Baked Seitan

I had a very successful go at making my own baked Seitan yesterday. I started with the recipe on Post Punk Kitchen and then dinked with it until it was what I wanted.

First, let me say that if you like Seitan, it can be pretty pricey to buy in stores. What is Seitan? It’s a Vegan replacement for meat that has an extremely “meaty” texture and tastes great. It’s made from Vital Wheat Gluten and is very high in protein with no cholesterol. Seitan nicely absorbs flavors from your spices, so you can really jazz it up and again, it has a great texture.

The reason I LOVE this Seitan is that it’s NOT BOILED. I seriously hate seitan that’s been boiled because to me, it’s so squishy and gross. In order for me to make it edible, I have to dry or bake the heck out of it so it’s just ruined. Baking Seitan in a cool roll like this recipe has you do is just fab. It takes about 5 minutes, start to finish and then 90 minutes to cook. After it’s cooled you can either slice off what you need or you can grind or grate some of it up to make a hamburger consistency to be used in tacos, sloppy joes or whatever your heart desires. My husband took some “sloppy joe” type mix to work that I’d made from seitan and one of his friends, a meat eater all the way, asked if he could PLEASE have the recipe.

The other reason that I love seitan that’s been baked is that unlike boiled seitan, which has a LOT of it’s spices boiled out, baking it keeps all the flavorful goodness packed into the seitan log.

Here’s my version:

Baked Seitan

2 1/2 c vital wheat gluten
1/2 c nutritional yeast
1 1/2 t. salt
3 t. papria
1 t. cumin
1 T. green chilli powder (you can use red too)
3 t. garlic powder
2 t. onion powder
3 t. black pepper

Mix the dry ingredients and then mix the wet ingredients in another bowl

1 1/4 c. of water
2 T. soy sauce
3 T. olive oil
1 small can tomato paste
3 t. veggie worchester sauce (you don’t need this, or the soy sauce, so if you don’t have it, don’t worry.)

Mix the wet into the dry and knead for 30 seconds till it comes into a neat ball.
Roll the ball out into a 9″ or so log and then wrap this in aluminum foil and fold the ends under.

Put the log into a small pan and cook in a preheated oven at 325 for 90 minutes. Take out of the oven and unwrap and let cool completely.

**I keep coming back to update as I play with this recipe. The way I do my seitan now is this:

a whole bag of Bob Mills Vital Wheat Gluten-5 cups
2 t. salt
2 cans tomato paste
1/2 c. onion powder
1/2 c. garlic powder
1 c. nutritional yeast (if I don’t have it on hand, I do without. Contrary to what some people say, leaving it out does NOT make for a rubbery seitan. I don’t even notice a change. I just love the taste of nutritional yeast and the extra nutrient punch it brings.)
3/4 c. red chili powder (mild)
1/2 c. green chili powder (mild)
1/4 to 1/2 c. poultry seasoning
1/4 c. ground sage
1/4 c. dried parsley
This isn’t hot spicey (though it may be to some), it’s just really spiced up. All of these spices keep the seitan from being bland and tasteless…like store bought brands. I would recommend you play around with this recipe, increasing your favorite spices, more than you think you need.

I don’t even measure the water, just pour in some cold water till it looks right. I probably use around a cup or maybe 2. I add and mix with one hand, add a little more. It only takes about 2 minutes from start to finish.

I often cut us some of the finished seitan into 1″ cubes and store in a covered bowl with this marinade: a lot of catusp, a little spicey brown mustard and a litte BBQ sauce. I now-not rocket science. It’s very good, cold or hot. I like to eat it cold, dipping it back in this sauce.

–Store in fridge or cut up/tear up and put into baggies, you can also freeze it. This recipe is so much better than the boiled version that I posted earlier that I’m going to remove that one from my blog. So much cheaper than meat and so much better for you and I promise, it tastes great.

I also made these seitan sausages/hot dogs and wanted to show you what they look like. You KNOW how expensive these suckers are, often $4.99 for 4! I just rolled cut off a smaller piece and rolled it up exactly like the seitan log above. I cooked these at the same temp but only for 60 minutes, then unwrapped them and let them cool for an hour before I baggied them up and put them in the fridge. These actually have taste, unlike the store bought ones. You can keep working on them until they’re as spicey and flavorful as you like them. I got about 12 sausages from less than half a bag of Vital Wheat Gluten, which cost me $6.00.

*Now when I make Seitan, I usually make the whole bag at once. Seitan keeps really well in the fridge, in a gallon sized baggie, so I can afford to make more than we’d use in a 2 week period. The best I can figure, an entire bag of Seitan makes about 22 sausage-like servings of about 3-4″ long and about 2″ around, for about 130 calories each if you don’t add any oil to the recipe, I usually don’t anymore. I pinched off 22 sausages so I could see how many servings I was getting. In reality, I usually pull off about 1/3 of the batch and knead 1 T. of Sage into it, and make those into sausages and then just roll the rest into 2 huge chubbs, slicing off what we need as we go.)

*update: I have to add this because it’s so great. I had torn up the seitan above, and put it in a baggie in my Mom’s fridge then pulled it out to make chilli tonight but of the three adults in the house, not a ONE of us could tell if it was meat or not when we tasted it!!!! My Mom, who was raised on a farm, *I* was raised on a farm, and my husband…we had to try it over and over to be sure I hadn’t picked up a baggie of seasoned hamburger she might have left in her fridge. It took me tearing up several pieces to see that it indeed, it was gluten based! My Mom was just delighted and completely sold on it. I can’t think of a better disclaimer than that and I really hope you’ll be interested in trying this baked seitan. Makes me SO HAPPY!

**update, update: To the above recipe, I also added some “sausage spices” that turned my seitan into a sausage tasting dream. Yum! Typically when I make seitan now, I use the whole bag of gluten and mix up the dry ingredients. Then, I pull out about 2 cups of this mix and to that I add my sage spices for sausage type links: 3 rounded teaspoons of ground sage, more if you like, 2 t. poultry seasoning. I then roll the little sausages individually in foil as in the above recipe.

It’s finally sunny again today. The past 2 days have been just awful: pouring sheets of rain. I went hiking with two women in Tacoma, WA at Point Definance-a 4 mile hike that turned into 5 1/2 miles in slogging mud because we got lost.

We saw bald eagles and this baby elk! Look, can you see him on the log? He was super calm. Just watched us as I took 10 pictures of him.

Here’s a large Madrona tree, perched on the edge of a sweeping cliff. Madrona’s only grow 50 miles from the ocean, so they aren’t just everywhere. Aren’t they pretty? The wood is so hard that it’s very difficult to cut-you could make a bowling ball out if it, it’s that hard!

Lastly, this big tree is just amazing:

I have to finish my oatmeal with molasses and head out to pick someone up for a hike in Olympia, WA. Someone I know is on vacation so we’re hiking all over the place this week.

Be safe, be happy.