Dragonfly's Vegan Ribs
2 cups vital wheat gluten
2 tablespoons vegan beef broth
1 tablespoon tomato flavored bouillon
1 7/8-2 cups water
2-3 tablespoons raw tahini
2 tablespoons nutritional yeast (I use KAL)
unbleached flour, for dusting
vegan BBQ sauce, to serve
1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F, and grease a cookie sheet. Mix the gluten with the broth and bouillon. Using a fork, make a well in the center and add the water all at once. (Add more if you live in a dry area, less of you don't, hence the different amount.) Mix fast, rapidly encorporating all the gluten. Mix in nutritional yeast.
2. Dust a flat surface, dust your hands and lightly dust the gluten lump. Knead until rubbery and smooth. Use more flour if you need to. Flatten the gluten out with the tips of your fingers. Melt the tahini in the microwave or on the stove. You want it to be smooth, slightly warm and easy to spread. Using just your fingertips, poke the melted tahini into the surface of the gluten.
3. Turn over the gluten and repeat. It won't actually knead into the gluten, but will work in a bit and sit on the surface. Slice the gluten into strips. The thicker the strip, the chewier the rib, the thinner the crispier. Put the strips on prepared sheet and bake for about 10-15 minutes.
4. When the under side is golden, flip them over and bake some more. You want a crispy product. They should puff up at first and flatten as they are browning up. You can add sauce to each side as they are browned up, or add it at the end. We like a small amount of sauce, but you can drench yours, if you like.
These are a homemade version of the non-vegan rib mixes you can buy at the HFS (they require butter). That, and it is a much larger quantity. I have four girls who can eat them all by themselves. I have to triple the batch when my grown sons are here. Those boxes should be out of reach price wise. We eat these every Friday or there is a general household revolt.
Enjoy!
SO HOW'D IT GO?
I made these once, and loved 'em, and am just about to make them again. I had to make some changes, because I didn't have some ingredients on hand....I didn't have any vegan beef broth or tomato bullion, so I used 2 tablespoons of "Rudy's Rub" . They came out fabulous. Also, I use Bull's eye bbq sauce, since it has no high fructose corn syrup.
To make these ribs easier, do not knead them as though you are making bread. They will still be chewy. I bake the ribs, flipping halfway through. Then I drizzle them in the BBQ sauce. I switch the oven from bake to broil and keep a close eye on them. Drizzle more sauce every few minutes, while flipping and carmelizing the crust.
Seems like a lot of people r having problems with these... there's a much easier and pretty tasty recipe on the fatfree vegan website if u haven't tried those already:
http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/2007/05/barbecued-seitan-ribz.html
WOW, thanks! I can't wait to try it and browse that website more :)
Seems like a lot of people r having problems with these... there's a much easier and pretty tasty recipe on the fatfree vegan website if u haven't tried those already:
http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/2007/05/barbecued-seitan-ribz.html
okay...i obviously did something not quite right, here. ;D i have never made anything quite like the blob of rubber that landed on my floured surface, i think it laughed at me when i tried to cut it into thin strips.... and then after baking, they squeaked when i squeezed them lol! :-\ i will not give in, however.. i will try again and this batch will hopefully be my dogs' new edible squeaky toy.
This is now one of our favorite foods, and even DS17, s notoriously picky eater, loves them. I keep some in the fridge at all times.
I use Better Than Bullion's low sodium veggie paste instead of bullion. I also have added up to a cup of nutritional yeast to the gluten flour and a tablespoon or so of natural (unsweetened) peanutbutter to the liquid (I heat the water in order to melt it.)
When the dough is flat on the counter, I heat some natural peanut butter and water in the microwave and use a brush or my hands to apply it to the top of the ribs.
I'm finding that they take at least 15 min per side to cook.
These are so good I even eat them without sauce. I also tried sweet Thai chili sauce on them, which was quite good.
So I have to ask: Can you use seitan which is already made? I can't get wheat gluten where I live, so I wanted to make the seitan ordinary flour, would that work? :)
It's a good thing I made a lot of potatos and corn because that's what we ended up eating. Maybe I did something wrong. But we didnt' like it :-\ I had high hopes because of all the good reveiws but this isn't for me...
Not that this recipe hasn't already been review a THOUSAND WORTHY TIMES but... I must say that I FINALLY got around to getting up to Whole Foods for vital wheat gluten and got to make these tonight!!! How, oh, HOW, Dragonfly did you come up with this??!! Absolutely amazing.
I wasn't too sure if they were going to come out right at first. I had to battle with the gluten ball for a while to find the proper consistency and even when I thought I had it right I still wasn't positive. So, I stretched it out with my finger tips, massaged the tahini in and thre it in the oven to see what happened. I did cook it much longer than recommended because I was thinking "crispy" and that was a good move because these babies came out great! I did drizzle just a little evoo on top when I flipped them over because some were a little on the thick side and I wanted to make sure they had the right texture.
My meat LOVING cousin couldn't believe his taste buds and my kiddos and hubby were blown away by how realistic these were! I doubled the recipe because I'm used to cooking for a large bunch but I have to say that it was NOT needed. The recipe yeilds a ton... now we have fantastic leftovers for lunch tomorrow. I'm thinking sliced thinly on a whole wheat bulkie roll with some fresh cole slaw on top is in order ;)
Wow. Dragonfly, you need your own cooking show on the Food Network or a book or something! Your recipes are out of this world. Haven't been disappointed yet!
Fabulous! I didn't have any bouillon so I added some ketchup and liquid smoke. I also broiled them for a couple of minutes on each side to carmelize the crust. My husband (the meat-eater) took the lot of leftovers to work! Because if you're going to eat ribs, you're going to eat a whole rack of ribs. (I shouldn't have halved the recipe!)
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