Vegan Kamut® whole grain Seitan Scaloppine with Caramelized onion and red bell peppers

Early-on when I started this glorious blog, I shared a great way to go meatless and save money that I had used for a few years using vital wheat gluten and savory stock or broth to make a meat replacement. That was the  Meatless Wonders Seitan (Wheat-meat)Tutorial. Today, after being on the Jan D'Atri radio show for 2 hours with the famous David Cherry...well known vegan TV star here in Phoenix I promised to give a full tutorial on how to make the seitan scaloppine we enjoyed. Making a seitan from the gorgeous and well known organic non-GMO grain Kamut® is a little more work than just using a powdered vital wheat gluten.  The results are fantastic and meaty! 

 If you missed the show, you can listen to the podcast:

02-09-13 3PM
· Click Here to Download MP3
In the Kitchen goes vegan!
02-09-13 4PM
· Click Here to Download MP3
Jan and Momma try more Vegan treats and find out what toxins are in our food.

If you've never heard of this amazing form of ancient grain, you really need to visit my friends at Kamut ® International. In order to carry the name Kamut®, there are very remarkable purity standards involved. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised to find a grain of this quality. 

Tess' Vegan Kamut® grain Seitan 
with roasted red bell pepper and red onions

Ingredients for Seitan:

7 cups Kamut ® flour

 3 1/2 cups water

3T vegan broth seasoning or very reduced vegetable stock

2 tablespoons olive oil

1/2 cup vegetable stock

2T grape juice

2T fig balsamic vinegar

½ cup olive oil (1/4 cup of it being a basil infused or garlic infused)

2 cups white button mushrooms (sliced)

1 cup sweet red onion (finely chopped)

1 cup diced roasted red bell peppers

1 tablespoon fresh Italian flat leaf parsley (finely chopped)

1 cup Kamut ® flour (for dredging)

¼ cup vegetable  broth (if needed - or water)

1 teaspoon kosher salt (or sea salt)

½ teaspoon fresh ground pepper

Directions: For seitan, combine the Kamut ®flour and water and knead in an electric stand mixer  7-10 minutes on medium speed. 

 Remove from mixer. 
Rinse fists-full of dough under slow running cool water until all the starch has been removed and the protein is only present.

It will be an almost grey sponge-like mass. 

 This will yield about 1 lb of seitan dough. 
 Squeeze all excess liquid out of the seitan and season well with stock or veggie seasoning.

 Roll into 2 tight tubes of foil, as you would a candy roll (see Meatless Wonders Seitan (Wheat-meat)Tutorial. ). 

 Simmer in hot water in a crock pot 3-4 hours or pressure cook 25 minutes (according to manufacturer's directions). 

 Cool and remove from foil. Slice into 1/2 inch medallions. 

Dredge each piece in flour.
In a large saute pan, add 2 tablespoons of olive oil. When the pan is hot, add the dredged scaloppine of seitan a few pieces at a time.Do not overlap pieces. Brown each piece quickly on both sides, about 30 seconds per side, making sure the heat is on high.

  When all pieces are browned, add onions, bell pepper and mushrooms. Cook 3 minutes. Gently add vegetable stock, grape juice and vinegar. Turn down to medium heat and simmer. Add parsley, salt and pepper to taste.

Place seitan medallions over a bed of rice or quinoa. For more flavorful rice, cook rice in chicken broth instead of water. Serves 4 to 6. Serve with fresh vegetables as a side.

There you go my darlings! Now you can isolate the protein and make seitan from scratch. Enjoy!

Always My Very Best,
Your Friend Chef Tess

Meatless Wonders Hamburger Replacement

For those just joining us, I wanted to do a little review and also update some new skills in Meatless Wonders 101 (Wheat Meat or Seitan) . We've done the Veggie Dogs (Seitan) and sausage. We've done the meatless chick'n nuggets aka Homemade Quake and Bake with "Chick-un" nuggets .

