Beata I’ve known about seitan and have tried it on multiple occasions while living in Asia but it has never crossed my mind to make it myself. I think I wasn’t even aware what it was, I just loved the texture and how wonderfully it can absorb all the spices and aromas of the dish, making each bite packed with flavour.
So what is seitan?
When you wash flour dough with water to remove the starch, you’re left with this elastic mass and that’s seitan. The main ingredient is wheat protein meaning that the protein content is super high, up to 75 grams per 100 grams of seitan. The texture is meaty and chewy which makes it ideal as a meat substitute.
Today was the first time I made it myself in our VegChef kitchen. The task was to make seitan sausages and soft bread rolls for hotdogs as the final dish.
The traditional way of making seitan where you wash off all the starches is more time consuming and doesn’t allow for adding flavour inside of the final mass. Thankfully, there is a much quicker way of making seitan using vital wheat instead. Since it’s a powder it can easily be seasoned.
Here is the recipe we used for our smoky, aromatic sausages:
Smokey Seitan Hot-Dog
Ingredients
- 75 ml oil
- 260 ml gluten flour
- 2 tsp cornstarch
- 5 tbsp almond flour
- 2 tsp sugar
- 2 tbsp soy sauce
- 1 tbsp mustard
- 1 tbsp liquid smoke
- 5 cloves garlic
- 1 onion
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp cayenne pepper
- 1 tbsp cumin
- 1 tbsp coriander
- 2 tbsp water
- 250 g tofu
Instructions
- Blend all the ingredients in the food processor, except the gluten flour and cornstarch.
- When everything is well blended, pour the mix in a bowl, add the gluten flour and cornstarch and mix well until you obtain a mixture that is easy to shape. Do not over mix. If it is too wet add a little bit more of the gluten flour.
- Shape the sausages in baking paper (for better shape use also aluminium foil), and steam for 30-40 minutes depending on the size.
- Fry them for a couple of minutes before serving.
- Serve as a hotdog with your favourite condiments, eg sauerkraut, fried onion, mayo or mustard.
The final sausage is perfect to the bite, smoky, aromatic and infused with flavours from all the spices. I garnished my hotdog with fried sauerkraut and onions, as well as sriracha mayo and pickled carrots for added crunch and freshness.
This recipe can be easily adapted to create all sorts of sausages like chorizos, kabanoss or bratwurst. The sausages can then be used in other dishes like this amazing Italian Zuppa Toscana, Stroganoff or Polish hunter’s stew (bigos) which I’ll be making tomorrow as part of the International Cooking Day.
