Seitan 'English' sausages

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have been working on this recipe for a while, now, determined to get it right.   I think most people enjoy sausages, with mash, or chips or as part of a huge fried breakfast.  What I love about this recipe is that is definitely a voyaging one, which means that you can have sausages half way across the ocean, should you so choose.  Not something many people can boast of, unless they have a freezer. In true voyaging style, the ones in the photo above are served with 'Surprise' peas.  Judging by the rest of the stuff on the table, the sea is pretty smooth!  These sausages are also quite fast to make, especially if you already have some sausage seasoning mixed: once you've cooked the sausages in the pressure cooker, they only need a few minutes in the frying pan to brown them to your taste.  Apart from my recipe for chorizo, this will be my first post about seitan, and I think it's a particularly good one to start with.

 

I am besotted with seitan recipes: the texture is so different from most other vegetarian and vegan foods, it’s cheap and making ‛meat’ with it is so quick.  These ‛English’ sausages are great on their own, in a bun/sandwich or as part of an ‛English’ breakfast.  The seasoning is based on that used in Cumberland sausage and the couscous is to replace the rusk that is always used in British bangers, to keep the juices in the sausage so that they don’t dry out.  In this way they're quite different from Bratwurst or other 100% meat sausages. In the days when I occasionally ate meat, I always found these tricky to cook because of the tendency of the ‛100% meat’ sausage to dry out, especially if they were also low fat.  Of course, the result isn’t as juicy as a good quality meat banger, but I do feel that the addition of couscous keeps it a little more moist.  If you don’t want to use couscous, go for the chorizo sausage recipe instead (link above) instead, and substitute the sausage seasoning for that included in the chorizo recipe.

Instead of the herbs, spices and salt in the recipe, shown in italics, I recommend using 3 tsp Annie's English sausage seasoning, for a more complex flavour (see recipe at the bottom of the page.) There's a generous amount of seasoning, because the seitan otherwise has no flavour. It does in fact, have a slight, indescribable taste, which can be a bit intrusive, and this is why the ingredients include vinegar. Most of the recipes that I’ve seen always insist on ‘apple cider’ vinegar (what other sort of cider is there? Surely the definition of cider is fermented apple juice?), but any vinegar, apart from Balsamic, would work just fine. So no doubt would lemon juice, but vinegar is cheaper.

Makes 6 sausages, 2 servings

Ingredients

1/3 cup couscous

1/2 tsp yeast extract or miso

2/3 cup boiling water

 

3/4 tsp crushed black pepper

1/2 tsp thyme

3/4 tsp sage

1/8 - 1/4 tsp cayenne

1/4 tsp freshly ground nutmeg

1 1/2 tsp onion powder

1/2 tsp salt

 

OR 3 tsp Annie's English sausage seasoning 

 

1/4 cup (60 ml) water

1 tbsp soya sauce

1 tsp vinegar

1 heaped tsp tahini

1 tbsp olive oil or deodorised coconut oil, melted

2 tbsp chickpea flour

1/3 cup vital wheat gluten

• Cut baking parchment into 6 sheets, approximately 200/8" x 150/6".
• Put the couscous in a large bowl.
• Mix the yeast extract/miso in 2/3 cup boiling water and then pour it over the couscous. Cover the bowl and leave it for about ten minutes until the water has been absorbed.   
• Now mix the seasoning into the couscous.
• Add the 1/4 cup of water and mix well.
• Then add the soya sauce, followed by the vinegar, tahini and oil. Mix this all very thoroughly, because once you have added the vital wheat gluten it will be difficult to incorporate the other ingredients evenly.
• Now add the chickpea flour and the vital wheat gluten and quickly mix it in to the rest of the ingredients.  Again do this very thoroughly.   I find a butter knife the best tool.
• Mix as well as you can with your knife and then use your hand, incorporating all the flour that will be trying to stick to the edge of the bowl.  Keep mixing until everything until you have a smooth dough and it stops sticking to your hands. You should end up with a fairly soft mix.
• Place the dough on a board.  (Make sure you clean the bowl really thoroughly, because the gluten sticks as soon as it dries out, making it quite difficult to clean.  Soak it for a while if you've left much behind, before cleaniing.)  Roughly shape it into a rectangle about as long as you want your sausages to be.  (The dough is nowhere near as accommodating as bread dough when it comes to shaping).   
• Cut the dough in half and then thirds so that you have six equal lumps of dough. I usually have to pinch a bit of dough from one or two to get them all more or less the same size.
• Shape the sausages to be best of your ability – the wrapping finishes the job.  Don’t worry about gaps and creases.  The cooking sorts out most of that.  It would be fun to try to make one long sausage, wrap it up in baking paper and then form it into a coil to put onto the trivet.  This would produce and authentic Cumberland sausage shape, which would be fun and impressive, but I’m not sure how well it would work.
• Now put each sausage, centred at the edge of a piece of baking paper and roll it up tightly. This helps make it round.  Twist the paper at either end, until it is squashed against the end of the sausage.  Do this with all six sausages.
   
