ¼ c prepared taco mix or other mexican seasoning. (can be pulsed in a food processor to make a ground taco "meat")

Here's the dough after mixing. Use cool water so it turns out spongy and elastic rather than a sticky, gooey mess.


On the foil, ready to be folded up.


Folded in the foil pack. Fold up one side, then the other so they overlap on top. Then fold the loose edges over several times to make the envelope. Be sure to leave about a half inch on all sides so the seitan an expand while cooking.


In the steamer, ready to be cooked.


A finished loaf of steamed seitan!

At War With Seitan - A Basic Seitan Recipe with Pics

Seitan... oh lord seitan. After years of reading recipes, blogs, watching videos, and making boiled seitan, I feel as though I have finally found consistency when it comes to making seitan. This post is for those who have struggled with texture – whether it be too gooey, too doughy, or problems with getting it to expand properly. Several little tricks have been have been suggested (use some soy or chick pea flour, start with cold water, etc.,) some of which have been useful, some not so much. After many practice runs of getting greatly varied results, I've settled on this process to produce consistent, well-textured and tasty seitan. I generally use Bob's Red Mill Vital Wheat Gluten and whatever Nutritional Yeast is available. The recipe/ process I use is built off of Bittman's recipe from “How to Cook Vegetarian,” but there are some helpful changes which I have added.

Time: 1 hour 30 minutes, mostly unattended

Difficulty: not bad, but can occasionally be frustrating – results can occasionally vary

Ingredients:

1 cup vital wheat gluten

1/3 cup of nutritional yeast

seasonings as needed (1 tsp. liquid smoke or soy sauce is a great place to start, though spice and flavorings can be used in any way )

apx. ¾ cup of cold water or vegetable broth (oddly, this is a place you will need to adjust depending on the dough's absorption of the liquid)

Stock pot (the larger the better) filled with veggie broth

Process:

1. Mix vital wheat gluten, nutritional yeast and dry seasonings (whisk works well) in a small mixing bowl.
2. Add wet ingredients (the cold liquid seems to help with the texture in the long run,) mix with fork
3. Knead for a minute or 2 (you may need to add more liquid or gluten – the texture at this point should be slightly gummier than Play-doh)
4. Leave sit for about 20 minutes.
5. At this point, you have to make a decision – do you want loaves or medallions? This will depend on what seitan dish you will be creating. If you choose loaves, divide the seitan into 2 roughly equal pieces. You can roll between your hands for a minute to shape, though it will be quite sticky.
   Should you choose to want smaller pieces, often referred to as medallions on other sites and cookbooks, use a knife or tear seitan into very small (a little larger than a thumbnail) pieces. This will take a little time (5-10 minutes.)
6. Place seitan into the large stock pot, filled with cold vegetable stock. Starting with cold stock (straight from the fridge) was recently suggested and has lead to much better consistency.
7. Bring to a rolling boil. Reduce heat to a boil, cover. Stir or flip on occasion (every twenty minutes or so.) Boil for 1 hour.

1. Dry ingredients

2. Wet ingredients mixed

3. Post-knead/ pre-boiled

4. Boiling

Storing and other stuff:

Once the seitan has cooled, you can store and refrigerate for a little over a week, though I will take it out every few days and re-boil it. I won't swear this is a necessity, but I have had stock go bad in the past, and I have read about moldy seitan as well.  As we post other recipes, we will let you know what works in terms of textures for specific dishes. However, 2 things you will likely do for many dishes is to either oven bake (to dehydrate a bit,) or pan-fry. When I first started making seitan, I was always disappointed that I could not achieve the textures I've found at many of the great restaurants of the veg-world. The two-aforementioned techniques have really helped significantly.