Basic Seitan Recipe
Seitan..what the heck is that? 🤔
Nonvegans probably have never heard of it, and if you are vegan or vegetarian, once you learn of it you most likely want to find great ways to make it taste good and actually create awesome substitutes for some of your once favorite meaty foods!
So here’s the thing. Seitan is primarily made up of vital wheat gluten. This is a flour like ingredient that has a ton of protein in it and when added to an appropriate amount of liquid and spices it turns into a tasty meat like texture. But hear me out, this can be made very wrong as well!
Fill up a 12-quart stock pot with water, cover, and set aside over medium-medium high heat while you prepare your seitan dough.
2. To your high-speed blender add in an entire 15.25 ounce can of black beans (liquid and all), an entire 15.5 ounce can of cannellini beans (liquid and all), 6 tablespoons water, 3 tablespoons of garlic powder, 1 tablespoon of vegan friendly grilling meat seasoning (steak seasoning, mesquite, BBQ, etc.) and 1.5 tablespoons of cayenne pepper. Blend until smooth, about 15-30 seconds in a high speed blender.
3. Add your liquid concoction to a large mixing bowl then add in 3.5 cups of wheat gluten with a rubber spatula until you can no longer stir and need to use both of your hands to knead the dough until it forms into one solid ball of dough that isn’t sticky!
Tips: If your dough is too tough and dry with powdered ingredients not fully mixed in then add in a little bit of water at a time (a teaspoon or tablespoon at a time) and not too much water to where it is sticky. If your dough becomes too sticky to the touch then add in a little bit more of wheat gluten until you have a thick ball of dough that springs back when you poke it.
4. Form the dough ball into small balls or strips (depending on what recipes you’re trying to use this as a meat substitute with) and submerge them one at a time into your roaring pot of boiling water. Once everything is all in, give it all a stir to make sure the pieces don’t stick to each other. Cover the lid with a slight crack to it and let your seitan boil for about 40 minutes. The goal is to cook your seitan dough to the point where it is fully cooked in the middle and springy to the touch when you poke it with a fork.
When you first put the dough into your hot pot of boiling water, the dough will sink to the bottom. After about 3-5 minutes of the lid being covered the dough pieces will float to the top. Give it a stir and really just leave it alone and let it cook for a while until the pieces aren’t gooey in the middle when broken in half. Turn off heat and let covered pot sit on the stove for another 20 minutes.
5. Drain the seitan pieces from the liquid by straining them into a colander and allowing the pieces to fully cool before cutting into smaller pieces and preparing to use them in recipes as a meat substitute!
For this recipe, I cut each piece of cooled seitan into smaller pieces that can be used to top pasta dishes, rice dishes, pizza toppings, and so on. If you want to use this recipe for making chicken tender substitutes then cut into larger sizes and boil bigger pieces and adjust the cooking time accordingly.
Once cooled and cut into pieces, this recipe makes approximately 14 cups of seitan pieces.
6. The last step before using this in a recipe or mixing with spices and oil and topping onto a dish is simply to heat up a large wok or pan, spray with cooking oil, or drizzle in a little bit of cooking oil instead and cook your setian pieces over medium-medium high heat for about 4-5 minutes on each side, spraying again with cooking spray and then flipping over to cook for another 4-5, and then one more time until most of the setian exterior is a crispy charred color for best results.
The goal is to have that charcoal smell before you flip over your pieces! You’ll be cooking your pieces from start to finish for about 10-15 minutes depending on how good your pan(s) are. Generally, about 1/4 of this recipe chopped into smaller pieces like stated will fit on one pan to harden up the texture and become more crispy before adding to a recipe so I suggest using two large pans at a time or a large double burner cooking griddle to save you some time! :)
Before you put your pieces onto your pan/wok, spray the pan first and then put on your pieces, cook for about 4-5 minutes and then spray the tops of your pieces with more spray before you flip them again. If you just want to use oil instead of spray then you only need to mix your pieces thoroughly with the oil once in the beginning instead of spraying your pieces throughout the cooking process. Cook your pieces for another 4-5 minutes until you start smelling a charred smell and color you desire.
I normally flip three times in total and get a blackish charred color on the exterior that produces a charred smell as if I char-grilled chicken on a BBQ grill outside. Creating the charred taste and crispy texture on the outside first before using this seitan in your meals makes this perfect for quickly tossing the hot crispy pieces in an Asian sauce to be topped on a rice bowl, a pesto-like sauce to be topped on a pasta dish, even cooking larger pieces for this recipe instead and adding BBQ sauce at the end for creating something similar to a rib substitute! :)
