These seitan steaks are our favourite plant-based meat replacement. They are easy to make at home, tender, but with a good meaty texture. Also, they are super versatile.
They can be cooked in many different ways, and served with pretty much any sauce. Here we show you how to cook them on a pan with a delicious creamy mushrooms sauce.
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In this blog post, I'll first show you how to make seitan steaks from scratch at home. I use wheat gluten and a few other simple ingredients, and then I cook them on a pan with a creamy mushroom sauce.
However, the vegan steaks you get with this recipe can be used with pretty much any sauce you want, just like regular meat. You can even deep-fry them to make a delicious vegan schnitzel.
What is seitan? Seitan is basically a vegan meat that has similar look and texture to real meat. It has been around for thousands of years, although the name "seitan" (pronounced SAY-tan) is a much more recent development.
Although it is made from wheat, seitan has little in common with flour or bread. It is also called gluten, wheat protein, or wheat gluten. There's a lot more info on seitan on this article from the Spruce Eats.
Ingredients & substitutions
Ingredients for seitan steaks
- Vital wheat gluten: or just regular wheat gluten. This is a flour-like powder, made from gluten extracted from regular wheat flour. So, despite the horrifying name, vital wheat gluten is a simple, plant-based ingredients. It's essential to give our vegan steaks that chewy, meaty texture.
- Vegetable broth: we use broth to cook the vegan meat cutlets. You can either use vegetable bouillon, or you can make your own broth with fresh ingredients. For this recipe we suggest using a good quality organic vegetable bouillon and a some bay leaves in it.
- Tofu: it helps to add some protein. You can substitute it with canned legumes, like chickpeas, beans or lentils.
- Seasoning: we use olive oil, onion, garlic, pepper, and soy sauce to add flavour to the vegan steaks. We find that these ingredients are enough to give a full, pleasant flavour, that goes well with most sauce and dressings.
You can experiment with pretty much any spices and flavourings you like, such as paprika, cumin, curry, turmeric, rosemary, liquid smoke, etc.
For the mushrooms sauce
- Mushrooms: we use brown champignon mushrooms. You can replace them with most mushrooms, such as white mushrooms, portobello mushrooms, porcini mushrooms, chanterelle mushrooms, and more.
- Flour: we coat the seitan steaks with flour. You can replace flour with rice flour, or corn starch
- Seasoning: olive oil, garlic, salt, pepper, and ideally some fresh parsley. Alse we use some vegetable broth left-over from the making of the steaks.
How to make seitan steaks
In a large pot, prep the vegetable stock by adding water and vegetable bouillon powder, and bring to a gentle boil.
Also, preheat the oven to 180°C / 360°F and line a baking rack with parchment paper and set it aside.
To make the meat, blend together water, tofu, soy sauce, olive oil, garlic, onion, pepper and salt.
Pour the liquid into a large bowl, add the vital wheat gluten to it, and with a sturdy spatula mix until you have a dough ball.
Transfer the dough on a work surface and knead by hand for 5 minutes. If the dough is too sticky, add some wheat gluten. By the end, you should get an elastic dough that is hard to tear apart.
Cut the dough into 8 pieces. Flatten each piece on the work surface with a rolling pin. Dust with some flour if the dough is too sticky. Reach your desired thickness. I like my vegan steaks quite thin, about 0.5 cm / 0.2 inches.
TIP: wheat gluten dough is very elastic and hard to flatten, that's normal. To make the process easier, flatten the pieces of dough a first time, wait 5 minutes to let the gluten relax, then flatten them a second time. You'll get thinner and larger cutlets this way.
Put the cutlets onto the baking rack with parchment paper, then bake for 20 minutes at 180°C / 360°F.
Take the cutlets out of the oven. Bring the broth to a boil and gently lower the cutlets in. Let the cutlets simmer in the broth for 20 minutes.
TIP: if the cutlets float on the surface of the broth, occasionally turn them and push them down again to ensure even cooking.
Turn the heat off and let the cutlets cool down in the broth for about 1 hour. Transfer the cutlets in a large container (or several small containers), cover in broth, and let rest in the fridge for a minimum of 8 hours and up to 6 days.
