Seitan Class

Matthew Woolen is a master pastry chef and has worked in a variety of Seattle restaurants, including gastropub Old Sage, Zhu Dang, and a gluten-free restaurant called Capitol Cider.

Matthew Woolen

One of the best parts about seitan is it’s a blank canvas. You can use it as a vehicle for all kinds of flavors, and you can manipulate it in its raw state to mimic a range of different textures. In this recipe, we transform seitan dough into a dish that looks and tastes like a rack of barbecue ribs.Since a rack of ribs is relatively thin but long and wide, it’s pretty easy to get the seitan to take on a similar shape. Adding beet juice to the seitan dough gives it a reddish tinge that’s reminiscent of meat. The thinness of the seitan rack of ribs also makes seasoning pretty straightforward. By searing it on both of its large, flat sides, then braising the whole “rack” in an umami-rich mixture of black garlic, red miso paste, molasses, and vegetable stock, it takes on an almost meaty depth of flavor and gets coated in a sticky, savory-sweet sauce, just like a braised rack of ribs.To finish the seitan, I sprinkle some of our <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/rib-rub">Kansas City Barbecue Rub</a> all over it then roast it, which produces a bark-like crust. Cut the rack into rib-shaped pieces and serve them up with a batch of cornbread and biscuits and even the most die-hard meat eater will be impressed. Sure, they won’t fool anyone into thinking they’re eating meat, but no one can say they aren’t delicious.

Seitan Barbecue Ribs