  
  
   
• Put the trivet into your pressure cooker.  Add about half a cup of water – don’t let it cover the trivet.  Place the sausages onto the trivet – it doesn’t matter if they are stacked – and bring up to pressure; cook for 5 minutes.
• Let the pressure come down naturally.

When they’re cooked, take the sausages out of the pressure cooker and unwrap them.    Put them somewhere where they can cool and dry out a little before storing them.  I find they keep best in my wooden bread bin!  Fry them before using them – the added olive oil gives additional flavour and I enjoy cooking them until they are slightly crisp.

 

 

Serve with mashed or smashed potatoes and vegetables, or any way that you enjoy your sausages.  They will stand up happily to barbecuing or cooking on the beach.

Annie’s English Sausage seasoning:

Makes enough for about 60 sausages, or 20 servings

Ingredients

1 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

1 tsp ground mace

2 1/2 tbsp salt

2 tbsp black pepper

2 tbsp rubbed sage

2 tsp onion powder

1 1/4 tsp ground ginger

2 1/4 tsp thyme

3/4 tsp cayenne

1 1/2 tsp ground coriander

• If you don’t have ground nutmeg or mace (which don’t keep well ready-ground) grind up about 1/2 a nutmeg in a mortar or blender. Remove 1 1/2 tsp and add to a bowl.
• Take several blades of mace, grind to a powder, remove 1 tsp and add to the nutmeg.
• Now add all the rest of the ingredients and mix thoroughly. Put into a glass jar and keep as cool and dark as feasible.

Add 3 tsp of sausage seasoning to 1/3 cup vital wheat gluten, ie, per 6 sausages.

Chorizo (seitan)

This makes one sausage, about 170 x 30. I worked out that it costs no more than a dollar for the vital wheat gluten. Even if you add another dollar for the rest of the ingredients, this is a very cheap chorizo. It tastes just like the real thing and the texture is very similar. I use dried flaked garlic instead of fresh and reckon 1/2 tsp = 1 clove of garlic. This is very hit and miss, however, because the flakes are big and the spoon is small! I smash them up a little bit and the finished appearance is just fine.  Granules would do, but the chunks of flaked garlic look a little bit like the fat that you usually find in chorizo, so add to its verisimilitude.

I can’t recommend this recipe too much, if you like chorizo: it’s dirt cheap, it’s quick, it’s easy and it tastes amazing. It’s also great to have as a tapa when you have friends on board – vegetarian or otherwise.

When you mix this, try to use up every bit of the dough in the sausage so that you leave a really clean bowl. Make sure your tools are clean, too. Gluten and glue have the same root and any dough is a nightmare to clean up, because it sticks to your cloths and scrubbers.

 Makes one sausage, approx 150x 30

Dry Mix

 

½ cup vital wheat gluten (60g)

3 tbsp chickpea flour

5 cloves garlic (See Note)

2 tsp smoked paprika

1½ tsp onion powder

½ tsp cracked black pepper

½ tsp salt

¼ – ½ tsp chilli flakes (See Note)

Liquid Mix

60ml water

1 tbsp olive oil

1 tbsp tomato purée

1 tbsp soy sauce

½ tbsp red wine vinegar

• Peel the garlic and blanch in boiling water for 5 minutes. Drain, leave to cool and then dice into small cubes.
  
