Seitan Buffalo "Wings"

Okay, I felt kinda' strange bringing buffalo wings for lunch today, but since a lot of people seemed to be interested in how they turned out, and since we've been on such a seitan kick here lately, I went ahead and brought them. And now that I think about it, it's really not that bad of a lunch. First of all, I have, of course, the seitan buffalo wings that I made recently. They are just made of some chunks of homemade seitan (this time I used the recipe from La Dolce Vegan by Sarah Kramer - she has a gluten recipe that is specifically chicken-like in flavor) which I then covered in some buffalo sauce made by simply mixing Frank's Famous RedHot Sauce and melted Earth Balance Margarine. This is the most significant source of fat in today's lunch (more on that later), but it's really not that much fat (there was only 1/4 cup of Earth Balance in the whole batch and this is just a fraction of it). Plus, the types and ratios of fats in Earth Balance are proven to IMPROVE your cholesterol. So at least it has that redeeming quality. Trust me. These are good!

I brought along some celery and carrots to go along with the "wings". And then I've got a container of vegan ranch dip down there to dip everything in. There's a story here too. I used to make ranch dip by mixing a pack of the ranch mix from Kroger (which just happens to be vegan) with a container of Tofutti Better than Sour Cream. Well, that would be about 1/3 of that container in today's lunch, and a container has 60 grams of fat in it, so I would have been looking at probably 20 grams of fat just in the dip. So what did I do instead? I pulled out Sarah Kramer's cookbook again and found a recipe for sour cream that uses Silken tofu, lemon juice, apple cider vinegar, a little sugar, a little canola oil (only 1 Tbsp, which is 14g fat), and some Tamari. I made the stuff and it completely filled one of the Tofutti containers that I had washed and saved. Then I made the ranch dip from that. So instead of having 60g of fat in a batch of ranch dip, now I have 14g. And that means I've only got 4-5g of fat in the amount of dip in my lunch. Plus, if you wanted to, you could probably even leave that 1 Tbsp. of canola oil out completely, making the stuff virtually fat-free. And yes, it tastes just as good as the dip made with the Tofutti.

Since I HAVE to eat wings with my fingers (licking the sauce off your fingers is half the fun) that made today's lunch another one where I didn't need the utensils, leaving that compartment free to hold a Cashew Cookie Larabar.

I will probably try and do a picture tutorial on making seitan this weekend. If I do, I have something in mind that came to me when making the pieces for these buffalo wings. I'll keep it a secret until this weekend, but if it works like I think it will, it will be a delicious new recipe that I will personally make ALL THE TIME. Oh, I hope it works. I'm pretty sure it will. Okay, enough about that.

If you used to eat buffalo wings and miss them, I would recommend making them from seitan. They are very authentic. One thing I forgot to mention up top was that after boiling the seitan pieces in their broth for an hour, I did take Sarah Kramer's advice and then place them on a pan and bake them in the oven for 30-40 minutes to make them even chewier. This makes the outside of the pieces get a lot drier and more chewy, not to be gross, but it gives it a texture that is very similar to real wings with the outside being a tougher "skin" and then a softer, more tender, "meatier" inside. Not bad from something made at home from scratch.

Thanks for stopping by! See you on Thursday!