Now you can cook the cutlets as you prefer. Here I'll show you how to cook them in a mushroom sauce.
How to make the mushrooms sauce
Take 4 steaks out of their marinating broth, then coat them with flour.
In a non stick pan, warm up 2 tablespoon of the oil. Add the garlic. Then add chopped or sliced mushrooms and cook on medium heat for 5 minutes, or until they loose most of their water. Season with salt and pepper. When cooked, set aside into a bowl.
In the same non stick pan, warm up the rest of the oil. When the oil is hot, add the seitan steaks and cook them on each side for about 1.5 minutes, or until golden. Season both sides with salt and pepper.
Add the white wine to the pan. When the wine has evaporated completely add a ladle of vegetable broth (you can also just add water).
Then add the mushrooms to the pan and cook for another 2 minutes, turning the meat once or twice, and mixing it with the mushrooms, until the broth is reduced into a creamy sauce.
Sprinkle with the fresh parsley and serve immediately.
Tips
- Add seasonings in the blender: the best way to add flavour to your vegan steaks is to add all the spices and flavourings to the blender with the wet ingredients and blend together until you get a flavoured liquid.
- Get the basics right, then experiment: vegan meat in general is actually very easy to make. But working with vital wheat gluten requires a little practice, just because it's a new ingredient.
The trickiest part to get right, is the ratios between liquids and the wheat gluten. So, make sure to follow our recipe first, get familiar with the texture of the "dough" and then feel free to experiment on your own, adding your favourite spices and so on.
- Tofu or legumes in the mix: it's important to add a legume (tofu is kind of a legume as it's made from soy beans) to the vital wheat gluten to improve the protein profile of the steaks.
- Let the steaks rest: to get the best meaty texture, let the plant-based steaks rest in their cooking broth overnight. The cool part is that they can be stored in the refrigerator in their own broth for up to a full week.
Their texture will only get better with time. So our advice is to prepare them in advance, so that you can enjoy them trough-out the week.
Frequently asked questions
No. There is no evidence to suggest that. Fake meats made with wheat gluten have been prepared this way in Asia for thousands of years, and served to Buddhist monks that already back then refused to eat animal flesh.
More recently, wheat gluten has become a staple in macrobiotic and vegan cuisines as a healthy replacement for meat. If, however, you are allergic to gluten, then you should not eat wheat gluten.
There is no difference between vital wheat gluten and wheat gluten. They refer to the same thing. A flour-like powder, made from the extraction of the wheat protein gluten from flour and the exclusion of starch.
You can find wheat gluten either in the health foods section or in the baking section of your supermarket.
If your local grocery store doesn't sell wheat gluten, you can always get some good one online.
Variations
Vegan stekas in lemon sauce
Ingredients: in addition to 4 vegan steaks, you'll need about 4 tablespoon of flour to coat the steaks, 2 tablespoon of olive oil, juice from 1 lemon, 1 teaspoon rosemary, 1 teaspoon thyme, 1 cup of vegetable broth (or water), salt, pepper.
Instructions: coat the steaks with flour, then cook them on a pan, 1.5 min on each side, with olive oil, rosemary, thyme, salt and pepper. Add the lemon juice, then some broth (or water) and finish cooking for 2 minutes, till creamy.
Deep-fried vegan schnitzel
This is probably the most indulgent way to eat vegan meat. Here's the full recipe for our deep-fried vegan schnitzel.
Storage
Store the seitan steaks in the refrigerator, in a container in their own cooking broth for up to 1 week.
You can also freeze the vegan steaks. To do so, separate them from their broth, then put them in a freezing bag, and keep for up to 2 months. You can also separately freeze the broth for up to 2 to 3 months.
Recipe
Recipe
Seitan steaks
Equipment
- Blender
- Rolling pin
Ingredients
For 8 steaks
- 4 liters vegetable stock
- 240 g water
- 100 g tofu
- 3 tablespoon soy sauce
- 2 tablespoon olive oil
- ⅔ clove garlic
- ¼ onion
- 1 teaspoon black pepper
- 2 teaspoon sea salt
- 225 g vital wheat gluten
Mushroom sauce for 4 steaks
- 4 tablespoon all purpose flour
- 500 g mushrooms
- 4 tablespoon olive oil
- ¾ cup white wine
- 1 clove garlic
- salt and pepper
- 1 handful parsley
- 1 cup vegetable stock leftover from making the steaks
Instructions
Preparation
- In a large pot, add water and vegetable bouillon. Bring to a boil, then let simmer throughout this recipe. Preheat the oven to 180°C / 356°F. Line a baking rack with parchment paper and set it aside.
