Vegetable Lo Mein with Char Shui seitan

This recipe really does come close to duplicating the taste of meat and it's very simple to prepare. The secret is cooking in a non-stick pan so you can use little oil and can glaze the seitan with the "char shui" ingredients without everything sticking.

I used Panda Lo Mein Oyster Sauce, which I really like. It is not vegan. You can find vegan oyster sauce substitute somewhere.

See the illustrations at the end of this post.

I started with the chicken seitan described earlier on this blog. I cooked it in a very old Rival plastic steamer, using the perforated steamer tray. I cooked it about 40 minutes.

Rival Steamer from the 70s

Ingredients:

• Precooked linguini noodles -- your choice of brand- about 1 cup or so
• Panda Brand Lo Mein Oyster Sauce or substitute as above
• Previously prepared Seitan, about 1/2 to 3/4 cup, diced
• Your favorite quantities of sliced button mushrooms, trimmed snow peas, diced green/red pepper
• 1/2 cup slivered white onion
• I Tbs Braggs Liquid Aminos  (or a good soy sauce)
• Canola oil
• 1 Tbs diced ginger
• 1 tsp finely diced garlic

Glaze--mix the following:

• I Tbs hoisin sauce
• 1 Tbs Braggs Liquid Aminos
• 1 Tbs Aji-Mirin sweet cooking wine (or 1 Tbs dry sherry with 1/2 tsp sugar mixed until dissolved
• 1/8 tsp five spice powder
• dash garlic powder

1. Dice the prepared seitan and marinate in 1 Tbs Braggs Liquid Aminos for at least 15 min
2. Prepare the glaze by mixing the hoisin, Braggs Liquid Aminos, miring and five spice powder
3. Stir-fry the marinated seitan with 1 Tbs oil in a non-stick wok or skillet on medium-high heat until well-browned with crispy edges. Use just enough oil to do the job. Reduce heat to medium and add the glaze, rapidly stir-frying to coat each piece of seitan.When the glaze has given the seitan a deep brown color, remove and drain on paper towel. Keep warm.
4. Wipe out wok, add 1 Tbs canola oil and stir-fry onion until translucent.
5. Add green/red pepper, garlic and ginger and stir-fry another 2-3 minutes, then add mushrooms and snow peas. Stir-fry until mushrooms have softened and snow peas have turned a deeper green. They should remain crisp, however.
6. Add the lo main noodles and stir-fry until hot. 
7. Add 2-3 Tbs Panda Lo Mein Sauce  and still until everything is coated.
8. Serve the noodles and vegetables topped with the char shiu  seitan

DON'T mix the seitan in with the noodles and vegetables during cooking; it will get soggy.

Stir-frying the marinated seitan 

After adding glaze and cooking down until well-coated

char shui seitan waiting the vegetable bride

Cooking the onions

Now adding the green pepper, garlic and ginger. 

and then the mushrooms

...and then the snow peas and the noodles

This was really good and easy to make

Seitan barbecued ribs: variations on an otherwise good recipe.

Being a planteater has its  downsides. One of those is forever giving up hickory smoked barbecued spareribs.

I found this recipe and have made a few modifications. I am not sure those helped or not, but here goes.

Here is the original recipe from Food.com, which borrowed it from fatfreevegan.com:



"This is an original recipe by Susan V from fatfreevegan.com. It's so easy to make and incredibly yummy! You can buy Vital Wheat Gluten at most grocery stores (look for Bob's Red Mill). I did not have nutritional yeast so I omitted this ingredient with no lack of taste. These were "grilled" on a griddle and it worked out great. My meat eater hubby loved it as did the kids. Check out http://everydaydish.tv/cookingshow_video.html for a video on how to make this. (it's under Susan's Ribz)."

Ingredients

• 1 cup vital wheat gluten
• 2 teaspoons paprika ( smoked Spanish)
• 2 tablespoons nutritional yeast
• 2 teaspoons onion powder
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 3/4 cup water
• 2 tablespoons nut butter ( peanut butter, tahini, cashew)
• 1 teaspoon liquid smoke
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• 1 cup barbecue sauce

