Broccoli & Seitan stir fry in Ginger sauce

Broccoli & Seitan stir fry in Ginger sauce

So, a while back we were watching an entry of a really good cooking youtube channel called the ‘Vegan Black Metal Chef” (really awesome – you should check it out) http://www.youtube.com/user/VeganBlackMetalChef?feature=watch

In one episode he was using Seitan for cooking – “All Hail Seitan!!”, this being the first time I had heard of it.

What’s seitan you might ask? It’s essentially wheat protein bound together, which absorbs flavour in with whatever you want to cook with and has a good texture. (kind of like tofu but good texture & less plain)

You can buy Seitan from a shop, but for this recipe we’ll try make it from scratch.

Attempt 1:

Credit to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAHvXAJl8oAand http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7_bNpSS9xg&feature=related for their videos which helped us out in the method a lot.

Basically, you need to get ‘Vital Wheat Gluten’, mix & knead it with water and you’re sorted. However upon looking we couldn’t find vital wheat gluten anywhere, nor anyone who’s ever heard of it! :s  So we had to try by filtering the stuff out of plain ol’ flour…..

- get 1 kg of flour. We used the Aldi plain flour (~55cent per kg)

- get about 550ml-600ml of water and mix it in

- knead it a bit, then let it sit in water for 30mins

- then play with it in the water till the water turns milky white, drain the water, fill It up & do again

- do this over and over until the water doesn’t milkeyify any more and take out what’s left

- You’re left with the vital wheat gluten & Seitan! (we microwaved it to remove some of the water)

As you can see, it didn’t turn out so well the first time… We got seitan out, but the ball fell apart in the water, and the shape was malformed. We cooked it in some stock & and onion to flavour & fried it and it was OK, but there was barely enough for two people…. So we try again the next night.

Attempt 2:

We read online that if you knead the crap out of the ball of flour at the initial part it’ll hold together much better. So we did the same method as above except this time we punched it, rolled it, squished it, really beat the crap out of it for about half-an-hour!

This makes all the difference as the ball held together great that time, we got a lot of seitan this time round!

We chopped and cooked it in stock & onion pieces to give them flavour, then chopped them into bite-sized chunks.

The actual meal part:

For this we used the following

- 1 whole broccoli, chopped into stalks                   - 1 red pepper, sliced

- 1 Onion                                                               - 2 carrots chopped into strips

- a cupful of beansprouts                                        - some waterchestnuts  (if you have them)

- A 3-cm cubed bit of fresh Ginger, crushed           - some Teriyaki sauce (or soy sauce/ whatever)

- 3 cloves of garlic, crushed                                    - spices etc..

While this is cooking get the sietan pieces and fry them in some oil until golden brown.

  

 -

Chop up everything, fry the onion, broccoli stalks and carrot first, then add in the pepper and beansprouts. Crush up the garlic and ginger and add it in also.

Then add in the seitan pieces and mix in the teriyaki sauce and your spices.

Serve with rice and enjoy J