Make the meat
- To make the meat, blend together water, tofu, soy sauce, olive oil, garlic, onion, pepper and salt.
- Pour the liquid into a large bowl, add the vital wheat gluten to it, and with a sturdy spatula mix until you have a dough ball.
- Transfer the dough on a work surface and knead by hand for 5 minutes. If the dough is too sticky, add some wheat gluten. By the end, you should get an elastic dough that is hard to tear apart.
- Cut the dough into 8 pieces. Flatten each piece on the work surface with a rolling pin. Dust with some flour if the dough is too sticky. Reach your desired thickness. I like my vegan steaks quite thin, about 0.5 cm / 0.2 inches.TIP: wheat gluten dough is very elastic and hard to flatten, that's normal. To make the process easier, flatten the pieces of dough a first time, wait 5 minutes to let the gluten relax, then flatten them a second time. You'll get thinner and larger cutlets this way.
- Put the cutlets onto the baking rack with parchment paper, then bake for 20 minutes at 180°C / 360°F.
- Take the cutlets out of the oven. Bring the broth to a boil and gently lower the cutlets in. Let the cutlets simmer in the broth for 20 minutes.TIP: if the cutlets float on the surface of the broth, occasionally turn them and push them down again to ensure even cooking.
- Turn the heat off and let the cutlets cool down in the broth for about 1 hour. Transfer the cutlets in a large container (or several small containers), cover in broth, and let rest in the fridge for a minimum of 8 hours and up to 6 days. Now you can cook the cutlets as you prefer. Here I'll show you a quick mushroom sauce.
For the mushroom sauce
- Take 4 steaks out of their marinating broth, then coat them with flour.
- In a non stick pan, warm up 2 tablespoon of the oil. Add the garlic. Then add chopped or sliced mushrooms and cook on medium heat for 5 minutes, or until they loose most of their water. Season with salt and pepper. When cooked, set aside into a bowl.
- In the same non stick pan, warm up the rest of the oil. When the oil is hot, add the seitan steaks and cook them on each side for about 1.5 minutes, or until golden. Season both sides with salt and pepper. Add the white wine to the pan. When the wine has evaporated completely add a ladle of vegetable broth (you can also just add water).
- Then add the mushrooms to the pan and cook for another 2 minutes, turning the meat once or twice, and mixing it with the mushrooms, until the broth is reduced into a creamy sauce. Sprinkle with the fresh parsley and serve immediately.
Video Recipe
Notes
Nutritional Values
Did you try this recipe at home? Let us know in the comments below, or take a picture and tag us on Instagram @italiaplantbased.
Dannette
Can you substitute beans for the tofu?
Nico
Hi Dannette, yes, there should be no problem. If the beans are very watery you might need to add some more wheat gluten, but you'll realise when you knead the dough.
Ken
I enjoyed preparing and eating this recipe. All of the steps are important to get a good cutlet. Right out of the broth, the cutlets were too chewy, then softer after spending the night in the fridge, and softer still after saute with the mushroom sauce. They were a perfect complement to the mushroom sauce. Thank you.
Nico
Hi Ken, thanks for your message. I am happy you enjoyed preparing the cutlets, and eating the with the mushroom sauce 🙂 Cheers!
Angela
Hi, can you freeze the cutlets before frying
Nico
Hi Angela, you can freeze the cutlets but there is a chance that the texture of the cutlets will change.
If you decide to freeze them remove them from their marinating broth first, then put them in a freezer bag, and freeze for up to 3 months.
Thaw in the refrigerator before cooking them.
Tracey Roberts
Made these vegan cutlets several time, they turn out really well and are very versatile. The best recipe I’ve found. Thanks
Nico
Thanks for the comment Tracey. We are happy you like the cutlets 🙂