Many traditional family recipes use chicken in them. Chicken is a staple in so many favourite dishes and I really wanted to create an ingredient that would allow me to create the dish in a vegan-friendly way. Enter this seitan chicken! It’s a super versatile ingredient that has a fantastic texture and will quickly become a regular in your recipes.
I’ve used this chicken in so many dishes, most recently in tacos. I marinated it in a sauce beforehand as you can see from the picture below, and then I fried it up. Exactly as you would with regular chicken, but suitable for vegans. It’s important to me that these recipes don’t take a lot of time. I try and create meals which aren’t labour intensive but are full of flavour. You can make up a batch of this chicken and add it into your meals during the week.
You can also freeze this chicken. I recommend shredding it first and then putting it into an airtight container before putting it in the freezer. Take it out when you are about to cook it and voila! I have added it to pasta dishes where I just fry it right there with the onions and it’s come out perfect. The chicken will also keep for up to a week, either in its loaf form or shredded in a box.
Important ingredients
There are several important ingredients in this recipe which I will go over quickly here. Any links included to Amazon will be affiliated links and I could earn a commission from anything bought using the links.
Butter Beans
When I was experimenting with this recipe I tried several beans before settling on butter beans. I think these beans give this ingredient a great creamy texture and the flavour of the beans really adds to the overall dish. During experimentation, I tried several white beans and found that butter beans worked the best, however, if you don’t have any you can substitute them. I also tried this dish with chickpeas but found they didn’t add as much creaminess.
Chicken stock
This is a difficult one because it is actually quite hard to find vegan chicken stock! I looked for a long time before settling for this chicken stock from Massel. This stock is incredible. It has a lovely taste which really compliments the chicken, it’s super fine so it doesn’t clump or make the seitan gritty. It’s just a fantastic stock and I use it every time I make chicken! If you do go looking for chicken stock in the supermarkets be careful, they often contain small amounts of chicken fat.
Silken Tofu and Vital Wheat Gluten
The next ingredient is silken tofu. Silken tofu helps add some great texture to the chicken and really bind it together. It gives the dish some much-needed moisture and another protein hit! Silken tofu can be found in the ambient isles of supermarkets and is kept in the cupboard. This is fantastic because it means you can always have a few to hand ready to use in a recipe. It’s very different to firm tofu, it’s creamy and very soft so don’t be surprised!
Finally, the vital wheat gluten. A staple to seitan cooking if you aren’t washing the flour yourself. I like to use the Wholefood Earth brand as I have mentioned before. The packaging is plastic-free, it comes in a 3kg bag and tastes fantastic, what more could you want?
This chicken fries up so well, it really is an incredibly versatile ingredient! I hope you love this seitan chicken as much as I do, let me know in the comments what you use it in.
Seitan Chicken
Equipment
- Steamer
- Blender
Ingredients
- 400 g Tinned Butter Beans and it's Water Add the tin with the water
- 100 g Silken Tofu
- 1 tbsp Chicken Stock Powder
- 1 tsp Soy Sauce
- 1 tbsp Cider Vingear
- 2 tsp Garlic Powder
- 200 g Vital Wheat Gluten
Instructions
- Add the tinned beans with their water to the blender and blend until smooth
- Add in the rest of the ingredients apart from the vital wheat gluten
- Blend all the ingredients until smooth and together
- Slowly add the vital wheat gluten and blend until a dough has formed
- If your blender struggles with the volume, turn into a bowl and mix by hand
- if it isn't already, put the dough into a bowl
- Knead the dough for 3 to 5 minutes and then leave it to rest for 10 minutes
- Divide the dough into four equal parts
- Wrap each indivdual section into a log and wrap tightly with baking paper.
- Add the chicken to the steamer and steam for 1 hour 10 minutes
- Once the chicken has cooked, take them out of the steamer and leave to rest for at least an hour still wrapped
- When ready to be used either shred into chunks by hand or cut into the amount required. Shreading by hand allows for great texture.
- Add to your meal as required and enjoy!
Hi. Any substitute for the tofu. Its hard to get here. Thanks
Hey 😊 I think it would work okay without the tofu. It just gives it an extra creamyness. You could try and blend some white beans into a smooth paste and use those instead. Let me know how it goes!
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