seitan halp pls

[themostfleeting]

Hi, there are some entries in the memories about getting seitan meaty and chewy but I found them kind of confusing so I was wondering if we could raise the topic again

Comments

[supercarrot]

i've added the techniques-seitan tag to your post. some posts in there should have the answers you are looking for.

[supercarrot]

(also we don't put entries in the memories anymore. those have been defunct since mid 2005

[themostfleeting]

mmm that sounds highly delicious! can regular flour be subbed for chickpea flour? chickpea flour is on my health food store shopping list but I don't have any right now.

[br0ken_dolly]

i'm sure it can be, but i think it changes the texture a bit.

[themostfleeting]

ok, good to know. thanks!

[supercarrot]

do you ever mix flavors into the dough instead of only in the broth?

try some of the bryanna clark grogan seitans. those are filled with flavors.

[amolibertas]

You should try a Miso/nooch combo. It makes my sausages amazing. Low sodium soy sauce and garlic help too. Don't bother using just plain water as a fluid or you'll get tasteless stuff.

[br0ken_dolly]

i wish i knew how to do this too! i just bought some for the first time the other day as a treat (i used to buy white wave stuff in the past but it's so pricey!) and it was so good! i love the texture. my seitan has never come out like that.

i do second the sausage recipe above. it's my favorite recipe and ive even made it as a meatloaf before (tho it's hard to judge how long to cook it). it makes great sausages that are good with pasta or just plain. it also substitutes well (i use better-than-bouillon instead of what's in the recipe, i change up the spices, etc).

[themostfleeting]

mmm yeah I think I will make that recipe--I'm glad you said that you changed the spices because I think sausagey spices wouldn't always work for some of the recipes I want to make.

a lot of the blogs I've read have said that home-made seitan is soooo much better than store-bought and I am really confused! but hopefully this will help :)

[ppunkgoddess]

i made bake-in-broth seitan for tofurkey and it wasn't at all spongy. The middle was lovely texture. The outter parts were a little spongy, came away a bit like "mince". but that was quite nice, and tasty too.

I have also made the chickpea cutlets many times (I mess with the flavourings and use different beans to get different outcomes but always use the same basic recipe) these come out perfect and could fool an omni easily. I just lightly pan fry them. They're super easy and don't require a lot of kneading.

I have made Isa's recipe from the PPK once but it was my first ever seitan attempt and it was very spongy and totally turned me off seitan. It took me a bit to get over that as it was my first taste of seitan too.
Since then I've discovered that boiling was my problem. Apparently its the bubbles in the rolling boil which make it so spongy and that keeping the heat very low and just on simmer point is the way to improve texture. I've yet to try that recipe again though, but I will.

HTH.

[ppunkgoddess]

I forgot to add, I made the "lunch meat" recipe posted on here recently (I think it was supercarrot who posted it) and it was perfect. Only downside was my daughter didn't like it much. I turned it into teeny tiny sausages using my apple corer, fried them up and she ate them that way. =)

[supercarrot]

nope not me. :-)

this one?
http://community.livejournal.com/vegancooking/2824106.html

[themostfleeting]

yeah I really love the chickpea cutlets! I always bake them, so I think that since I like that texture so much I might try it with seitan, as suggested. I was really disappointed when I tried plain seitan but eating those gave me hope for seitan-based meat substitutions!