Since it was my last day of holidays yesterday (sadface) I decided to make a fancy lunch. Because I can.
I found 'Seitan and Brocollini with Clementine Teriyaki sauce' on Vegan Yum Yum, thought it sounded fantastic and made it. I just used oranges instead of mandarins for the sauce because mandarins aren't in season at the moment :) The sauce is delicious and made heaps so I'm going to use it to make this again for Nadine for tea! It's a perfect balance of sweet and salty, and bonus points for making it at home - no more expensive bottled sauce. I only needed 2 dessertspoons of sauce to coat all my veg and soybean chicken bits, and it was a rather large meal. I used regular brocolli and some purple cabbage as my veges, and served it with brown rice.
I thought about making some seitan for it, but came to the conclusion that it was too much effort so I dug this soybean chicken out of the pantry. When I bought it I was intrigued and asked the guy at the counter what it was like. He said it was pretty good - and that it was apparently good enough for people to get angry at him when it was out of stock! Now, it is actually quite good, but since I prefer my protein to come mainly from unprocessed foods I don't think I'd abuse the store guy if it wasn't on the shelf!
It only costs $3.95 (where I got it) for a 200g packet, which has four servings in it. One serving is quite a lot, so you could probabaly stretch it to six or eight servings if you up the veges in your stir fry or whatever you're making.
What you do, is you boil the little dried pieces of whatever it is in some water until they are soft, then you drain and rinse with cold water. Proceed to use in any recipe you'd use actual chicken!
It comes out of the water looking disturbingly like cooked chicken pieces. Doesn't taste like it though, it's all about the sauce/flavorings with these things! The texture is pretty damn spot on ( I don't know how they do it!), and I wouldn't hesitate to reccomend this product to people wanting to give up chicken or those transitioning from eating meat to being vegetarian/vegan.
(I am not being paid to flog this product by the way.)
I wonder if those are similar to 'soy curls', which were fairly popular amongst vegan north american bloggers a year (or a few?) ago, but which seem to be less trendy these days.
ReplyDeleteI have to laugh at this post, because although you *say* you made the recipe from Vegan Yum Yum, you kind of changed every single aspect of it. So it's pretty much your recipe! That's how Andy and I cook, too. It's a good way of life!
@Theresa: 'soy curls' just brings to mind little piglet's tails. Ha. but I have seen them specified in recipes, maybe they are like these soy thingamees.
ReplyDeleteI hardly ever actually follow a recipe! It mostly depends on what's cheap or in my cupboard/fridge :) Also makes it a lot less stressful 'omgiforgotthesuchandsuch!'
Hi, i was just wondering where you got the soy chicken from?
ReplyDelete@Anonymous: sure; I bought mine at The Green Edge, they have an online store - http://www.greenedgeonline.com.au/acatalog/catalogbody.html or a shop in Enoggera, QLD. I've also seen the brand at Mrs Flannery's Organic supermarkets - another QLD company. Good luck :)
ReplyDeleteI'm in Qld too. Thanks for this! I also discoved www.lamyong.com.au/shop
ReplyDeleteis about to do deliveries in 2weeks so I'll be able to buy stuff online =)