This past weekend was extremely busy and stressful for me on the academic front, yet I somehow managed to squeeze in my first Seitan-making experiment on Sunday (I mostly used it as a break from writing my seemingly endless analysis of Paradise Lost). It turns out, Seitan is incredibly easy to make on your own!
I followed A Vegan with a Plan’s recipe (look her up, she is awesome!), which used vegan bouillon, garlic powder, onion powder, poultry seasoning, and nutritional yeast to season it. I didn’t have any nutritional yeast however, so I just left it out, and instead of using bouillon cubes, I used the vegetable Better Than Bouillon, which worked perfectly. However, there are tons of seitan recipes out there on the internet, and the basic process is pretty much the same. The only major difference is how you choose to cook the seitan. I wanted to try A Vegan with a Plan’s method of cooking the seitan in the oven on a rack above a pan of water, but I don’t have a rack that can sit in a baking pan, so I had to browse the web for another option. In the end, I simply rolled my seitan log in aluminum foil and stuck it directly on the oven rack. I baked the seitan at 325 degrees for 90 minutes total, turning the log over once half way through. Pretty darn simple.
My seitan turned out with a firm yet very bite-able texture, and it was not super chewy (which I was worried about, because the seitan at Shaw is incredibly chewy). The shape is a little freaky though; we all decided it looks like brains that have been mashed up and put in a log shape, but I try not to think about that too much. Otherwise, the seitan is fabulous! Right now it is sitting in the fridge for sandwiches or whatever, but I can’t wait to start actually making meals with it. I’ve seen some really cool things that people do with seitan, from buffalo wings to fried “chicken” to sloppy Joe’s. Really stoked to try them out!
I also would like to congratulate my darling parents for their recent vegan culinary endeavor: last night they made vegan mac-n-not-cheese from scratch! After my poor experience with boxed vegan mac ‘n cheese, I was prepared to bid farewell to the dish forever, but my parents reported that their homemade version was a total hit. They used cashews as a cream base and added yummy stuff like mushrooms and sautéd garlic. You can find the recipe they used at http://detoxinista.com/2011/01/move-over-kraft/ Here’s a few lovely photos of their culinary adventure, including one of my dad, who is a professional model as you can tell.
The College Kid Goes Vegan 