Vegan Pulled BBQ Seitan

Vegan BBQ Pulled Seitan

About a year ago, a group of kosher food bloggers came together as a group. We call ourselves the Kosher Connection. As a group, we have grown and learned a great deal from each other as food bloggers. We’ve supported each other and have been sounding boards for each other throughout the year. I am so glad we all got together. Since the group started, we have come together monthly for various themed blog challenges. For our anniversary challenge, we are doing a blog swap. Each kosher blogger has been assigned another kosher blogger to seek inspiration from. We are challenged with choosing a recipe from that blogger’s blog and making it our own.

I was super excited for this blog swap. I had no idea what to expect.

BBQ Pulled Beef Busy in BrooklynI was pleasantly surprised when I was tasked with coming up with a recipe from Chanie Apfelbaum’s blog – Busy in Brooklyn.  I mulled it over for a while and studied her blog intently. What would I make? I have already cooked a few of her recipes and all have been wonderful. Her recent recipe for chili and cornbread was amazing! What would I make this time? At first I thought I bought veganizing her Sesame Noodle dish. But I realized that was cop-out for me. I make sesame noodles often and swapping out chicken for tofu wasn’t much of a challenge.

I decided to turn one of her meat dishes in to a vegan dinner. From around the kosher blog world, I knew that her BBQ Brisket was a huge hit. What if I took the flavors of that dish and made it vegan? I knew that I could pull something similar off with seitan. I love that her ingredients are simple and something I would already have on hand.

I played around with the quantities a bit to make it work with the seitan. I cooked up about a pound of seitan in advance – about a day before. You can easily use prepared seitan with this dish as a shortcut. I am so happy I chose to make this dish! The flavor was fantastic and was a huge hit with the family. Even the picky kid ate it, gobbling it up quickly.

To celebrate the 1-year anniversary of the Kosher Connection, we are giving away two prizes from Emile Henry, a Bread Cloche valued at $130 and a 4.2 qt Dutch Oven valued at $170! Use the Rafflecopter below to win- you can enter up to 23 ways! Two winners will be chosen at random.

The contest winners will be contacted via email. They will have 48 hours to respond before other winners are chosen. This contest is open to United States residents over the age of 18

Be sure to check out the rest of this month’s Kosher Connection’s bloggers below!


Vegan Pulled Seitan
 
This recipe is inspired by Busy in Brooklyn
Author:
Ingredients
  • 1 tbsp. olive oil
  • 1 onion, chopped
  • 6 cloves garlic, chopped
  • 1 lb. Seitan (homemade or store-bought)
  • 6 oz. sliced baby bella mushrooms
  • ½ cup ketchup
  • ½ cup apple cider vinegar
  • ⅓ cup packed brown sugar
  • 1 tbsp smoked paprika
  • 1 tbsp Hungarian paprika
  • ¾ cups vegetable stock
  • 2 tsp. chili powder
  • 2 tsp. garlic powder
  • 2 tsp. salt
  • ½ tbsp. vegan worcestershire sauce
  • 3 tsp. ground pepper
Instructions
  1. Heat up the olive oil in a large saute pan.
  2. Add in the onions and garlic and cook a few minutes, until it softens.
  3. Add a teaspoon of the salt and pepper to that mix.
  4. Chop of the seitan in to thin pieces and add to the pan. Let the seitan brown a bit.
  5. Add in the mushrooms and cook a few minutes.
  6. In a small bowl, mix together the ketchup, the apple cider vinegar, the vegetable stock, worcestershire sauce and the rest of the spices. Pour the mixture over the seitan mixture. Stir everything together.
  7. Let some of the liquid cook off a bit. This will only take about 5-8 minutes on medium-high heat.
  8. Taste and adjust seasoning as necessary.
  9. Serve the pulled seitan on buns or in a wrap along with some avocado. A cole slaw would be a great way to give it some needed crunch.
  10. Enjoy!

Vegan BBQ Pulled Seitan

 

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Mom’s Passover Brisket

Each year without fail, the day before Passover, I make a call to my mom. Not to wish her a happy Passover. I call for cooking advice and to ask how she managed to accomplish Passover for all of these years. For the past few years, I have been making Passover at home and each year I am more and more appreciative and amazed by the amount of work she puts in to each of the holidays.

This year, like years past, I put in that call. The call where I ask my mom for her Passover brisket recipe. It’s been emailed multiple times, but instead of searching for the email, I get lazy and want to hear her voice, so I call her. I decided to finally put it down somewhere where I know it can be found quickly and easily. This brisket is always amazing. When cooked at a low heat for a long time, the brisket comes out amazingly moist and soft. So full of flavor. This brisket has pulled me from my mostly vegetarian diet several times over the past years. My mom’s brisket is what I craved when I was pregnant with my daughter.

