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Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Barbecued Seitan Ribz

Sunday was such a beautiful day that I had to get outside, away from the kitchen and the computer, and just enjoy the sunshine and flowers. I spent all of last week closeted in my office trying to copy files and programs to a new computer and set up a new home network. By Sunday I had had enough. I wanted to spend as much of the day outside as I could.

For a few weeks I've been planning on cooking this barbecued seitan, but the timing and weather were never quite right. Though it's started in the kitchen, it's finished up on the grill, giving it the smoky taste that only grilling can impart. I've found that cooking outside is much less stressful if most of the foods are pre-cooked at least a little in the kitchen; long grilling times, different foods finishing at different times, and potential burning all can be avoided with a little strategic pre-cooking in the microwave or oven.

Update: Thanks to Julie Hasson for featuring this recipe on Everyday Dish. Be sure to check out her video!

Barbecued Seitan Ribz

Barbecued Seitan Ribz
(click for printer-friendly version)

Like Veggeroni, this seitan is baked dry rather than boiled. The results are a little spongier than Veggeroni, less dense, but I think the texture is perfect for absorbing the flavor of the barbecue sauce. You'll be amazed at how easy this recipe comes together using your favorite bottled sauce.

1 cup vital wheat gluten
2 teaspoons smoked Spanish paprika
2 tablespoons nutritional yeast
2 teaspoons onion powder
1 teaspoon garlic powder
3/4 cup water
2 tablespoons tahini or other nut butter
1 teaspoon Liquid Smoke
1 tablespoon soy sauce
about 1 cup of your favorite barbecue sauce

Preheat the oven to 350 and lightly spray an 8x8 baking dish with canola oil. Mix the first 5 ingredients together in a large bowl. Mix the water with the nut butter, Liquid Smoke, and soy sauce and add it to the dry ingredients. Stir to mix well and then knead lightly in the bowl for a couple of minutes.

Put the dough into the baking dish and flatten it so that it evenly fills the pan. Take a sharp knife and cut it into 8 strips; then turn the pan and cut those strips in half to form 16 pieces:

Barbecued Seitan Ribz

Put it in the oven and bake for 25 minutes. While it's cooking prepare your grill.

Remove it from the oven and carefully re-cut each strip, going over each cut to make sure that the ribz will pull apart easily later. Generously brush the top with barbecue sauce. Take it to the grill and invert the whole baking dish onto the grill (or use a large spatula to lift the seitan out, placing it sauce-side down on the grill). Brush the top of the seitan with more sauce:

E brushing bbq sauce on Seitan Ribz

Watch it closely to make sure that it doesn't burn. When it's sufficiently brown on one side, turn over and cook the other side, adding more sauce, if necessary. When done, remove to a platter and cut or pull apart the individual ribs to serve.

Barbecued Seitan Ribz

We ate this outside with steamed broccoli and grilled/baked potatoes. The potatoes were pre-cooked in the microwave until almost done and then cooked on the back of the grill while the seitan was cooking. The whole meal was a complete success. The potatoes had that delicious grilled taste without the long cooking time baked potatoes usually require. And the seitan was succulent and tasty. In fact, the three of us probably could have eaten another entire pan of this stuff, so in the future I will double the recipe and hope for leftovers. E. says to tell you that this is "way, way kid-friendly."

Note: The cooking method is based on this recipe, which uses the oven rather than the grill. If you don't have a grill, you might try following the directions in that recipe.

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46 Comments:

Anonymous Jenny said...

OOOOH that looks good, cant wait to try it! Its nice to be able to make my own versions of these fake meats that come in packets and I can control what goes in them. Thanks for what looks like a delicious recipe!!

11:34 AM, May 01, 2007  
Blogger Vegan_Noodle said...

My boyfriend and I were so impressed with the veggeroni, I'm sure we will be trying this one soon (he's pretty much obsessed with homemade seitan....that is, homemade by me)!! I'm guessing the nutrition content would be about the same as the veggeroni as well? Thanks for the recipe!

