Bethany's Vegan Kitchen

Hello! I’m back from my break with new recipes for 2024, starting with this pepperoni style seitan. I’m a big fan of seitan personally, I usually make some every Sunday and I use it in a variety of different ways. This smoky, spicy seitan is great for using in place of pepperoni on pizzas, diced and stirred through a tomato sauce, or added into vegan cheese toasties. I’ll also include how I use this seitan to make a vegan version of Peperami. Peperami did launch a meat free version of their signature snack, but it contains egg white, so it isn’t suitable for vegans. This however contains no animal based ingredients, is easy to make, and is a good source of plant based protein

Yield; Roughly 360g Cook time; One hour

You’ll need;

Dry Ingredients;

1. 100g vital wheat gluten
2. 20g chickpea flour
3. 15g nutritional yeast
4. Two tablespoons of smoked paprika
5. One tablespoon of chilli powder, I used mild chilli powder, use hot if preferred
6. Two teaspoons of onion granules
7. Two teaspoons of garlic granules
8. One teaspoon of ground mustard seeds
9. Half a teaspoon of ground fennel seeds
10. Half a teaspoon of black pepper
11. Half a teaspoon of salt

Wet ingredients;

1. 135ml hot vegetable stock, I used one vegetable oxo cube dissolved in 135ml hot water
2. 40g of roasted red pepper, skin removed
3. One tablespoon of hot sauce, I used sriracha
4. One teaspoon of liquid smoke

Method;

• Add all the dry ingredients listed into a mixing bowl, I used a stand mixer to make things easier. Then add all the wet ingredients listed into a jug and blend until completely smooth with an immersion blender
• Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and mix until a dough forms. Then knead the dough for seven or eight minutes, you’ll notice the gluten developing and the dough will start to firm up
• Next, wrap the dough in either PVC free cling film, foil or muslin. I prefer to do this with foil, as foil makes it easier to form the shape of the seitan
• Now add a small amount of water to a large saucepan and bring to a boil. Once the water is boiling add the wrapped seitan and cover with a lid. Reduce the heat to the lowest setting and cook for 45 minutes. Once cooked, carefully drain away the water, and leave the seitan to fully cool to room temperature before unwrapping. Store the seitan in airtight containers in the fridge, or the freezer if you want to keep it for longer

If you want to top pizzas with this, just add the pepperoni around five minutes before the pizza is cooked. As the seitan is already cooked, it will only need to be heated through. Adding it five minutes before the end of the cooking time ensures it won’t dry out or overcook