Passover Brisket (recipe from my dear mom, Lili G.)
Ingredients:

1 – 6 lb (or so) brisket
2 onions, sliced
1 bunch celery, sliced
6 carrots, peeled and chopped
10 cloves of garlic, smashed

Marinade:
3 cloves garlic, crushed
1 cup ketchup or other kind of tomato based sauce
1/2 cup brown sugar or honey (you could also use some wine or marmalade in place of the sugar or honey)
½ cup chopped fresh parsley
2 sprigs of chopped rosemary and thyme
1 bay leaf
1/4-1/2 cup olive oil

Note: This brisket yields a lot of a gravy. So good!

Directions:

Combine marinade ingredients

marinade

Place brisket over chopped vegetables.

raw brisket

Sprinkle with salt and pepper

Mix marinade in a small mixing bowl.

Pour marinade over brisket and cover with foil. Allow to marinade for at least 4 hours.

marinade on brisket

If you refrigerate, remove and let it come to room temperature.

Set oven to 275.

Bake overnight – around 6 to 8 hours.

Refrigerate. When cold, remove fat and slice brisket thinly while still cold.

sliced brisket

Place brisket slices back in sauce and warm in oven at a low heat.

Enjoy!

Glazed Corned Beef with Potatoes

Another shabbat dish with no pictures for proof.

We did eat this and it was good.

And if a vegan eats this hunk of meat, you know it’s really good.

There’s a custom to eat smoked meats on Purim. I have no idea why or where this custom came from, but I can’t complain. I liked smoked meat and it results in discounts on corned beef in our local kosher market. Coincidentally, it times out well for the custom of corned beef on St. Patricks day. This year it played out really well, with St. Patricks Day falling a day away from Purim. Of course my purchase had nothing to do with either holiday, it just worked out that way. I saw corned beef. I drooled a bit. I saw it was on sale, and in the basket it went.

I am not a boiled meat kind of gal. I like some oomph thrown into everything I eat. Glazed corned beef it is. It just works.
Bold
Glazed Corned Beef
Ingredients:

1 – 3 lb corned beef (or more, it’s what they had that fit in my budget)
1 large onion, cut up
2 potatoes, chunked
pickling spice – 2 tbsp

Mustard Glaze:
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup dijon mustard
1/4 cup vinegar
1/4 ketchup

In a large pot of water, boil the corned beef with the potatoes, onions, and a cheesecloth pouch filled with pickling spice.

Cook the corned beef in the water for a bit over an hour.

Preaheat oven to 350

In a small mixing bowl, whisk up the glaze ingredients.

Transfer the cooked corned beef to a roasting pan. Lay the potatoes and onions around it. Pour the glaze over the roast. Cover the pan with foil and cook in oven for a half hour. Uncover and cook for another 20-25 minutes. Slice meat against the grain. Serve with cabbage or egg noodles or whatever you are in the mood for. Enjoy!

Beer Braised Brisket

I had some extra beer. I had bought a couple loosies to experiment with during the beer bread episode. I am not really a beer drinker, even in partylicious social settings. I decided to experiment a little. Wouldn’t want the good Heineken to go to waste.
I opted for a beer braised brisket. The guy at the liquor store claimed that ANYTHING can be cooked better with beer.
Hindy’s Beer Braised Brisket

Ingredients:

1 Brisket – should have some good marbling on it
Salt
Pepper
Thyme
Onion, chopped
Garlic, chopped
2 red potatoes, cubed
3 stalks celery, sliced
3-4 carrots, sliced
Bay Leaves
1 Bottle of Beer
Olive Oil
Preheat the oven to 350.
Rub salt and pepper into the meat. In a Dutch oven, brown your meat on all sides. Takes around 15 minutes.
Put your meat aside. Toss in the onions, garlic, and some of the thyme. Scrape up the meaty bits. Saute for 10 minutes. Remove half of the onions.
Lay the brisket on top of the onions. Cover with the rest of the onion mixture. Surround the meat with chopped veggies. Throw in the rest of the thyme and the bay leaves. Add some more salt and pepper.
Pour over the beer.

Cover and transfer the meat to the oven. Cook for a few hours until done.
Let the meat cool before slicing.

The verdict is that the meat was very good, but the beer taste was not overpowering in the least bit. It’s a good brisket over all. The meat was very tender. Not sure if that was because of the beer or the brisket cut though.
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