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F and lightly spray an 8x8-inch baking dish with canola oil.
2. Mix the first 5 ingredients together in a large bowl. Mix the water with the nut butter, Liquid Smoke, and soy sauce and add it to the dry ingredients. Stir to mix well in the bowl for a couple of minutes.
3. Put the dough into the baking dish and flatten it so that it evenly fills the pan. Take a sharp knife and cut it into 8 strips; then turn the pan and cut those strips in half to form 16 pieces.
4. Put it in the oven and bake for 25 minutes. While it's cooking prepare your grill pan or grill.
5. Remove it from the oven and carefully re-cut each strip, going over each cut to make sure that the ribz will pull apart easily later. Generously brush the top with barbecue sauce. Take it to the grill pan or grill and invert the whole baking dish onto the grill (or use a large spatula to lift the seitan out, placing it sauce-side down on the grill). Brush the top of the seitan with more sauce.
6. Watch it closely to make sure that it doesn't burn. When sufficiently brown on one side, turn over and cook the other side, adding more sauce, if necessary. When done, remove to a platter and cut or pull apart the individual ribs to serve.

 Here's how I modified it:

I used regular paprika instead of smoked Spanish paprika. I used creamy peanut butter and I added about 2 Tbs garbanzo bean flour to the dry ingredients. I have read that certain bean flours enhance the development of the gluten when the liquid is added.  


Instead of soy sauce, I added Braggs Liquid Aminos, which I think is more flavorful. I also added 1 TBS of tomato paste to the liquid and reduced the amount of water.

Gluten is impossible to cut without a very sharp knife, which you will probably dull if cutting inside a glass baking dish. Just use a kitchen scissors such as this one:

I roasted the ribs at 350 degrees for 24 minutes with the thought they would be drier, less bread-like and chewier. Then I grilled them on a Jenn-Air with KC Masterpiece barbecue sauce.

Along with the seitan, we also grilled Vietnamese portabello mushrooms and spice-rubbed sweet potato slabs from today's New York Times Sunday Magazine:

The appearance shouted "ribs" all the way. Even the grill marks looked authentic. The texture wasn't bad, although it didn't develop meat-like fibers. 

Seitan ribs, grilled marinated portabellos, cumin-spiced grilled sweet potatoes
 Click to enlarge

It was good seitan, but alas nothing substitutes for real pork ribs.

Taste: B+
Texture: B-
Appearance: A (it really looks like meat)
Shredding: C- (still shreds like seitan, not meat.) 

Sharp knives are safer...not.

Many authors tell you a razor-sharp knife is safer. It's less likely to slip, they say.

Here is the fact: a razor-sharp knife hurts less when you cut yourself.

So about 30 years ago, I am making Peking Duck, one of my favorite dishes back in the days of carnivorous behavior. It's a tedious affair if you follow recipes in a classic Joyce Chen cookbook. One duck, crucified on chopsticks and hanging from the ceiling, rotating slowly in front of a fan all day after its sherry bath and between loving massages.

While the duck was swinging around, I got to the vegetables, starting with roll-cut carrots. I am using my razor-sharp Chinese cleaver. I gave that cleaver a lot of love, sharpening it regularly on a fine whetstone and then on a steel. It would easily split a piece of paper held vertically, one nice test of sharpness.

As I am thinking about what I will do next, I see red among the orange carrot slices. My left index finger is gashed and oddly, I can't straighten it out. Off the the emergency room....

I had painlessly severed my skin, my extensor tendon and who knows what else. 3 hours later, I am back home (things were a lot faster back then) with a layered closure and enough rubber gloves to get back into cooking. The duck turned out fine but I never again used that cleaver.

My wife has a Pampered Chef utility knife that rests in a sharpening scabbard. That instrument is truly sharp. Every time I try to use it, I get a little queasy. Most of the time, I just use a serrated steak knife for most cutting or a not so sharp inexpensive chef's knife. My sharpening equipment is rarely used.

In all my years of cooking, I have never had a dullish knife slip.

Moral: a sharp knife is truly safe only when you don't use it.

Unbeefy Seitan...revisited

Tonight, I redeemed the too-wet seitan I mentioned yesterday.

First, I dried it between layers of paper towel. It's remarkable how much water it held.

I simply grilled it in non-stick pan with a little canola oil. I used a cast iron grill press to keep it flat and cooked it until it had a very appetizing external appearance.

In the same pan, I pan-roasted baby eggplant slices with a very small amount of oil until the slices softened and charred a bit.

I have the appearance part down now. I think the secret is starting in ice-cold cooking water or broth and raising the temperature to a simmer very slowly. I have to figure out the best way to dehydrate them before cooking. Tofu will develop a better texture when frozen and defrosted before cooking. I will try that next and see.

Working with a Recipe for Unbeefy Seitan Steaks

It's Sunday, which at our house is SeitanDay. I set out to make beefy seitan steaks.