11:37 AM, May 01, 2007  
Blogger Linda said...

it's simply ludacris! i have YET to make seitan from scratch... it's really unacceptable on my part. it's not even that hard (seemlingly)!

susan, this looks lovely. is that your daughter's adorable hand helping you on the grill?!

12:51 PM, May 01, 2007  
Blogger scottishvegan said...

That's pretty meaty looking! You are so inventive!

2:11 PM, May 01, 2007  
Blogger Good-Dees said...

I know what I'm making this weekend! It looks sooooo yummy!Thank you!!

3:54 PM, May 01, 2007  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I love seitan and this looks scrumptious. Aren't some seitan's from China?. I used to buy the ones that look like duck at oriental grocery stores.

4:28 PM, May 01, 2007  
Blogger bazu said...

in a word, AMAZING! Now I can't wait for grill weather. I love BBQ so much (and everything that goes with it: cole slaw, watermelon, potato salad, etc.) and these ribs would just make it divine.

Oh, don't worry about the salt. I have a ridiculously low salt tolerance. I used to live with a roommate whose food always tasted better than mine. One day I realized, that was because she used liberal amounts of salt! Ever since then I've been trying to remind myself that salt is my friend!

5:08 PM, May 01, 2007  
Blogger Johanna3 said...

great! this looks very good!

7:28 PM, May 01, 2007  
Blogger SallyT said...

Do you cover the seitan when you bake it or just leave the pan uncovered? It looks great and I'm glad it's kid friendly. My son loves ribs I hope I can get him to like the veggie version!

7:36 PM, May 01, 2007  
Blogger SusanV said...

Just leave them uncovered, SallyT. I hope your son likes them. My daughter likes this product called Riblets, and she thought this tasted like them.

8:12 PM, May 01, 2007  
Blogger Veg-a-Nut said...

Susan, these look like the real thing. DH will be thrilled. I had the ribletts once, but just couldn't eat them. Too much like the real thing. DH loves them and they are so expensive that I am excited to make these. I did make a version of your vegironi and liked that.

10:38 PM, May 01, 2007  
Blogger Fatchan said...

This looks great...although I'm not sure where to buy wheat gluten in new zealand. I'm really struggling with being vegan, I grew up only eating meat and fish, hated vegetables, adored dairy. Eggs on toast in the morning, tuna and cheese for lunch and pork for dinner. NO kidding.

But now I've cut out the meat ad the dairy i'm suffering..I love my food but I just suck at cooking. Really really suck. I would just follow a recipe every day but unfortunately we don't have much money so we can't buy specific ingredients for each meal..

I just don't know what to do anymore. I don't agree with the dairy industry and so I don't want to support it...and of course I'm not going to eat meat but...

I miss tasty food...it's really wearing me down. Tonight I have to go hungry because I wasted all our ingredients on this vile lasagne...

Sorry to rant. I just get sad when I see all these vegan blogs with tasty food and I just can't make anything that tastes remotely decent.

2:29 AM, May 02, 2007  
Anonymous monica said...

whoa, these look awesome. i especially love the picture of you basting it on the grill. =)

i've been meaning to try making my own seitan for a while now. i think i'll start here. cheers!

3:09 AM, May 02, 2007  
Blogger Rachael said...

Ok, anything involving liquid smoke will be a hit in this house...my partner is kinda crazy about it. Plus any baked seitan recipe wins big points with me. Those will be made here once its warm enough to grill, or we get a stovetop grill. yum!

10:28 AM, May 02, 2007  
Blogger Dani said...

I think I might make these tonight!

11:28 AM, May 02, 2007  
Blogger bee said...

just gorgeous

11:29 AM, May 02, 2007  
Anonymous aiyana said...

Susan,
I tried your veggeroni last night, and it was so good... I'm definately going to try the ribs this weekend. although I'm not a big barbeque sauce fan, I know my son will love them.
Thanks for all your great recipes!

