Beefless. Hot. Dipped. End of introduction.

As always, if you dig this recipe, tag me at @draggedthroughthegarden on instagram and we can talk about ordering food in shorthand.

The Vegan Chicago Italian Beef……….Beefless.

CHICAGO ITALIAN BEEFLESS SANDWICH

prep time: 20 minutes
cook time: quite a few minutes

Today’s vocabulary words are “Turano” and “Marconi!”

This recipe will require you to make your own seitan from scratch. If you’re too lazy for that, you can use store bought seitan or soy curls. I’m proud of you either way honestly. I’m going to list the main recipe first and the store bought alternatives at the bottom.

To start, you have to make your own fucking seitan!

What you’ll need:

vital wheat gluten
nutritional yeast
red pepper flakes
salt
pepper
cumin
garlic powder
onion powder
paprika
dried oregano
dried basil
dried thyme
mustard seed
vegetable broth
coconut aminos (or soy sauce)
liquid smoke
molasses (optional)
vegan worchestershire
water!
olive oil

For the seitan, you want to make it taste as beefy as possible, hence the plethora of seasonings above. If all goes according to plan, you should be left with something like the picture below.

So you’re going to make two separate bowls of mixture. One will be dry, one will be not dry. In your dry bowl, you will add 2 cups of vital wheat gluten, half a cup of nutritional yeast and a teaspoon of each of the aforementioned seasonings. You can go heavy on the garlic & onion powder if you’d like. I know I did.

Now you have this bowl of insignificant looking powder.

Next order of business, you gotta make your wet mixture. That will get poured directly into your dry mixture and then kneaded out.

Take like three cups of water and pour them into a bowl. Add a bunch of worchestershire and coconut aminos. Add liquid smoke if you have it. Add molasses if you have that too. Those will add a smoky depth to your seitan.

Now you can toss the wet mixture into your dry mixture. It’s going to solidify very quickly so be ready for that. Mix it up until you have one giant lump of dough. Once it is in a state of dough, take it out of the bowl and put it on your counter. Knead it out and play with it for like five minutes. The dough is your friend. After you knead it up a bunch, let it rest for a few minutes and maybe clean up those bowls or something.

Now preheat your oven to 325°. In a baking pan, lay out some aluminum foil. Then lay out some parchment paper right on top of the aluminum foil. Throw your doughy seitan mixture in there and wrap it with the parchment and then the foil. Let it bake in the oven for an hour and fifteen minutes.

It’ll look like this when its wrapped in the baking pan.

While your seitan is in the oven, you can start your stock. This is going to cook for a few hours and then once your seitan is cooked out, you can add it right into your stock. It’s easy I promise!

What you’ll need:

water
beefless boullion
vegetable broth
garlic
onion
fresh thyme
bay leaf
salt
pepper
dried basil
dried oregano

Bring three cups of water to a boil and add salt. Once your water is bubbling. add a few cubes of boullion to the water. Mince up some garlic and add that in there too. Then add some whole bulbs of garlic too. Cut up an entire red onion into fourths and throw all four of them thangs in there.

Bring it up to a boil and then add your salt, pepper, basil, oregano, and whatever is left of your vegetable broth. Add like five or six sprigs of thyme into your pot. Toss three bay leaves in there because those help I guess. Now that all of that is boiling, cover the pot and bring it to a simmer. It’s going to stay like that for a while. About two hours. We’ll call it two hours.

Here’s a terribly wonky picture of all of those items in the stock!

Next, you’re gonna check on your seitan so pull it out of the oven. Unwrap it from the foil and parchment and throw a bunch of the seasonings on it that you used earlier. Add a little olive oil and rub the seasonings on to the best of your ability

Toss it back in the oven for another 10 minutes or so, uncovered.

Once you unwrap it, it’ll look like this.

Once you season it and pop it in the oven and take it back out, it’ll look like this!

Let your seitan cool off on a cutting board for a little while before you cut into it. You’re going to cut the whole thing down into slices as thinly as humanly possible with a knife. So yeah, once your seitan is cool, slice it down into thin slices.

It’s not easy to slice thinly, but hopefully your situation looks something like this.

Now that your seitan is sliced and cooled off, add it directly into your stock. It’s going to sit in there for about two hours. At least.

Look, here’s a picture of the seitan about to go into the stock!

Next, after your seitan has been cooking in the stock for two hours….or more, you can start to get the rest of your sammy ready. Preheat your oven to 350°.

After a few hours, your seitan will look like this.

What you’ll need:

french rolls (preferably turano)
hot giardiniera (preferably marconi, but homemade would be cool)
green pepper (optional)

So now your seitan has been cooking in the stock for a while, get your French rolls and toss a few of them right onto the racks of your oven. This will ensure they are crispy on the outside and soft inside. When they are crispy, pop them out and put em on a plate.

Take some of your seitan out of the stock with some tongs and throw them right into the bread. Then add your hot giardiniera if you want. Add cooked green pepper if you want, don’t forget to cook them. Don’t eat the bay leaves or thyme stems! Pull them out!

Whatever you do from here on out is up to you. The stock you cooked your seitan in makes a delectable juice so if you wanna dip your sandwich in there, do that — it’s awesome.

Now, if you wanted to use seitan or soy curls…….just prepare them according to the package and season the same way, and toss into the stock. You weren’t expecting a more in-depth explanation were you?