I started with Ellen's Kitchen unbeefy seitan steaks. I like the idea of adding some garbanzo bean flour. I ground dried garbanzo beans in a Braun Coffee Grinder and added that to the vital wheat gluten and the nutritional yeast. I finally found some kombu seaweed this week, again at Whole Foods.

I also added about 1 Tbs corn oil and 1 Tbs tahini (sesame seed paste) to the mixing liquid to give the seitan a richer flavor. We had just bought celery and that provided me with plenty of celery leaves. I also substituted Braggs Liquid Aminos, about 1 Tbs to the cooking liquid. The broth had a great aroma.

The oils help make the gluten ball easier to work with. A firm silicone spatula is excellent for scraping bits of gluten from the bowl to incorporate into the gluten ball.

I didn't add quite as much liquid as the recipe called for.

After just enough kneading to mix the ingredients, I shaped the log and sliced into 1/4 inch slices.

and then pressed the slices into steak-like shapes. Well, sort of steak-like. I am not sure why the gluten has the variegated appearance. I couldn't knead that out.

Here's the cooking broth. I started with very cold broth (by adding a few ice cubes) when the steaks were submerged. I used a very low setting on my element (2) to  be sure the temperature was raised very slowly. The only problem is that eventually it will boil furiously, something you really don't want unless you like Goodyear-style seitan. It's best to use a very minimal simmer. So you have to watch the pot during this process.

One of the reasons I gave up meat is global warming. I own an SUV that we use for real off-road travel (the real deal). I made a calculation a couple years ago to look at the carbon impact of losing meat vs losing my SUV. The carbon impact of plant-eating was significantly greater than switching to a vehicle with twice the mileage as my 4Runner.  Plus I only drive a few miles each day--usually about 3 miles (the average car in the USA is driven about 40 miles daily--hard to believe). Case closed.

This morning's NY Times had a depressing article about global warming and grain prices. Looks like it may be more economical to eat grass-fed beef than seitan sometime in the future at the rate grain prices are increasing.

But back to cooking. The seitan is gradually getting warmer in the pot. It hasn't begun to expand yet. I suspect everyone who cooks seitan is surprised by the first time they lift the lid and find huge seitan monsters leaping out the pot.

Once the seitan is cooked, I prefer to let it cool in the broth until it's at room temperature. Then I store it, with its broth, in a tight lidded plastic container in the refrigerator.

Looks good so far--not brainy and nicely flattened like a steak

Today's New York Times Sunday Magazine featured Korean food. I prepared the seitan in the manner of beef bulgogi. I marinated two steaks in a mixture of soy sauce, sesami oil, scallions, garlic, black pepper and honey, then pan-grilled them. As a plant-eater, I have little need for an outdoor grill. The Times article also included a recipe for fried hijiki (a form of seaweed), which to my amazement I happened to have in the pantry. I stir-fried the soaked hijiki in a combination of canola and sesame oil, then added soy sauce, sesame seeds, chopped scallions and a pinch of sugar. The resulting hijiki looked great but tasted too much like the beach to me.

East meets Midwest. Seitan bulgogi, stir-fried hijiki and steamed corn.

What I learned today was that a seitan simmered in a salty broth doesn't do well with a salty marinade. Also. this particular batch was too watery. I will keep it dry in the refrigerator to see if it will dry a bit over the next few days. If I use the Ellen's Kitchen recipe again, I will omit the molasses or use less as I could taste the molasses through all the other flavors.

Final grade:

Taste: B (it was somewhat too salty)

Texture: C (even after grilling, the seitan was too watery. Juicy works for a steak but not seitan)

Appearance: A-  (it really looked like a steak)

Meat-like shredding: C

An Almost Perfect Texture in a Storebought Seitan--and a pickup soy recipe

Finally bought some Primal Strips from Primal Spirit Food. The texture is really about perfect. They shred nicely when pulled apart. 


This is the texture I am looking for. Some are made from gluten and others from either soy or shiitake mushrooms. I like the texture but the flavors are not great. The Texas Barbecue and the Hickory Smoked flavors are more in the sauce-like coating than in the strip itself. 


But who should expect real Texas BBQ flavor in a product made in Taiwan?