11:54 AM, May 02, 2007  
Blogger Carla said...

I love seitan and my husband loves to bbq - so when the rain in vancouer finally stops I may make some of this. mmmm. I'll also have to try baking the Seitan O'Greatness sometime too!

12:40 PM, May 02, 2007  
Blogger mira said...

This looks absolutely delicious. It also looks very easy, can't wait to try it. Thanks for sharing!

2:22 PM, May 02, 2007  
Blogger Jes said...

I can't wait to try this at a cook-out sometime soon (it's so hot in the South already!). I've been reading your blog/cooking your recipes for the past couple of months--thank you so much for posting all this deliciousness for us to use!

6:41 PM, May 02, 2007  
Blogger stonielove said...

beautiful! i'm getting hungry...

7:53 PM, May 02, 2007  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thanks for posting this great looking recipe. I love this blog. Question: Do you think this could be made up and baked a couple of days prior to bbqing? We are going camping at the end of the month, and this would be perfect to take with- assuming it would keep that long. What do you think?
AO

9:49 PM, May 02, 2007  
Blogger Kelli said...

This look so good. Living in Memphis which is famous for its barbecue and ribs is hard on a veggie. Your ribz look like the perfect solution!

10:18 PM, May 02, 2007  
Blogger SusanV said...

AO, I think it would probably be fine to make this ahead of time; just be sure to keep it on ice until you bbq it. Also, it can burn really quickly on the grill, so maybe you should place it on some aluminum foil at first, to get it warm before putting it directly on the grill. Then watch it closely!

10:52 AM, May 03, 2007  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Have you never heard that smoked products (even liquid smoke) can cause colorectal cancer? Since you are so health cautious I thought I would urge you to check it out. If one thing is sure, it is that smoke be it in cigarettes or smoked food does increase your chances of getting cancer.

9:01 PM, May 03, 2007  
Blogger Douglas said...

I need to make some seitan really soon. I googled a Vegan Cheesecake recipe and I came up with one of yours. Its cooling on the counter now. I really appreciate you posting all the recipes and I will let you know how the Cheesecake turned out.

I am also in the process of making a Raw Vegan Cheesecake....

9:49 PM, May 03, 2007  
Blogger Dani said...

I made these the other day. :)
See here!

8:53 AM, May 04, 2007  
Anonymous katrina said...

hey, i couldnt figure out how to omment on your current post the one one eggplant pancakes- they look amazing caint wait to make them tomorrow. theribs look soooo good too, caint wait to try them when i go to my parent's house *they have a grill). also i was wondering what program you use to get the nutrition info for you recipes, i just got a mac and caint find any for them . thanks, Katrina

5:55 PM, May 05, 2007  
Blogger SusanV said...

Hi Katrina--Thanks for letting me know about the comments problem. Blogger turned off the comments on that post without warning me. As for the nutrition info, I use a cheap product called MasterCook. Since I have a PC, I don't know if the software is available for Macs, but if you do a search for nutrition software, you're bound to find something. Unfortunately, all the really professional programs are very expensive; I've been looking at them, and they're out of my price range, so I'm sticking with MasterCook.

6:05 PM, May 05, 2007  
Anonymous Jessica "Su Good Eats" said...

Thanks a bunch for this recipe! It was super easy. I may never buy seitan again. (The ones at the Chinese supermarket taste stale.) It reminded me of a McRib because there were no bones, and it didn't have the stringy fibers. But I'm used to this texture for "meat" because I'm Chinese.

11:56 PM, May 05, 2007  
Anonymous katrina said...

oooo ok ill look into that one, thanks alot

7:59 AM, May 06, 2007  
Blogger Lauren said...

Fatchan-- I'm so sorry you're having trouble finding/making vegan food. All I can suggest is to keep at it and hopefully you can find a few recipes you like, and then stick with them when it's not possible to buy new ingredients. Good luck.

