A (not so) brief commentary on the seitan I’ve been praising.
The recipe for that sparked this post is the Black Bean and Seitan Stew from AfroVegan that we had the other night. I used the “wrong” seitan for it. How? Isn’t all seitan the same. No, my friend, it is not. There are a lot of different ways to make seitan that result in wildly varying tastes and textures. With that, I think most of us that make it regularly have a few favorites that we return to time and again.
It’s actually pretty important to know what you’re making with the seitan you’re preparing because of these textures, and I didn’t do that on Saturday when I was lazy and just made the chickeny seitan from The Vegan Slow Cooker. I like the seitan recipes in this book because I can get back to napping on the couch ASAP, but on this particular day, I kinda jacked up the ratio of wet to dry ingredients... ROOKIE MOVE. And I felt it as I dropped it into the broth. I turned to Ray like “uhhhhh these are going to be very loosely formed.” And yeah, they came out as very light fluffy (can you say fluffy in broth?) dumplings???
Flash forward to cooking day, and I realize I have to cut into medallions then coat these bad boys in cornmeal and then pan fry them. There is no way they will hold up! I AM SO ANGRY WITH MYSELF.
But I am a person of action.
I pressed the seitan in a tofu press, and then sliced them into medallions (carefully). You can see where some bits were too crumbly in the photos, but the rest were able to be dressed and fried pretty well. They looked like chicken nuggets, but I think (because of the vinegar) they taste like fish sticks.
They definitely fill a niche when you’re vegan but you’re not doing it for the beach body...