• In a large bowl mix together all the ingredients from the dry mix.
• In a separate bowl mix together the ingredients from the liquid mix and whisk them together to ensure that they are well combined.
• Add the liquid mix ingredients into the large bowl with the dry ingredients. Begin mixing with a knife or spatula.  You will probably need to finish by hand: it's not necessary to kned the dough, just mix everything thoroughly.
  
• Put the trivet in the base of the pressure cooker and add ½ cup of water.
• Roughly shape the chorizo into a log that will easily fit in the pressure cooker – about 120 x 50 mm. It doesn’t have to be perfect because the cracks and crevices will disappear during cooking.
• Wrap it in foil or baking parchment, twisting the ends tightly. Place the wrapped chorizo into the pressure cooker, bring up to pressure and cook for 15 minutes. Let the pressure come down gradually.

 

While warm the chorizo stays fairly soft, but it goes harder as it cools, and if left overnight, ends up with a texture very similar to the real thing.  It keeps well wthout refrigeration: up to about a week, as long as it isn't in too moist an environment.

 

 

 

Notes

• If you prefer, you can use dried garlic flakes.  These are really too big, but if you smash them up a bit with a pestle and mortar (or in a blender), after cooking, they end up looking like the fat in a 'real' chorizo.  If you are very patient, you can break them into smaller pieces.  Soak the pieces in a little warm water before using them.  You can also use dried garlic granules, but they are much more even in size and don't look quite as nice.  Use 2 1/2 tsp garlic flakes, or 1 1/4 tsp garlic granules.
• I like my chorizo quite hot, so use 1/2 tsp chilli flakes
  

Basic bread

In case you haven't read the Page about Bread, I’d better introduce you to the oddly-called Vital Wheat Gluten (vwg). This works as a bread improver, particularly with wholemeal flour. Apparently the insistence on kneading one’s bread for a long time is to ‛activate’ the gluten, which takes longer in whole flour than in white. If you add 1 tbsp vwg to 1 cup flour, it makes the dough more ‛stretchy’. I have vwg on board for making seitan, which we’ll explore a lot more thoroughly on another page, so have started adding it. It does make a difference, but it is far from necessary. Thus in the following recipes it will be shown as optional.

It’s worth noting, before going any further, that if the ambient temperature is over 25°C (about 80°F), you can use water straight from the tap – or the sea. This helps reduce one possible cause for your bread not rising properly.

Incidentally, flour varies in how much water it will absorb, so you can’t really make any hard and fast rules here. However, I’ve never found that the amount in this recipe is too much. It’s really quite messy and unpleasant to have to add more water to the dough once you’ve started mixing it by hand.

I find the best way of ensuring the water is the correct temperature, when the ambient temperature is below 20°C, is to boil ¾ cup water and mix it with ¾ from the pump

3 cups wholewheat flour 

1 tsp salt 

1 tbsp instant dried yeast 

1½ cups warm water, at no more than 45°C (110°F) 

½ tsp sugar/honey 

3 tbsp vital wheat gluten

• Put half the flour (and the vwg) into a large bowl. Add the salt (sweetener) and dried yeast and mix. Add the water and mix everything together into a smooth batter.

• Gradually add the rest of the flour, half a cup at a time. Before it’s all incorporated, you’ll have to abandon your mixing tool and get down to it with your hands. After a few minutes, you should have pleasantly yielding dough that isn’t particularly sticky. If it is, or you can’t roll it easily into a ball, add a little more flour.

• Once it comes away cleanly from the side of the bowl, gather it all together in a ball, flatten it out and roll it into a sausage. Put this into a well-greased (or oiled) ‘2 lb’ loaf tin. Flatten it down and leave it to rise until it’s about 25 mm (1 inch) above the sides of the tin.

• The dough is susceptible to cool draughts and I reckon that the best way to protect it’s to put your mixing bowl over the dough, if it’s large enough or put it in the oven. (I used to put it in a large, polythene bag: if you have one, it might be worth saving just for this purpose.) When your loaf has risen above the tin and is nicely domed, light the oven and cook it at a Moderate heat for about 40 minutes.

• Shake the loaf out of the tin and rap the base with your knuckles. It should (as they say in all the best cookery books) sound hollow. Equally to the point, it should be an appetisingly brown colour and smell delicious.

