Stuffed Seitan Roast – A Very Vegan Christmas

Serves: 8

Time: 2.5 hours (30mins prep 2 hours cooking)

Price: €5.29 – €0.66 per portion

The final main of the series is another favourite of mine – the seitan roast. For those that don’t know seitan is vital wheat gluten and is a meat replacement that apparently dates back to ancient times. It also makes making vegan meat dishes pretty simple. Even though I always enjoy it when I make it, I do shy away from working with seitan as I make it a bigger deal in my head. It’s also not really the prettiest of meals but it makes up for it in taste and price!

You will need:

• 2 cups vital wheat gluten
• about 3 litres of water
• 1 can of chickpeas, drained
• 4 small onions, one de-skinned and diced – the rest quartered with the skin on
• 2tbsp garlic puree
• 2tbsp salt
• 2tsp peppercorns
• 2 knorr stock pots (or your favourite stock equivalent
• 1 cup carrot and celery scraps (not essential but i had them in the freezer)
• 2tbsp tamari
• 3tbsp onion powder
• 1tbsp each of dried rosemary, thyme, sage and marjoram
• 3/4 cup cranberries (I used frozen)
• 5 chestnut mushrooms, diced small
• sage and onion stuffing mix (you could also use this stuffing mix from week one)
• 1/4 cup nutritional yeast
• 5 cloves of garlic, smashed
• 2 sprigs each of fresh thyme and rosemary

How to make it:

Start by throwing the vegetable scraps, the skin-on onions (not the diced one), garlic, fresh thyme and rosemary and one stock pot into a big pot and cover with 2.4 litres of boiling water and begin to simmer over a medium heat, covered.

While the broth simmers, add the diced onion, garlic puree and chickpeas to the food processor and blend until smooth. When that is blending, mix up another 400ml of stock (not the one from the pan – use a stock pot or cube). In a separate bowl, mix the vital wheat gluten, dry herbs, nutritional yeast, salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Now, my food processor has a dough hook so I used that, but essentially for this step you want to mix the wet and dry ingredients. Add in the tamari and slowly add in the stock (you may not need it all) until you get a doughy consistency.

Next, you need to knead that dough aggressively for 10 minutes (why I used my dough hook in the food processor). I mean aggressive – more aggressive than you would with any other dough as this is what activates the vital wheat gluten to make in meaty!

Leave the dough to rest while you make the stuffing. This is a quick way you can take a box stuffing and make it super tasty – you could always whip my my stuffing recipe though (link in ingredients list) and add the extras I recommend here! Simply make the stuffing as per package instructions and add the mushrooms and cranberries.

Flatten out your dough into a rough square and lay a row of stuffing as pictured above (if you have excess stuffing, just make stuffing balls out of it!). Roll it up tightly. Ideally you would wrap it in a cheesecloth here but I couldn’t get hold of any this week so I wrapped it in parchment paper then tinfoil, using a sharp knife to add some “breathing” holes. Simmer in the pan of stock you made over a medium heat for 1 hour, turning half way. Preheat your oven to 200c(fan).

After simmering for 1 hour, remove from the pan and remove the parchment paper and tinfoil (or cheesecloth. Re-wrap in toilfoil. Bake in your preheated oven for 30 mins. I like to elevate the seitan of the bottom of my oven dish with vegetables so it is on a bed of carrots – and as you can see I’m making some stuffing balls too!

Once it has been roasting away for half an hour, remove the tin foil and flip the roast. This is entirely optional but I added some pepper and the roast drizzled with maple syrup. Return to the oven for a further 30 minutes.

There you have it. A luxurious vegan roast dinner, the perfect centrepiece to wow your guests on Christmas day! Serve with all the trimmings and swoon at how delicious and cruelty free your Christmas dinner is!

Speaking of trimmings – check back tomorrow for another Christmas side dish! Make sure to follow my blog so you don’t miss any recipes!

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