Savory Seitan - St. Paddy's Day Part 1

My goal is to make Fork-and-Knife Reubens in American Vegan Kitchen (p. 106) for St. Patrick's Day.  However, knowing what I do about cooking for a vegan diet, I figured I should start looking at preparation NOW.  :::chuckle:::  Actually, I have to keep the office open for OT on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, so I wanted to get a jump.  Tonight, I made Savory Seitan (p. 5) in American Vegan Kitchen in preparation for my Reuben dinner on St. Paddy's Day.

I'm making the slow cooker version.  I only needed to form 4 balls out of the dough, which was easy enough.  My dough was stickier than I'm used to (for homemade seitan), but I forged ahead.  It's in my slow cooker for the next 8 hours (really longer if you count the "warm" time it will have while I'm still snoozing at 4:30AM).  I did not have any veggie broth in my house, so I used 2½ cups of No Chicken broth (Imagine), 4 cups of water with 1½ teaspoons No-Chicken Better than Bouillon, and 2 cups of water with ½ No-Beef bouillon cube.  How does that sound for variety? :::chuckle:::  I had to add the last (no-beef variety) so that the water would cover the seitan balls as stated in the recipe.  After three hours in the crock pot, the seitan balls have grown.

After slow cooking all night in the VersaCooker, my seitan looks like it's done.

 

Since this is the first time I made the Savory Seitan recipe, I'm hoping it looks like it should.  It looks good to me.  I saved the broth and stuck it in my freezer to use to make more seitan or to use as a gravy base.  I only kept one seitan ball out and froze the other three to use in future dishes.

So, my seitan is prepared for the Reuben sandwich for St. Patrick's Day. I'll be making the marinade, probably tomorrow, as realistically, I have to work until 7PM on St. Paddy's Day, and I won't feel like cooking at 8PM when I get home, so I'll eat these on Wednesday.  I'll also make the Reuben Dressing on Tuesday night and put it in the fridge until Wednesday.  I'll marinade the seitan all day on Wednesday and then pull it all together when I arrive home.

I have wanted to make these Fork-and-Knife Reubens for a LONG time (ever since I got the cookbook a while back), and now, I'm finally doing it.  I cannot wait!!! 

I leave you with a shot of Kobe, "My Girl", the one who had ACL surgery at the end of January.  She has stolen Skittles (my Yorkie) bowl of food (after Skits ate most of it) and took it to the living room to polish it off.  Kobe is the smartest dog I've ever owned.  I totally love her, but then, I love my other two dogs, too.  :)