Vegan Seitan Tenders Recipe

This homemade vegan seitan chicken recipe is easy to make, just 8 ingredients, can be made ahead of time, and once prepared can be used any way that you might have cooked chicken- marinate, bread, fry, crust, bake, grill, BBQ, the options are endless!!!

It took many, many, many rounds of recipe testing to get these vegan seitan tenders just right, but I finally nailed it. It was important to me that this vegan chicken recipe was more tender in texture than my vegan steaks (which have a chewier texture similar to traditional steak). The tenders needed to be lighter in colour, tasty but still basic enough that you could season them any way you like, easy to make, and of course incredibly delicious.

I tried baking the seitan and boiling it, but in the end, I still preferred my method of steaming the seitan which allows for the best juicy texture without being weirdly squishy (which can happen with boiling). I tried adding chickpeas to the seitan but that made it too mealy and I discover instead, that the key was adding soft tofu which makes the cutlets delicate enough to cut with the side of your fork, but still strong and meaty enough to toss on a grill. I played around with ratios and seasonings until I got it juuuussst so.

The final result: vegan seitan tenders that are, you guessed it, tender. They are juicy and succulent. The tenders are easy to make and can be prepared ahead of time and stored in the fridge for several days, or in the freezer so you can have them on hand whenever you like. Then, the best part is that when you are ready to serve, you can fry them, grill them, marinate them, bake them, or treat them any way you would have treated a chicken dish.

Serve a vegan seitan tender on a bun, bread or crust them, slice them for salad, pasta, or stir fry, cut them into nuggets and fry or bake, add them to burritos, tacos, sandwiches- the options are endlessly delicious!

Just 8 ingredients, 40 minutes to make plus an hour of cooling. 1 recipe makes 6 tenders and each one contains 156 calories, 8g carbohydrates, 26g protein, and 2g fat. Boom!

Ingredients

For the vegan seitan tenders:

• 1 1/2 cups vital wheat gluten, plus more for dusting
• 300 g soft or silken tofu (1 1/4 cups)
• 2 tablespoons water
• 2 tablespoons nutritional yeast
• 1 tablespoon onion powder
• 2 teaspoons vegetable broth powder, vegetable instant stock mix powder, or 1 vegetable bouillon cube
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

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