Seitan doesn't have to be scary. Back in the day, folks had to start with hard wheat flour dough, rinsing and rinsing and rinsing while kneading and kneading to get the starch out. Forget that! Go to your store and buy a bag of vital wheat gluten or gluten flour (they are the same thing). You can have the dough ready in the minutes it takes you to heat up those leftovers for lunch, throw it in the crock pot and have "cutlets" for whatever you want: chicken nuggets, fajitas, chicken fried steak, picatta. You can chill it and it will get firmer and you can make your own ground "meat" with it. It works as a roast, as well.
What's not to love about a chicken-(oven) fried steak with spicy mustard greens and mashed potatoes? Oh, and gravy? What's above is completely vegan with the exception of the Pioneer Pepper Gravy mix, which I'm sure has powdered milk in it. But, really, I can't make a gravy that low fat and tasty (and Mom agrees--she's been known to use those packets). To get started, you want to make a batch of chicken seitan cutlets. I use the recipe here as my base, but let me tell you a couple of secrets. First, don't dump in that cup of water. If you do, your dough will be too soft. Instead, you want to put your dry ingredients in the bowl and add the soy sauce, then stir with your hand as you gradually add water. Some days it takes more, some days less. Most days for me, I seem to get about 2/3 cup of water in. You have what you want when you have a slightly wet dough you can easily knead. And then you knead it, just until it's springy and no longer sticky. You should be able to see the strings of gluten in there (sounds great, I know, but that's where the texture comes from). Once you've done that, you can stretch it into cutlets and flatten them out. They don't look just overly tasty above, but wait til you see them ready for using. See, doesn't that look better? That leads me to secret #2. The crock pot. While I have done the oven method and it's great, the crock pot is better. For one, it doesn't heat up the house. Also, you can walk off and leave them cooking. So, I put mine in and put it on four hours, flipping these over at the halfway point. They'll get browner and firmer, even a little bigger, as they cook. Let them cool off, and then you can coat them for oven frying. I used a seasoned chickpea flour dredge, followed by a dunk in the liquid left in the crock pot (I added some ground flax seed to it to mimic egg wash), and a final dip in a combo of italian seasoned bread crumbs and panko. Then, into the oven at about 400, flipping after they were brown on the bottom and browning them off. They're already cooked, so you're just going for the final crust and pretty factor.
Seitan doesn't have to be scary. Back in the day, folks had to start with hard wheat flour dough, rinsing and rinsing and rinsing while kneading and kneading to get the starch out. Forget that! Go to your store and buy a bag of vital wheat gluten or gluten flour (they are the same thing). You can have the dough ready in the minutes it takes you to heat up those leftovers for lunch, throw it in the crock pot and have "cutlets" for whatever you want: chicken nuggets, fajitas, chicken fried steak, picatta. You can chill it and it will get firmer and you can make your own ground "meat" with it. It works as a roast, as well.
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