As a vegetarian household we use a lot of different sources for protein, like beans, tofu, and seitan. Many of you might be familiar with seitan through Field Roast products. Indeed, their Italian and Apple Sage sausages are some of our household staples.

Over the past few years we’ve been making our own after discovering two great recipes in Isa Chandra Moskowitz’s Isa Does It cookbook. We’ve played with the recipes a bit and crafted something of mashup between her Simmered Seitan (p240) and her Steamed Chicky Seitan (p241). This “beefy” seitan slices up great and browns nicely for saucy recipes like “beef” and broccoli and numerous other stir-frys. These also freeze very well.

“Beefy” Seitan

• 1c veggie broth
• 2T tomato paste
• 1/4c soy sauce (yes, you read that correctly)
• 1/2c water
• 2c vital wheat gluten
• 5T nutritional yeast
• 2t onion powder
• 1t garlic powder

Prepare a steamer and bring the water to a boil. Tear off 4 squares of aluminum foil.

Mix together all wet ingredients. Add in the dry ingredients and mix well. While you can start off with a fork be prepared to get your hands dirty to knead it all up towards the end.

Divide the mass into 4 equal patties (ours end up resembling very thick hamburger patties) and loosely wrap each in a piece of foil.

Steam for 40 minutes.

You can use them immediately or store them in a ziplock in the fridge (for about a week) or in the freezer (for several months).