Satanic Secret Ingredient

This recipe is metric AND imperial because I love to confuse you. Just kidding. It’s because the source seitan recipe is from a French friend and the French generally use the metric system for cooking. If you need a unit converter, here’s one. Blayne and I converted/translated the recipe for y’all. The gluten in this recipe is one of the best I’ve had in terms of texture and works well for our wings. According to my partner Blayne, who is a connaisseur of fake meats “this recipe is second only to Foodswings itself in terms of deliciousness”. He’s not kidding. It’s soooo tasty and will definitely give a stomach ache.

For about 600g of seitan “chicken” you will need:

130g (1/2 cup) of gluten flour

50g (1/4 cup) of ground almond

50g (1/4 cup) of rice flour

25g (1/4 cup) of nutritional yeast flakes (+ more for sprinking)

150ml (2/3 cup) of water + 50ml (1/4 cup) of almond milk

For the bouillon

1.5 litres of water (6 1/3 cups)

1 tbsp soy sauce

1 large onion cut in 4

4 bay leaves

1 sprig of thyme

3 tbsp of sunflower oil

Throw together the bouillon ingredients in a large pot and set it to boil on medium heat. In a separate large bowl or pot, add the dry ingredients and mix well. Pour in your water/almond milk and mix well to form a blobby mass of seitan. Let stand for 15 min. 

Once the seitan has settled, ‘flour’ a surface with nutritional yeast and roll a thick sausage sized portion in the yeast, then cut it up with some clean scissors, keeping in mind that these pieces will double in size and try to cut them a little triangular so they look like wings. Keep the pieces mingling with the yeast, this will keep them from sticking back together and add flavour. Dump these pieces into the bouillon and boil them on medium for a low boil about 35 min. Turn off the heat and the seitan cool down, either in the bouillon or draining separately in a colander. 

Leave it for a few hours or overnight in the fridge before you move to the wings step! You can prepare your sauces and coating in the meantime. 

Wings Time!

5 carrots, chopped into sticks

10 celery stalks, chopped into sticks

Wing hot sauce (half for drizzling on cooked wings, half for dipping)

1/2 cup vegan butter

1/4 cup Encona original hot pepper sauce

1 tbsp any BBQ sauce

2 tbsp apple cider vinegar

salt and black pepper (white pepper tastes like dust)

1 tsp chili or cayenne powder

2 tbsp agave (this is only if you like sweet wing sauce, otherwise, don’t add it!)

Put all this into a small saucepan for around 5 min and then turn off heat. 

Wing coatings 

2 cups of sunflower oil for frying in a medium pot

Wet (put half in a bowl for coating and the other half in a serving bowl for dipping the carrots and celery, this doubles as your ‘blue cheese’ dressing even though actual blue cheese is DISGUSTING)

2 cloves garlics minced

2 tbsp lemon juice

3/4 c vegan cream

2 tbsp flour

1 tsp corn starch

2 tbsp soy sauce

1 tsp black pepper

1 tbsp dill (or parsley if you don’t have dill)

2 tbsp water

2 tsp agar agar (optional)

Dry mixture

1/2 cup of cornflakes, crushed

1 cup of breadcrumbs- homemade or otherwise (careful, storebought ones often contain cheese)

1 tsp salt

1 tsp chili or cayenne

1 tsp black pepper

1/3 cup flour

1 tbsp corn starch

1 tsp onion flakes

1 tsp bouillon powder

1 tbsp of nutritional yeast

Prepare a wet and a dry coating bowl for an assembly line of wings. Get out a large plate with paper towel spread on it to soak up your extra wing oil after frying. Heat your oil to between medium and high (hot enough to fry, not to scorch). Wait 5 min for the oil to get hot. Dip your seitan in the wet coating, then dredge in the dry coating and slowly slide them into the hot oil. You should be able to do 5 or 6 wings at a time. Brown them about 1-2 min each and remove from oil, placing them on the paper towel to absorb excess oil. 

