Fake beef - it's what's for dinner!

I've already posted this on various social networks, so I apologize if you're seeing it again.  I'm simply trying to get into the habit of putting things on the blog.

Yesterday, I made 'beef' seitan for dinner.  These photographs show some of the process, along with the end result - a teriyaki stir-fry with orzo.

The first step was making and flavoring the seitan.  You can make it many ways - to simulate, beef, chicken, pepperoni, etc.  I was making a 'beef' chunk version.  All it took was some vital wheat gluten, nutritional yeast, assorted spices, and water.  You can add as much spice as you want, and whatever types.  In this case, I was giving it a moderate flavor so that it could soak up the flavor of the dish.  After mixing everything up and kneading it for a while, it looks like this:

Next, I chopped it up into usable sized chunks.  The seitan expands quite a bit during the process I use in this case (there are other ways to make it that give it a totally different feel):

After it was all chopped up, I placed all of the chunks into a boiling broth.  I made the broth with water, molasses, and Bragg's Liquid Aminos (which is similar to soy sauce):

This shows what the chunks look like after about 30 minutes of cooking in the broth (I generally cook them for about an hour).  Notice how large the chunks have gotten:

After an hour, the seitan chunks are finished cooking. This is what they look like:

I like to put them in the dehydrator for a while.  That gives them a really nice color and texture (note that this only shows one layer, there are actually two layers worth from the dough shown in the first photograph):

And this is what the chunks look like in the teriyaki stir-fry with orzo.  Everything looks and tastes great:

The recipe for the dough can be found here: Basic Seitan recipe used in this meal

Making homemade veggie crumbles and seitan.

I had the items that I needed for the crumbles (which mimic ground beef), but it was slightly hard to locate the vital wheat gluten to make the seitan. If there is any interest, I'll explain what I did to make them.

Veggie crumbles after being dried in the dehydrator.

Vacuum packed veggie crumbles.

Homemade seitan ready to be dried a little in the dehydrator.