Seitan Gives you WINGZ!

Today is my beloved's birthday. He is an omni, and I am a veggie and yet we happily coexist in a largely meat free household. How is that even possible, you might ask? Aside from respecting each other's beliefs, my fine cooking skillz and his willingness to try anything make us a dynamic pair. I wanted to make something really special for his birthday, one of his favorite dishes... these, however, tend to include dead animals and I'm not so much willing to deal with that, so I thought I'd whip up some meg*n "chicken" wings. Most recipes call for tempeh, and honestly, I'm not so big on the tempeh. I'll eat it, but it just doesn't do anything for me. Seitan, however, is a household favorite, so I set about creating seitan "chicken" wings, and it was... SUCCESS! They are really tasty and weirdly chicken wingy and my beloved enjoyed them quite a bit! (As did his parents and I!) It would be cruel to keep this recipe from the rest of the world, so here are...

Seitan Wingz!


First step was to prepare chicken style seitan. The recipe I settled on was written by Bryanna Clark Grogan, who writes a good many seitan recipes (though a lot are very time consuming with a lot of steps and maneuvers), and tweaked it to suit my needs. This recipe probably yields about 30 wings. I took about half of the dough and boiled it as per normal seitan and used it in my unchicken and dumplings the other night.

Dry:
2 1/4 cups vital wheat gluten
1/2 cup instant/quick tapioca (NOT PUDDING MIX!)
1/2 cup quick oats
2 tbsp unchicken broth concentrate/powder
2 tbsp nutritional yeast
1 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp onion powder

Wet:
1 cup pureed silken tofu
1 1/4 cups water
1/4 cup tahini
3 tbsp tamari (or soy sauce)

Cooking liquid:
7 cups unchicken broth
4 cloves of garlic, crushed
2 1/2 tbsp tamari
2 tbsp nutritional yeast

Hardware:
Popsicle Sticks

[See Seitan: A How To for more detailed instructions]

1. Mix all the dry ingredients together in a large bowl/bowl of your kitchenaid stand mixer

2. Whisk all the wet ingredients together in a large bowl until relatively smooth

3. Add the wet to the dry and knead for 10 minutes

4. Let the ball of seitan dough rest, covered, for about 20-30 minutes

5. Knead the dough for 10 minutes

6. Assemble the wings: Using golf ball sized seitan dough balls, stretch and flatten them into a square almost as long as the popsicle stick. Roll the flattened dough around the stick and squeeze/pinch the edges to get it to stick. Repeat... again... and again... and again... They'll look something like this:



7. Place all the "wings" into a large pot containing your cooking liquid. Bring the liquid to a boil, them immediately turn the heat down to low, cover, and simmer for 90 minutes.

As seitan is best after its rested overnight, I'd recommend letting it chill in the fridge overnight in a great big ziplock back or tupperware container or some such. If you want to freeze them, lay them out on a cookie sheet in one layer so they freeze individually, then once they're frozen put them in a collective vessel.

.... Is it tomorrow already? Great! Let's get winging!

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Now you'll need to bowls, one for wet and one for dry, to bread your wings. None of these measurements are exact. It's hard to screw this part up!

Wet:
~1 cup Unflavored soy/rice/oat/hemp/etc... milk of your choice

Dry:
~1 cup all purpose flour
~ 1/3 cup cornmeal
~1 tsp paprika
~1/2 tsp garlic powder
~1 tsp salt
~ 1/2 tsp pepper

Dip a wing in the milk. Then roll it in the flour mixture. Then back in the milk. Then back in the flour. Now onto a cookie sheet. Repeat... and repeat... and repeat... Once they're all down on the cookie sheet, mist them with a bit of olive oil. They'll look something like this:


Bake in the oven for 10-15 minutes on each side. The side that's down will get a little brown, and the seitan will puff a bit.

Towards the end of baking, make your wing sauce. I'm told this recipe come from Don't Eat Off The Sidewalk! so I'm going with that for a source.

1/4 cup margarine
4 tbsp ketchup
2 1/2 tbsp hot sauce
2 tbsp agave

Melt the margarine in a small pot. Add everything else. Stir 'til smooth.

When your wings are done, drop them all in a large bowl, dump the sauce on, and flip them around until they're all coated. Then dig in!