rants & recipes

Okara Seitan Chicken Fingers

Posted by ataraktos on 2011-08-13

I have been wanting to experiment with adding some fiber to seitan for a while. We have a Loving Hut a couple of blocks away and their mock meats are very fiberous. Searching online, I found The Airyway blog, which has some recipes for okara seitan.

Today I finally got around to trying one of their recipes. I'm very happy with the results - juicy and chewy, not gummy or bready at all. I'll be tweaking flavorings and envision this recipe and alternates becoming a regular. I made some breaded baked seitan nuggets a couple of weeks back. They weren't very good, at all. I'll revisit the breading part of that recipe and bake some of these up as nuggets. I also flattened a few pieces out into thin rounds (much thinner than a chicken patty for a sandwhich) and was pleased with how those cooked up.

Ingredients
  • 300 grams vital wheat gluten
  • 60 grams chickpea flour
  • 1 batch of okara, from making soymilk (I use 100 grams of soybeans for a batch of soymilk), drained but not really squeezed dry
  • 1 cup water
  • 1/3 cup soy sauce
  • 3 tbsp canola oil
  • 1/4 cup nutritional yeast
  • 1 tsp garlic powder
  • 1 tsp onion powder
  • 1 tsp dry mustard
  • 1/2 tsp curry powder
  • black pepper
Instructions
  1. Mix gluten and flour.
  2. In a second bowl, mix remaining ingredients.
  3. Start a pot of water plus some soy sauce heating to boil.
  4. Combine wet and dry ingredients in your bread mixer and knead for a couple of minutes.
  5. Form into the shapes you desire. Make them a little bit smaller than you want the final pieces to be, because they soak up some liquid while cooking.
  6. Drop into boiling water and cook 5-10 minutes, depending on the shape and thickness of the pieces you made. I made "fingers" a little longer than and about twice as thick as my thumb - I boiled those for 10 minutes.
  7. Although not necessary, these can be fried or breaded and baked as desired.
No chickens or fingers were harmed in any way, to make these vegan chicken fingers: On pizza:
Adapted from this post.