rants & recipes

Ingredients:

• 1 box wheat gluten (1 1/2 cups)
• 6 tbsp nutritional yeast
• 3 tbsp oil
• 7 tbsp "marmite water" - see notes
• 1 tsp oregano
• 1 tsp black pepper
• 1 tsp basil
• 1 tsp Italian seasoning
• 1/2 tsp ground fennel
• pinch marjoram
• 1/4 tsp ground sage
• pinch chili powder
• 1/4 tsp dry mustard
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp onion powder
• ~ 1/4 cup water, added at the end because the mix was too dry.

Instructions:

1. Combine dry ingredients.
2. Add liquid and combine. This mix was too small an amount for my Bosch and also very dry, so after watching it ride around the Bosch for a bit, I finished mixing and kneading by hand.
3. Pinch into small crumbles. Or cut. It was dry enough for me to cut into small cube-like pieces.
4. Brown in oil and soy sauce for approximately 15-20 minutes. Cook until the chewy texture is gone. Taste a piece after about 5 minutes of cooking, when they begin to look nicely browned. You'll see they aren't done, yet.

Notes:

• Adjusted combination of these two recipes: this one for spices and this one for ratios of water/gluten, etc.
• The "marmite water" mentioned above is cooking broth from re-hydrated soy curls in this recipe.  I'm sure a similar soy sauce, ketchup, marmite and water mixture would suffice.
• The seitan mix was very dry and stretchy. If undercooked, you will have Italian Seitan chewing gum. Keep cooking until the chewy texture goes away.
• Because it was dry, I was generous with soy sauce and oil, for browning.
• Next time, I'll add some flour or oats in an attempt to decrease the density. Maybe 1/4 cup?
• Although tasty in pasta sauce, these really "belong" on a (vegan!) pizza.
• I didn't store leftover crumble in sauce, they seemed like they may get soggy.

Updated:

• 14-Aug-09 - I made a second batch of these. This time, I used 1/4 cup water and added the following additional ingredients: 1 tbsp A1, 1 tbsp soy sauce and 2 tbsp garbanzo bean flour.

• The mix seemed much less dry, starting out. I browned for a while in oil and soy sauce. Once browned sufficiently, I placed in the food dehydrator (on about 130 degrees) for maybe about 3 hours? They were really good.

• Leftovers didn't get soggy overnight, although seitan always seems to soften up, when warmed. Given that, I would have preferred not to have the leftover crumbles mixed in - if they were separate, they could have skipped re-heating in the microwave.

• Next time, I'll try to make further ahead, and dehydrate longer.

Updated crumbles with vegetables, sauce and noodles.