After cooling the wings for about 5 mins, arrange them in a on a lettuce leaf, then drizzle them in some of the wing hot sauce, putting the rest aside in a serving bowl.  Serve with carrot and celery sticks and the blue cheese dip. So good you’ll rip your shirt off.

Viva Granola in Montréal are making salty versions of these filled with pizza toppings and Daiya. I might try that vegan challenge soon. In the meantime, here’s the “traditional version”. I actually don’t have egg replacer here and didn’t heat the soymilk up, so if you don’t either, your buns will be fine.

Here is the repost of the cinnamon bun recipe:

Cinnamon buns/Brioches à la canelle

Cinnamon buns take a bit more planning than other baked goods because they are leavened with yeast, but the payoff of deliciousness is worth the effort. Plus, people are always impressed that you managed to make *gasp* VEGAN cinnamon buns! They’re no more difficult and not much different than regular ones.

The recipe is adapted from The Joy of Vegan baking- Colleen Patrick-Goudreau. I usually forgo the icing, since these are amazing without it and it’s not really necessary.

Dough

4.5 t egg replacer

1/2 c + 6T warm water

5 c unbleached all purpose flour
1 packet of active dry yeast

1 c almond milk

1/3 c vegan margarine

1/3 c sugar

1 t salt

Filling

3/4 c firmly packed brown sugar

1.5 T cinnamon

1/2 c vegan margarine

3/4 c chopped dates or raisins (dates pre-soaked in boiling water for 10 min if dried) (optional)

1/2 c chopped walnuts

Icing (OPTIONAL but delicious)
1 c icing sugar

2 T vegan margarine

1 t vanilla

2 T almond milk 

2 T agar agar powder

First of all, fill a glass cup or jar with the 1/2 c of warm water and add the packet of yeast. Stir for about 1 min, then let stand 5 min- until a foam forms on top which indicates the yeast is ALIVE. Water that is too hot kills the yeast, too cold doesn’t activate it. A trick is to but 1 t of sugar in the warm water to feed the yeast.

In a large bowl, dump 4 of the 5 cups of flour. Make a pit in the centre of the flour. Save 1 cup for adjusting the wetness of the dough and set aside.

In a med bowl, whip the egg replacer with 6 T of warm water for about 1 min and set aside. In a small pot, melt the sugar and margarine with the almond milk and salt. Don’t overcook- it should take less than 5 min on medium heat. One melted, just add the sugar mixture to the flour, along with the egg replacer and yeast mixture. Integrate the wet and dry ingredients by scooping the flour up into the wet mix slowly. You want to form a wet dough with no lumps of flour. Once it’s all mixed, turn the dough out onto a flat floured surface for kneading, ready with the 1 c of dry flour set aside to add intermittently to dry out the dough as needed. Use discretion- if the dough is too dry, add water/almond milk. After about 3-5 min of kneading, you are ready to set the dough aside in a large greased bowl. Cover it with a wet dish towel and place somewhere warm to rise for 1-2 hrs. Punch it down after about half the time, recover with towel and let it continue to rise. Punch it down again just before using it.

Meanwhile prepare the filling and icing by mixing all the ingredients and set them in the fridge.

To roll out the dough, cut off half the dough and roll out on a lightly floured surface in arectangle shape to make more/shorter buns, or a square shape for less/taller buns. Spread some filling evenly along one edge of the dough and roll up the dough into a log shape, pinch the ends. Slice it into 8-12 even size spirals and arrange them on a cookie sheet or lasagna pan- A cookie sheet yields crunchier buns, a lasagna pan yields chewier buns. Repeat until dough is used up and make sure to crowd the buns together, don’t space them out. Cover with a towel and let rise another 10-20 mins. Preheat the over to 375. Brush with a little more almond milk and bake for 20-25 min, until the buns are browned. Let cool for 10 min, then drizzle on the icing and serve.