Munchie Monday: Homemade Seitan (fake meat)

Some of the fake meats that vegetarians buy at the grocery store are pretty good. I have tried multiple times to make a homemade version. Until now I have been unsuccessful for one reason or another.  This time I made a homemade seitan in the oven which did work!

What I made is based on Lachesis' Seitan O' Greatness  recipe.  There are many different websites with this recipe.  My variation is below:

Dry ingredients:
3 cups vital wheat gluten
1/2 cup nutritional yeast
1/2 cup chick pea flour (also called Besan flour or garbanzo flour)
2 teaspoons coarse kosher salt
1 Tablespoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon black pepper
2 teaspoons white pepper
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 Tablespoon garlic

Wet ingredients:
1 1/2 cups water
1 4-ounce can tomato paste
1 Tablespoon tamari
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce      

Preheat oven to  325 degrees F.

Mix the dry ingredients in a large bowl.  In a smaller bowl mix the liquid ingredients whisking until smooth.

Add the liquid ingredients to the dry ingredients. Mix until the ingredients are well combined.  Knead for a minute or two with your hands.

Divide in half and form into logs on foil.  Wrap well and twist the ends of the foil to make a very tight smooth wrap.

The original recipe calls for baking for 90 minutes.  Since I had to leave after 75 minutes, I just shut off the oven and let it finish cooking without opening the oven door.

When cooked,  remove from oven and let cool before storing covered in the refrigerator.



This turned out to be pretty spicy.  Dear One tried about a quarter teaspoon of it and put the rest down.  No problem. I had other ideas.

A couple days later I removed a chunk and grated it on a box grater until I had about 2 cups of gratings.  Since we only had lasagna noodles in the pantry, I smashed them up into small pieces and boiled them for about 10 minutes in heavily salted water.  When the pasta was cooked, I put the seitan into a pot of prepared pasta sauce  and let it heat up.  Pouring it over the pasta I mixed it in well then served it with grated quasi-parmesan cheese (the green can...).

Dear One  ate a reasonable serving.  He did comment that it was pretty spicy and refused a second serving. 

We also had omelet with fake meat inside.  Dear One thought I was pulling a fast one on him but he ate it anyway....