How To Make Some Tender Seitan

Braised seitan with peas and mashed cauliflower

Making seitan can be a long and arduous process. I remember making this stuff from complete scratch with whole wheat flour and water. That's it. That was a four hour process at least. So my love affair with "wheat meat" did not make it to adulthood with that method. But thank those lovely food scientists and my mother's wonderful cooking for this recipe. It still takes about 2 hours but I think it's worth it and one batch goes a long way.

Mind you this is what is considered the "quick method" (complete screw face at this being the quick method) so if you want to bake it, well, that's another post for another time. Use this quick method for chicken-fried seitan or quick stir-fries. I used it for a (sort of) braised dish pictured above.

The thing that makes this tender? Soy flour. I find that if I use equal parts soy flour and gluten flour it becomes really tender and a lot less chewy than using the recipe on the back of the box. If you want it a little more tough, add more gluten flour but never exceed a 2:1 gluten flour:soy flour ratio or it'll be like chewing leather. Ew. Anyway, enjoy!

Ingredients:
1/2 cup vital wheat gluten
1/2 soy flour
about 1/4 cup warm water
various seasonings
salt and pepper
one really big pot

Directions
Put a large pot of water on high heat. Heavily season your water with your own mix of seasonings. I use the following:
salt
pepper
paprika
liquid smoke, hickory flavor
minced onions
4 cloves of garlic
poultry seasoning
 
Mix the flours in a bowl. Slowly pour the warm water in the flour mixture.

Knead mixture for about 3-4 minutes. After kneading your ball should be firm and should not fall apart.

After much kneading, this is what your gluten should look like.

For the next part you can do one of two things:

Roll out the dough with a rolling pin and cut the mixture in equal parts.

OR
Pull pieces of the gluten from the ball and stretch it out with your hands until it forms rounds.

I use the second method.

This is what your pieces look like before you put them in the water.

Place the gluten in the pot of water (that should be boiling about now. If not it's hot enough to place the pieces in there).

Cook the gluten for at least one hour.

Drain and cool and prepare as you want.

I hope my instructions were clear enough. Tell me what you make with it!

And this is what your pieces will look like after cooking.

Here's a picture of some veggies. It was just too much brown in this post.

Curried Carrot Soup

It's cold outside. Not "brr. I can't feel my toes" cold but "hmm...soup would be nice on this brisk autumn day" cold. And that's exactly what I did. I made some soup.

I've always liked making soup. My mother tells me my orange lentil soup is really good (another day).  And I'm currently watching my figure ferociously so I wanted to make a soup that was both warming and guilt-free. I paired this soup with a Tofurky panini on whole wheat bread with honey mustard and white cheddar. Twas filling and really good. I hope you like it.

Curried Carrot Soup

Ingredients
-4 medium carrots
-1 white potato
-1/2 small white onion
-frozen peas (optional)
-3 cloves of garlic
-1 tbsp. vegetable oil
-Curry powder (really pile it on)
-3 cups of vegetable stock (or 1 veg. bouillon cube and 3 cups of water)
Small amounts of the following:
-Ground Cumin
-Ground Coriander
-Celery Seed
-salt and pepper to taste
-A dollop of Daisy plain yogurt to serve (optional)


Directions
Peel and chop onions, garlic, potato, and carrots. Set aside.

Heat a pan with oil on medium high heat. Saute veggies for 10 minutes. Add vegetable stock and reduce heat to medium low.

Add all spices to mixture. Cover and cook for 15 minutes.

Ladle majority of vegetable mixture into a blender and blend until smooth. If you like all of your soup smooth, ladle the entire mixture in the blender and blend until smooth. Pour blended mixture back in pan and turn neat to low. Reduce heat to low.

Add peas and cook for another 2-3 minutes. Turn off heat and serve with a sandwich of your choice or crusty bread.