Recipe Review: If You Don't Mind Your Food Looking Like A Foil-Wrapped Turd... (Baked Seitan)
Being a vegetarian and a girl who likes to make things hard on herself I make my own seitan. What's seitan besides the most evil sounding of all hippie foods? It's basically super glutenous wheat. Now you know.
I started out making the basic recipe from PPK and got good results the first few times I made it. Sure it looked a bit like the horta, but it was good. Then the stars changed alignment and my seitan started to fall apart in the water and I was a sad panda.
mooflyfoof pointed me to an alternate recipe for baked seitan. Intrigued I gave it a try. The recipe was really easy but Will and I both thought it tasted like bizarro pepperoni and that was just a little, well, bizarre so experimentation has been happening. Also, it looks like a foil-wrapped poop. There's no way around that. It's just how it is and you'll have to learn to love it. It doesn't judge you, why would you judge it?
Here's the original recipe configuration:
1 1/2 cups vital wheat gluten
1/4 cup nutritional yeast (nooch)
1 tsp salt
(now check out these spices)
2 tsp paprika (I bought paprika just for this and as with all previous paprika experience there is NO FLAVOR)
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp cumin
1 to 2 tsp ground black pepper
1/4 tsp cayenne
1/8 tsp allspice
2 tsp garlic powder
3/4 cup water
4 tbl tomato paste
1 tbl tamari
2 tbl olive oil
2 tbl Worcestershire sauce (Annie's makes a vegetarian one)
Preheat ye olde oven to 325
Mix your dry ingredients together
Mix your wet ingredients together
Mix the dry and wet together and knead for one or two minutes. I beat the hell out of everything in the KitchenAid and it was awesome.
Form into a log and wrap tightly in foil. If you use the passive-aggressive hippie foil I use (called If You Care) spend a few moments cursing and picking the foil off the roll because the end is glued down and it's the flimsiest foil on the planet so you can't even peel it up without shredding it.
Bake for 90 minutes.
Let cool in the foil for a bit.
Slice, dice, make into sandwiches, nom as desired.
Today I tried a different combo of spices and it turned out awesome. I was going for curry-ish.
1/2 tsp Asian 8-Spice (Chinese 5-Spice but with three extra to make you feel inadequate)
1 tsp white pepper
1/2 tsp turmeric
1 tsp curry powder
2 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp ground ginger powder
2 tsp garlic powder
I started out making the basic recipe from PPK and got good results the first few times I made it. Sure it looked a bit like the horta, but it was good. Then the stars changed alignment and my seitan started to fall apart in the water and I was a sad panda.
mooflyfoof pointed me to an alternate recipe for baked seitan. Intrigued I gave it a try. The recipe was really easy but Will and I both thought it tasted like bizarro pepperoni and that was just a little, well, bizarre so experimentation has been happening. Also, it looks like a foil-wrapped poop. There's no way around that. It's just how it is and you'll have to learn to love it. It doesn't judge you, why would you judge it?
Here's the original recipe configuration:
1 1/2 cups vital wheat gluten
1/4 cup nutritional yeast (nooch)
1 tsp salt
(now check out these spices)
2 tsp paprika (I bought paprika just for this and as with all previous paprika experience there is NO FLAVOR)
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp cumin
1 to 2 tsp ground black pepper
1/4 tsp cayenne
1/8 tsp allspice
2 tsp garlic powder
3/4 cup water
4 tbl tomato paste
1 tbl tamari
2 tbl olive oil
2 tbl Worcestershire sauce (Annie's makes a vegetarian one)
Preheat ye olde oven to 325
Mix your dry ingredients together
Mix your wet ingredients together
Mix the dry and wet together and knead for one or two minutes. I beat the hell out of everything in the KitchenAid and it was awesome.
Form into a log and wrap tightly in foil. If you use the passive-aggressive hippie foil I use (called If You Care) spend a few moments cursing and picking the foil off the roll because the end is glued down and it's the flimsiest foil on the planet so you can't even peel it up without shredding it.
Bake for 90 minutes.
Let cool in the foil for a bit.
Slice, dice, make into sandwiches, nom as desired.
Today I tried a different combo of spices and it turned out awesome. I was going for curry-ish.
1/2 tsp Asian 8-Spice (Chinese 5-Spice but with three extra to make you feel inadequate)
1 tsp white pepper
1/2 tsp turmeric
1 tsp curry powder
2 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp ground ginger powder
2 tsp garlic powder