This Tutorial Tuesday we're going to go one step further and make the hamburger substitute we use around here. Just to review, let me ask, have you ever wondered how meatless meat substitutes are made? You know, the ones that come in a package priced per ounce like gold? Veggie dogs, chick'n nuggets, chick'n patties, veggie sausage, veggie pepperoni...all made from one handy ingredient: Vital Wheat Gluten. In the old days my mom would take fresh ground whole wheat flour, add water and knead it for 15 minutes, and then rinse the starch out of the dough under running water. That would leave this gummy mass of protein that she would use to stretch our food budget by making fake gluten meat. "Seitan" being the technical vegetarian name for it. Seitan...not Satan. If you are on a gluten free diet, this stuff is not for you. I'm good with it. My vegetarian husband's only complaint about Seitan is that it tastes too much like meat! So...let's begin shall we?

I know how to make it that old fashioned way in a pinch, but have found great joy in just buying the gluten protein flour in a can. My favorite local Emergency Food Storage store has it for around 11$ for a #10 can. This makes the equivalent of 10 lbs of meat. So, it's cost effective for me to have vegetarian food stuff. If I bought 10 lbs worth of pre-packaged meatless products, it would cost me right around 50$.

One thing, if you aren't vegetarian and want to use flavoring, I highly recommend using a low sodium broth. If you cook it on the stove until half of the liquid evaporates, it makes wonderfully flavored meat-less meat. Vegetarians can use vegetable stock with great success in this way. If you have a good quality MSG free, low sodium stock powder, you will not need the liquid stock. I make my own stock or purchase already made stock. This box was at our local "dollar" store. So, still very inexpensive. If you don't want to buy the big can of gluten, there are boxes on the baking aisle at most grocery stores (see picture) that sell for a dollar and a half and make 1lb of meatless meat.

Here's my secret recipe. Don't freak out.

1 package (6 1/2 ounces) or 1 1/2 cup vital wheat gluten

1 cup highly seasoned stock (or 1T MSG free, low sodium bullion plus 1 cup stock)

You will also need:

1-2 feet heavy aluminum foil (don't use the cheap stuff...it won't work as well)

oil or pan spray to keep Seitan from sticking to the foil (easy release foil works wonders!)
4 quart crock pot ( or solar oven) and a quart of water

Combine the stock with the gluten powder.

Mix about 2 minutes until a gummy mass is made and there isn't any dryness left.

Take one cup of the mixture and place on 1 1/2 feet of aluminum foil that has been sprayed with a non-stick coating or oil. I use oil.

Roll into a tight log...

Twist the ends of the foil tightly.

It will look like a hamburger chub. This is called a force meat. It is wonderfully effective in producing a very firm texture similar to meat. I've seen gluten cooked other ways, but have never had a great love for the textures in other cooking methods.

You can bake the chubs in the oven on a sheet pan 250 degrees for 3 hours. I prefer to immerse in a 4 quart crock pot full of water or take out to Solar Oven in a water filled 4 quart dark pot. Turn crock pot to high setting and cook 2-3 hours. Solar oven 3-4 hours. The lower cooking time I use for thin sausages and hot dogs.

What do I do with the chub once it is cooked? Well, it's like a roll of cooked meat. I cube it up and use it anywhere a recipe calls for chicken pieces (casseroles, stews, over rice etc.) Sliced it can be eaten like meat medallions with any sauce or gravy or breaded and turned into chicken nuggets. If you make smaller chubs you can add sausage seasonings and make anything you would use sausage with like pizza, Italian dinners, breakfast burritos. For a more ground burger texture, I would go with TVP or run the gluten through a meat grinder after making and cooking it into the chub. This would give you a meatier texture. There is no cholesterol at all in this "meat" so it's heart healthy. Very little fat (half a gram in 1/3 cup)and it adds that texture of meat at a fraction of the cost. Plus, it's easier to store a can of gluten than 10lbs of meat in your food storage. It isn't meat, so the texture won't be exactly like meat, but it's very very close.

There you go.

