Seitan!
Once in a while I get motivated and make a big batch of seitan (AKA Wheat Meat). Although you can buy packaged seitan, I think that once you get the hang of making it at home it is much better for several reasons. It is cheaper, has much less packaging, and you can easily adjust the flavors to suit your tastes.
The first time I attempted to make seitan it didn’t turn out so well. I think I did not knead the dough enough, and I did not let it rest after cooking but ate it right away. The flavor was good but the texture was horrible- squishy and spongy. I think the biggest factor in making sure your seitan is non-spongy is to make it in advance and let it cool in the fridge overnight or at least for a couple of hours.
I’ve been using the recipe in Veganomicon as a basic starting point, although I always double the recipe and add a whole bunch of seasonings to the dough. The recipe calls for three tablespoons of nutritional yeast, but I add a lot more than that. I vary the seasonings depending on what flavor I want my seitan to have. Usually I want a chicken-ish flavor, so I add poultry seasoning, rosemary, and/or sage. I almost always add some spanish smoked paprika, and sometimes some cajun seasoning or seasoned salt. If I know I”m going to use my seitan for something Italian, I’ll add some dried oregano to it.
The other place I deviate from the recipe is to add things to the cooking broth. Usually this is a whole onion, chopped up, and several crushed cloves of garlic. Also bay leaves, more rosemary and sage, and some crushed black pepper and maybe some crushed red pepper if I want a little spiciness. Here’s my cooking broth:
The beauty of this seitan-making method is that you can save the broth to use for something else later! It especially works well for French Onion soup.
I forgot to get a photo of the dough, but here it is all cut up into chunks and simmering in the broth for an hour. It takes a while to cook, but aside from putting together the dough and kneading it and getting it into the pot, you can just leave it alone and go do something else while it is cooking. The dough chunks will sink when you put them into the pot, but they gradually puff up and start floating to the top.
And here is the seitan fresh from the cooking broth! I like making large batches because it is very versatile and it also freezes well. I cooked part of this batch in thin slices in some olive oil in my cast iron skillet, then added some homemade BBQ sauce to coat the seitan like a sticky glaze. It also works well breaded and pan-fried, or added to stir-fries, or fajitas.
