Vegan Fried Chicken

Preparation

Make the seitan following the instructions below:

• There are loads of recipes for seitan and I am working my way through them, learning as I go. For this recipe I tried one by Isa Chandra (Chicken Stylee Seitan, available on thePPK.com) and because it was a big batch I tried a couple of different ways of cooking it. I think either way would work and I would definitely try the boiled method for this recipe next time.

• I followed the recipe by Isa Chandra up to the point of cooking. At that point, I separated the seitan dough in to two batches. With one, I followed the recipe, gentry cooking the seitan in stock. This was the most successful of my attempts so far. It is really, really important not to let it boil. I got all tech about it and dragged out the jam thermometer. I kept it between 94 and 98 degrees.

• Anyway, for this particular version, I took the other half of the seitan and formed it in to small nuggets. Keep them on the small side because they will expand on cooking. I put them on an oiled baking tray and covered them with tin foil and baked for 20 – 30 mins at 180oC. Keep an eye on them, they are only small so it won’t take much to burn them. My thinking with this was that it keep them dry and therefore make the coating stick better.

• If you have the time, the stock method would work too but you would want to leave them to drain for quite a while and get as much stock out of them as you can before trying to do the coating.

• If you don’t fancy making your own seitan or you have your own preferred product or recipe, you could just use that. If you are still searching for that perfect recipe, give Isa’s recipe a go.