Seitan Nutritional information

1/3 cup (30g)

Calories: 160

Protein: 23g

Carbohydrate: 11g
Total Fat: 0.5g

Fiber: 2g

For the Hamburger replacement I have found a great love for highly seasoned broth with the addition of 1/4 cup dry onion to the liquid ingredients and 1T of Pero powder for a natural caramel color. It just goes without saying that grey meat was never very appetizing...even fake meat. This is how you grind it:

I have a hand powered meat grinder...that ironically has never been used for meat. I cut the pieces of cooked seitan and feed them through the top of the grinder. By weight I figure 14 oz of the ground product to equal a pound of hamburger. If I'm making the Hamburger "helper" Stroganoff Skillet Meal Mix (and there will be several to follow), I cook the noodles with the mix and milk, then fold in the hamburger replacement at the end of cooking time.

It freezes beautifully in quart size baggies too. So, there you have it. Burger replacement...at a fraction of the cost of meat.

Veggie Dogs (Seitan)

Is it possible to make homemade veggie dogs with great flavor and less sodium than the commercially prepared pre-frozen counterparts at the grocery store? We covered the basic steps for making seitan, but if you missed that post, please look here: Meatless Wonders 101 (Wheat Meat or Seitan) We are using the same basic ratio of 1 1/2 cup gluten powder to 1 cup liquid (concentrated vegetable stock if you're vegetarian). For added color I often use 1T paprika and 1T Pero® Caffeine Free All Natural Beverage. I've found the caramel color to be fantastic by adding just a few teaspoons of the powder. I add 1 tsp liquid smoke to the stock as well as 2 tsp cracked black pepper, 1T minced garlic, 2T minced onion and a 1/2 tsp sage. Combine with the liquid.

See how dark it gets? Normally light colored gluten will look grey when cooked. I've never seen a grey meat that really appealed to me. Ever.

Cut the gluten ball into 4-6 pieces, depending on the size of the veggie dogs you prefer.

Lightly oil a foot long piece of foil. Squeeze the gluten into a thin log, then roll tightly in the foil, twisting the ends.

This recipe makes 4 "bratwurst" size sausages or 6 hot dogs. Simmer on high in a crock pot 2-3 hours. I make 20 at a time in my gallon size crock pot.

When finished cooking, allow to cool. You can brown the sausages in a little barbecue sauce on the stove, or place the unwrapped sausages in freezer bags and freeze for later use.

Slice thin for pizzas or for breakfast burritos.

Other Sausage flavors

(If you are vegetarian, feel free to use vegetarian stock as the liquid and omit the bullion) All the dry ingredients are added to the dry gluten before mixing. I use the low sodium MSG free bullion if I use it instead of fresh stock:

Pepperoni: Use 2 tsp beef or vegetable bullion, 1 tsp liquid smoke or sesame oil, 2 tsp cracked black pepper, 2 tsp dry oregano, 1 T minced fresh garlic, 1T paprika (for the color...or you can use dark coffee or pero.)
Mild Summer sausage:

Use 2 tsp ham or beef bullion, 1T mustard seed, 1 tsp cracked black pepper, 1 tsp liquid smoke, 2 tsp powdered sage, and 2 tsp minced rosemary.
Breakfast sausage:

Use 2 tsp beef or pork bullion 1T minced fresh rosemary, 2T maple syrup(mixed with the liquid), 1/4 cup dry onion, 1 clove fresh pressed garlic and 1 tsp pero or instant coffee for color.
Shrimp sausage for seafood chowders:

4 tsp shrimp bullion, clam juice for the liquid, 1T dry minced parsley, 1 T dry chives, 1 tsp garlic, 1 tsp lemon zest and a dash of Tabasco.
Southwest Roasted Chile Sausage:

4 tsp chicken bullion and 2 tsp each:ground cumin, new Mexico Chile powder, cilantro, lime zest 1 tsp liquid smoke.
Italian Fennel Sausage:

2 tsp pork or beef bullion, 1/4 cup minced onion, 1 1/2 tsp fennel seed, 1 T mustard seed, 1 tsp all purpose Italian Seasoning, 2T minced garlic, 1 tsp ground pepper.

Greek Sausage for gyros:

2 tsp beef bullion 2 T garlic, 1T fennel seed, 1 1/2 tsp dill seed, 1T dry mint, 1T fresh minced rosemary, 1 tsp liquid smoke, 4 tsp pero or postum granules, 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes.

There you go.