Luckily I have access to vital wheat gluten, and I've used it to make seitan a few times. Just tried these, and they're very good. Didn't have Spanish smoked paprika, so I just used regular (though I know the two aren't really similar). For some reason, unbaked, mine was darker than Susan's. Also, I'd recommend making sure you stretch the seitan out so it's as thin as possible in your baking dish because mine came out a little thicker than Susan's and it would have been much better thinner.
Very good eats, thanks!

6:30 PM, May 06, 2007  
Blogger Veg-a-Nut said...

Susan, you hit the nail on the head with these ribs. We just made them and love them. Even DH, my omniman enjoyed them. Although your photo looks nicer I want you to know that I vote for these to be in your cookbook for sure!

5:35 PM, May 15, 2007  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Fatchan - you can buy gluten flour in most supermarkets in New Zealand - Healtheries produce it.
Also the Bin Inn stores stock it.

2:52 AM, June 01, 2007  
Blogger Courtney said...

These look incredible; I can't wait to try them. I'm so glad I found this blog--I am running out of my own recipe ideas! The DH and I are really into making our own seitan, so this will be a fun new project for us. Cheers!

4:45 PM, June 06, 2007  
Anonymous Jennywenny said...

Yay! I finally tried them and they were a winner, my veggie friend really liked them too! I have to admit I was sceptical when I saw the rather squidgy looking grey lump before the grilling but they went down a treat! Thanks again!

5:50 PM, June 18, 2007  
Blogger Heidi said...

What do I make wrong when my seitan is always like a bread when I try to cook it in the oven? I don't have that problem when boiling it.. Do you have an idea?

Your BBQ Ribz and Veggeroni look sooo delicious!

5:39 AM, July 08, 2007  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I just made this last night. It turned out perfect, so delicious! I can't wait to make it for my husband.

9:27 PM, July 20, 2007  
Blogger Diana said...

Tripled the recipe for a potluck and it was a BIG hit! I grilled them in my cast iron grill pan with lovely results.

Thanks for the recipe! I'll be making this again.

11:57 AM, July 22, 2007  
Blogger Jen said...

Heidi- I have the same problem too! When I made these, I got a bread-like consistency. Mine definitely didn't spread out in the pan well like Susan's did. (I also had the same problem when I made the original recipe from VegWeb.) What gives? Bad gluten? Not enough liquid? Anyone else have this problem? I have seen tons of pictures on the PPK where people have made them successfully and they look just as delish as these! :(

1:18 PM, August 11, 2007  
Blogger Juliana said...

Just made these tonight for the holiday and all I can say is WOW!
Even my omni and unadventurous parents thought they were "fabulous".
I simply couldn't get enough. Will make two batches in the future (as you said).
But thanks so much, Susan!

7:30 PM, September 03, 2007  
Anonymous Jackie Vetter said...

I am intimidated by seitan. I've never tried eating or cooking it. So, guess what I'm going to do this Friday for lunch? BBQ Ribz!

I'll post a picture, Susan and, as always, I'm sure your recipe will be easy to follow and delicious!

8:55 AM, September 10, 2007  
Anonymous Sarah said...

I made these this weekend and they were a huge hit. Two batches disappeared quickly with 4 people! So easy too; I'm looking forward to frequent McRibby sandwiches in the near future. Thank you!!

3:06 PM, September 10, 2007  
Blogger EL said...

I made these Sunday evening and they were yummy! I found the vital wheat gluten at my local health food store and still have some left to make this again! I used the BBQ sauce from Trader Joe's also - very good!!

Check out my blog -
www.healtheats.blogspot.com

12:13 PM, September 27, 2007  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

These were very good! This recipe also works well with wing sauce to satisfy my only meat craving - chicken wings.

6:28 PM, January 08, 2008  
Blogger Fiber said...

I just made these for the first time and I am quite smitten with them. This recipe is so good, I wish I had thought of it!! =)

I posted them to my website - http://28cooks.blogspot.com/2008/04/famous-bbq-ribz-ive-been-vegaquarian.html

8:02 AM, April 04, 2008  

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