• Put it on a wire rack and try to leave it for at least 20 minutes before slicing it: warm bread doesn’t cut very easily. Usually, however, at least the crust gets cut off not long after it comes out of the oven!

Additional tips: if the bread doesn’t rise it’s usually for one of two reasons. Either the yeast has gone stale or the water was too hot. Made with cold water, bread will eventually rise, but if the water is too hot you will kill the yeast, so err on the side of coolth.

In cold places, put your loaf in a sunny spot or cuddle it up with a hot water bottle. Alternatively, put it in the oven and use a small oil lamp or pilot light to keep it warm.

Use 1½ cups seawater instead of fresh water and salt. This will not make the loaf too salty.

If you have plenty of time, you can get an even better-textured loaf by mixing in two-thirds of the flour and then leaving the batter to rise for about 20 minutes. This is also a good way of ensuring that your yeast is OK, if you have any doubts. (If the batter doesn’t start to rise, add new yeast.)

‛2 lb’ loaf tins vary in size. If your loaf seems a little undersized, use 4 cups flour (4 tbsp vwg) and 2 cups of water. The other ingredients can stay the same.

Chapati/Roti

 

Chapati and roti are much the same thing, and have a variety of spellings and names, but they consist of a disc of soft, unleavened, wheaten bread. In the areas of India where rice doesn’t grow and wheat flourishes, chapati are the traditional accompaniment to curries. I once read a delightful story about an elephant who was fed several of these every day. They were the size of cart wheels and when his keeper brought them to him, at the start of the day’s work, the elephant would weigh each one in his trunk before eating it. Any considered under weight would be thrown to one side and the elephant would refuse to work until they were replaced with some of the correct size.

This recipe makes about half a dozen rather smaller ones: 180mm/7in chapati, that will roll out to fit in your frying pan. I have found that the addition of the vital wheat gluten seems to make it easier to keep the soft. Overcooked and they become brittle.

Chapati can also be used as ‘wraps’ round any sort of sandwich filling and although on the small side, will provide a suitable case for roti, that delectable Trinidadian dish. Put hot curry in the centre of the chapatti and fold it into a parcel so that it can be eaten out of the hand. I will warn you that they tend to be messy and you might prefer to use a plate!  However, you probably need an extra large frying pan to make these, something rarely available on a boat.

½ cup flour 

2 tsp vital wheat gluten 

good pinch salt 

1 tsp (olive) oil 

¼ warm cup water

 

• Combine the flours and salt in a bowl. Add 1 teaspoon oil, and the water. Grease your hands, and knead to make fairly smooth and not too sticky dough. Add more water (1 teaspoon at a time) during the process if the dough seems dry or starts to come together as stiff dough. Brush the dough lightly with oil, cover, and let it rest for 15 minutes. 
• Grease your hands, knead the dough for a few seconds, and then divide into 6 equal parts. Roll them into smooth balls. Keep the balls covered while you roll out and cook each flatbread. 
• Take one ball, flatten it, and dip into your flour container, coating it fully. (The more fastidious can set aside some flour for this purpose. Using a rolling pin, roll it out into a thin, 180mm/7in flatbread. Dust the dough with flour as you roll, to help prevent it from sticking. 
• Heat a frying pan over a medium-high heat. When it’s hot, place the flatbread on the pan. Cook for about 20 seconds, until a few small bubbles start to appear. Flip it over and cook for another 20 or 30 seconds, until more bubbles appear and some become larger. Now, you can puff the flatbread on the frying pan or on the flame. 
• To puff the chapati on the pan: turn it and using a flat spatula, lightly press the flatbread on and around the puffed spots so the air can move around and the flatbread puffs up evenly, which takes about 10 to 20 seconds. Remove the bread from the skillet and set aside. 
• To puff the flatbread directly on the flame (preferable with an alcohol stove): use tongs to place the flatbread on the open flame (medium high or high heat). Move it every 1 to 2 seconds so it puffs up like a balloon. Turn it once. Traditionally you would brush the chapati with some melted coconut oil or melted vegan butter (if you have such a thing!) 

Note

I find it best to stack the chapati on a plate and cover them with another, to keep them moist; underway, wrap them in a tea towel.