I love making seitan.
Especially my easy vegan chicken seitan recipe because well, its quick and like I said, easy!
The chicken mixes up quickly, uses ingredients that are pretty easy to find, is healthy, affordable, and delicious.
Besides the obvious reasons for eating seitan and not meat, I will say I love the versatilely of using a seitan dough vs an actual piece of chicken! You can shape seitan into a ball!! Neat!
Someone recently asked me if I could veganize “butter balls” with seitan, which I was not familiar with. After they explained that it was basically herb butter stuffed inside of ground chicken, a light bulb when off in my head! I could form my seitan chicken dough into a ball and stuff it with more than just butter!!
No offense to all y’all that love butter, but I decided if I was going to stuff balls of chicken seitan that I wanted more than just butter inside I mean I love butter, I do, but I suspected the dough would just absorb the butter as it baked and not give nearly the dramatic flare a non vegan butter ball displays when cut into.
So since I was craving a broccoli chicken cheese casserole, I decided to try that combo for this seitan experiment.
I use my All Purpose Vegan Cheese Sauce in so many of my recipes because it lends itself to so many different applications. I wanted a cheese filling for this recipe but needed the filing to be a nice solid ball to form the chicken seitan around. So, that is why I chose the sauce vs just a shredded cheese. You can cook it up extra thick, mix in a little of this and that, and it will firm up in the freezer so you can wrap the dough around it!
I also opted to air fry these vegan broccoli and cheese chicken bites. You can easily pan fry them in oil as well but I have a huge crush on my air fryer and use it more often than not these days when I am frying. Not that I am against oil frying because I am not!! I guarantee they will be extra tasty pan fried in oil, so I gave two cooking options for this recipe. Choose whichever you like or is more convenient for you!
As for dipping these broccoli cheese chicken bites? Well I love marinara on most any fried food. And since these are stuffed with a mozzarella style cheese marinara makes sense. But I also will dip just about anything in vegan ranch so I can get behind that option too! Again, use whatever dip you like.
Lastly, if 24 vegan broccoli cheese chicken bites seems like too many, these will freeze up super nicely. You can freeze them before you coat them, or you can coat them and freeze them like that. Either way seitan can be frozen for up to 6 months so fry up as many as you like now and save the rest for later!
I have a pretty good feeling once you make these, you will find yourself craving them later, so having some in the freezer is kind of perfect!
INGREDIENTS:
1 cup finely chopped broccoli
1 small finely diced onion
1/2 batch All Purpose Vegan Cheese Sauce
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 cup vegan cheddar cheese shreds
1/2 cup vegan plain unsweetened yogurt or sour cream
1/2 cup unsweetened plant milk
1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup panko bread crumbs (make sure the brand is vegan, many are not)
1/2 cup tapioca or corn starch
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
2 teaspoons all purpose seasoning (any you like)
oil for frying (or you can air fry)
marinara sauce or vegan ranch for dipping
FOR THE CHICKEN:
1 block super firm tofu (16 oz) the kind that is vacuum sealed in not much water
1 cup vital wheat gluten
2 -3 teaspoons No Chicken Better Than Bouillon, or any vegan chicken flavored bouillon powder or seasoning
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1-2 teaspoons onion powder
1/2 teaspoon sage
1/2 teaspoon rosemary
2 teaspoons liquid smoke
2 tablespoons tapioca or corn starch
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
2 tablespoon neural flavored oil
1/2 to 3/4 cups water
1 teaspoons salt
INSTRUCTIONS:
Toss the broccoli into your food processor or blender and pulse until its chopped up pretty small.
Finely dice the onion. Add a teaspoon of vegan butter or oil to a small skillet and add the onion over medium heat. Let the onion cook until it becomes translucent. Set aside and let cool.
Prepare the cheese sauce according to the instructions but the sauce needs to be pretty thick. Let the cheese sauce cook until it is thick, stretchy, and pulling away from the sides of the pot. Stir in the shredded cheddar, broccoli, onion, minced garlic and dried oregano. Let cook for a few minutes.
Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Using a small 1 inch cookie scoop, or tablespoon, scoop out 24 balls of cheese mixture onto the parchment paper. You should use up all of the cheese mixture. Pop the pan in the freezer while you prepare the seitan chicken.
FOR THE CHICKEN
Break up the tofu and place it into a food processor with the regular metal blade. Run the processor for around a minute until the tofu is broken down.
Add all of the remaining ingredients and let the food processor run for a couple of minutes. You want the mixture to form a dough. Letting the processor run will help knead the dough. We want this seitan to be firm so we need it to knead for a bit. If you dough seems a bit too dry, you can add another few tablespoons of water, just don’t add too much more! I start at 1/2 cup and work from there.
Once you have a smooth but firm dough, remove it from the food processor and place on a clean counter. Knead the dough with your hands for about a minute. You will need 24 equal pieces for this recipe. I like to cut the dough in half and divide each half into 12 equal pieces.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit
Remove the broccoli cheese from the freezer. Flatten each piece of seitan into a round disk. Place a broccoli cheese ball in the middle of the dough. Pinch up and seal the dough around the broccoli cheese ball making sure the dough is completely sealed up. If not the cheese will ooze out while baking. Try and shape into a nice ball shape, smoothing out the dough. Place seitan balls on a parchment lined cookie sheet a few inches apart. I use 2 cookie sheets. Give the tops a spray or brush of oil and sprinkle with some oregano or all purpose seasoning if you like. Cover the pan with foil, wrapping it around the edges of the pan forming a nice seal.
Bake the vegan broccoli cheese chicken bites for 30 minutes covered the whole time.
Remove from the oven, uncover, and allow to cool at room temp for about 20 minutes. Transfer to the fridge for 3-4 hours to allow the seitan to rest and the texture to set up. Seitan requires some rest time in order of the texture to fully form. Trust me here.
COATING AND FRYING THE CHICKEN BITES
In a medium bowl whisk the plant milk and yogurt or sour cream.
In a separate medium bowl whisk the flour, starch, bread crumbs, salt, pepper, and seasoning blend.
First dip the vegan chicken bites in the wet mixture then into the dry mixture, making sure they are nicely and evenly coated. If you have leftover mix you can go back re-coat any of the bites that might not have been coated well enough the first go round.
To Air Fry: place the bites on your air fryer tray with some space between them, you will have to fry in batches as you will not be able to fit all of them in at once. I can fit about 8 in my fryer at a time. Give the fryer tray a spray with oil and then spray the chicken bites. Fry at 400 for 5 minutes then give the bites a turn with some tongs. Fry another 5 minutes or until the chicken bites have browned and are good and crispy.
To Pan Fry: Fill a deep skillet with a few inches of neutral flavored oil. Heat the oil to around 350 degrees. Once the oil is good and hot, add some of the chicken bites to the pan, just making sure you don’t over crowd the pan. Let the bites fry on each side a few minutes, turning them to evenly brown all over. Remove from oil once nice a crispy and brown. Place finished bites on a cooling rack on top of a paper towel lined baking sheet.
Serve with marinara sauce of vegan ranch for dipping.
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