Here's a last-minute recipe I made up. It's not gluten but if you happen to have some textured soy protein on the shelf, this is quick and easy:


Meatless Bolognese Spaghetti Sauce


1 can diced tomatoes, unsalted, not drained 
2 tsp Braggs Liquid Aminos
2 tsp Aji-Mirin (sweet Japanese cooking rice wine)
4 sliced button mushrooms
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp rubbed sage 
1/2 tsp dried basil
1/2 tsp ground oregano
1/4 tsp ground savory ( had this on the shelf but never figured a use for it)
1/2 tsp dried parsley flakes
1/4 cup textured soy protein granules (available in bulk at Whole Foods)


Mix all the ingredients in a saucepan. Bring to a simmer. Simmer uncovered for about 15 minutes, until the TVP is thoroughly hydrated and the sauce has thickened. You may need to add a little water if it gets too dry and use the lid. The TVP absorbs a lot of water.


I like this recipe because it takes hardly more time than heating prepared spaghetti sauce. The TVP gives it a distinct ground beef taste and mouth feel, and also makes it a good protein source. 


The Braggs Liquid Aminos is addictive. It must be high in umami, which means it must have some sort of natural MSG-like components.  All taste, no guilt. 


I would use fresh herbs but I just had to replant my herb Aerogarden.


If you've got no mirin handy, I would substitute any white wine but add a scant teaspoon of sugar. I know, Aji-Mirin is not the real deal but it does taste pretty good and it's easy to find.

Which Came First: the Chicken or the Seitan?

Making a Great Chicken Substitute

Next time you watch someone eat a chicken breast, note how the meat shreds into bundles of fibers as they pull it apart. That's what I am seeking today.

I started with Faux Chicken from VeganGuineaPig's blog.  In my Cooking with Seitan cookbook, that author recommends using half soymilk, half water for the liquid mixed with the dry vital wheat gluten. I bought plain unsweetened soymilk and used about 1/2 soymilk, 2/2 water for this batch.

For some reason, I seem to need less liquid when making the gluten than most recipes call for. 

With the soymilk, the finished raw gluten seemed stickier than usual. I had to wet my hands to work it. Getting stuck gluten out of the mixing bowl is always a chore. I've found soaking the bowl helps. We try to keep the gluten out of the garbage disposal as I can't imagine it gets chewed up very well.

One recipe I read called for twisting and folding the gluten as you knead it to develop "muscle" layers.

Do this enough and you will develop new muscle layers.

I used plenty of sage. I got genuine Albanian sage from Penzey's. Their prices are remarkably good when compared to Spice Island and McCormick at the supermarkets. Who knew Albania is known for their sage? McCormick's website has an entire page on Albanian sage.

I cut the seitan dough into smaller pieces and then stretched out those pieces to make chick'n nuggets.

The pieces aren't that small; the bowl is huge

I started the seitan in ice water. Many recipes say that an icy cold start will produce a less rubbery seitan. I substituted 1 cup of ice for part of the water in the recipe and set the electric stove element to "3" to be sure I could catch it before it actually boiled.

I simmered it about an hour. As usual, it about doubled in size during the cook. When you first lift the lid, don't be surprised by the inflated seitan. It settles down to its resting size quickly.

Hope it tastes better than it looks

Another blog suggested that the seitan be allowed to cool in its broth, so that's what I did with this batch.So when is seitant done? Good question. There's no "warm and pink center" clues here. It's done when it looks and feels done. You've got to figure that out yourself.


This batch should be easy to prepare for a meal. Yes, you have to make the seitan and then prepare it for the table. Seitan right out of the pot or steamer isn't for the uninitiated.  I think I will bread and fry this batch. It's probably too healthy as is. 


The finished seitan has a good texture but has a bit more brainy exterior than I hoped.

Next I breaded it with bulk breadcrumbs from our local Whole Paycheck food store and pan-fried it in about 4 tablespoons of canola oil. I braised napa cabbage and sliced button mushrooms in the broth left over from the seitan. All in all, reasonably attractive and not too bad.

Pan-fried chick'n cutlets with braised napa cabbage and mushrooms

One caution: I didn't dry the seitan well enough before breading it. Must remember to blot surface water and squeeze out any interior water.


For the original recipe, look here. Substitute soymilk for 1/2 of the water used for mixing the vital wheat gluten. Knead by twisting and layering.


No question in my mind:  Braggs Liquid Aminos has a much more desirable taste than soy sauce. I was overjoyed to see how little sodium it contains as it has no added salt per label. But then I noticed the serving size is only 1/2 tsp. It actually has more sodium than my low sodium soy sauce.

Final grade:

Taste: B+

Texture: B

Appearance: C  (Still looks like seitan, not chicken)

Meat-like shredding: C-