Hi Everyone!
I am so excited to share with you my Seitan Chicken Recipe! First I want to say I was deathly afraid of seitan when I first started cooking and creating vegan food. I loved eating it but I was terrified about making it because it just seemed too easy to make that I knew that if I did it I would 100% screw it up and fun fact, I did, multiple times. After a trying other people’s recipes a few times, reading articles on how to make it, watching videos, and reading other people horrors on making seitan I finally figured out the right method for me and that is how I came up with the below recipe.
Now I want to give a disclaimer, this recipe is how to create and initially cook a seitan chicken loaf. After creating this loaf, I need to come up with a better word than loaf, there are endless possibilities you will have to turn it into whatever you want! And I am happy to give some examples. You can slice it and grill it and put it in a salad, you can roast the whole loaf in the oven with some broth and vegetables and turn it into a roast, you can cool it down slice it thin and eat it in a sandwich, you can cube it pan fry it and put it on tacos. The way I look at this seitan chicken recipe is this will give you a blank slate to create so many other recipes that you may have added grilled chicken to in your non-vegan days.
So, with all of that said, I hope you enjoy this Seitan Chicken and I look forward to seeing all of the fun things you create with it!
Seitan Chicken
Servings: Approximately 5
Prep Time: Approximately 15 Minutes
Cook Time: 50 Minutes
For the Dough:
- 1 ½ Cups Vital Wheat Gluten
- 1/3 Cup All Purpose Flour, plus a sprinkling when kneading
- 1 ½ Tbsp. Nutritional Yeast
- 2 Tbsp. Trader Joe’s Chicken-less Seasoning
- ½ Tsp. Garlic Powder
- ½ Tsp. Onion Powder
- 1 ½ Cups Vegetable Stock
For the Simmer Broth:
- 5 Cups of Water
- 1 ½ Tbsp. Better than Bouillon No Chicken Base
- 2 Cloves of Garlic, Slightly Smashed
Instructions:
- In a medium bowl, add the vital wheat gluten, all purpose flour, nutritional yeast, chicken-less seasoning, garlic powder, and onion powder and mix slightly so all ingredients are incorporated
- Once all the dry ingredients are mixed in the bowl add in the vegetable stock and mix until the dough comes together. This happens quickly, approximately a minute
- Once the dough comes together sprinkle a small amount of all purpose flour onto the dough, approximately ¼ Tsp., and begin kneading the dough
- Knead the dough for approximately 5 minutes until it feels more elastic and springs back at you
- Once the dough is kneaded, shape it into a log and wrap it in cheesecloth and tie off both sides tightly and let it rest while you set up the simmering broth
- In a medium pot add in the water, bouillon base, and smashed garlic cloves and bring to a boil
- Once the broth comes to a boil bring the heat down to low and the broth down to a simmer
- Add in the dough to the simmering broth and cook it for 50 minutes, flipping the seitan halfway through if it is not submerged fully in the broth. Make sure the broth does not ever come back to a fill rolling boil during this time.
- After the dough has cooked remove it from the broth and let it rest for 15 minutes.
- Once the dough has rested you can remove it from the cheesecloth and use it for any kind of dish you desire!
Notes
- You can substitute the vegetable stock for a chicken-less broth as well, I just like the contrast of using both broths
- It is imperative to knead the dough! This dough in particular will not come together into a smooth dough like you may be used to when looking at a bread dough but once it feels elastic that will be the time you can stop kneading it.
- You can mix and knead this dough in a mixer as well if you have one!