Grilled Seitan & Portabella with Chimichurri


I’ve always wanted to make my own seitan, but figured it would be too time consuming and overwhelming. During our April weekend of classes for “Foods in a Flash” at the Natural Kitchen Cooking School, we tried our hands at making homemade seitan. At school, it came out fantastic…with the help of my classmates and the assistants, of course! At home, it seemed easy enough to make, but mine came out softer than I would have liked it. I’ve skimmed online and found this is a common issue for some and recommendations have ranged anywhere from kneading the flour more to using other methods besides boiling (i.e crock pot or poaching). I also used shoyu (as that was one of the options for ingredients) and found it a bit salty for my tastes. I will need to refine my methods in the future, but it was fun to try it for the first time.

I used a combination of chunks of the homemade seitan, portabella mushroom, grape tomatoes (although cherry tomatoes are better for grilling if you can get them), green and orange peppers to make kabobs. Even though Mr. Tuxedo Cat and I aren’t huge fans of mushrooms, we found the portabella palatable in this meal.

Getting ready to grill the kabobs
Getting ready to grill the kabobs

Another tasty and classy garnish we learned how to make in class was grilled romaine. All I can say is wow! Using a little sunflower oil and a dash of cajun seasonings, the romaine lettuce wedges were thrown on the grill with the kabobs in preparation for the elegant plating. They were easy to eat with a knife and fork at the end.

NKCS Homework 2
Prepping the romaine wedges for grilling

Using a recipe from Horizons: The Cookbook by Rich Landau and Kate Jacoby (now owners of Vedge, one of the top restaurants in Philadelphia, if not the country), we made chimichurri sauce to go over our delicious seitan. My sauce came out thinner than I would have liked, but overall it gave a flavor punch with ingredients like cilantro, mint, parsley, and lime juice. We had a lot of sauce leftover, so I used it to marinate seitan later in the week for fajitas. It would also be amazing as a dressing on a salad.

NKCS Homework 3
Grilled seitan & portabella kabobs served over grilled romaine
NKCS Homework 4
Grilled seitan & portabella kabobs with chimichurri

This was a wonderful meal to get ready for summer and the grilling months. We enjoyed it and thought the marinade for the seitan and chimichurri were great. I imagine the dish would be even better if I can get the seitan consistency a little firmer next time.

Overall we’d rate the dish as a strong 3 1/2 out of 5 carrots on the veganlicious scale! 3.5carrots