Vegan Cook-a-Long

Irish Seitan Stew

My first post on the Vegan Cook-a-Long! How exciting!

I'm in serious fall cooking mode, drooling over root vegetables and digging myself in like a hermit for cozy evenings out of the rain. Recently, I scanned a bunch of stew recipes for ideas and modifications and came up with this seitan stew. It's been years and years and years since I had proper Irish stew (i.e., carnivorous) but this tastes very close to the flavours I remember. It's pretty darn close to the recipe found on fatfree.com.

Ingredients

1 Tbsp olive oil
2 cups seitan -- chunked
1.5 cups carrots -- washed and chopped
1.5 cups portobello mushroom, wiped and chopped
1 cup onion -- chopped
1.5 cups potatoes -- washed and chopped
2 bay leaves
1 tsp dried rosemary
1 tsp garlic -- minced
1 tsp dried basil
1 Tbsp tomato paste
2 cups water
4 tsp tamari soy sauce
1 Tbsp Worchestershire sauce (vegan)
1/4 cup celery -- chopped
4 Tbsp water -- cold
3 Tbsp cornstarch

Directions
1. Saute seitan in oil over medium heat in a large pot until seitan crisps up a bit.
2. Put veggies (except celery), herbs and spices into the pot. Saute in a little water or veggie broth at medium heat for about 8 minutes, stirring to prevent burning.
3. Add tomato paste, water, Worchestershire and tamari and bring to a simmer. Cook about 10 more minutes or until veggies are soft. [I used pretty big chunks of veggies so cooked it quite a bit longer in this stage]
4. Add celery (added at the end to help retain color and texture).
5. Mix the 4 T cold water with the cornstarch in a small bowl. Turn off heat under stew. Vigorously stir in cornstarch solution. Turn heat back on under stew and stir until thickened.

Number of Servings: 4 - 6 but it feels like it feeds an army!
Serve with mashed spuds and a winter ale. Lovely!

Sorry, at the time I didn't think to take progressive photos. Here is the end result steaming away in the stew pot.

posted by Liminal Me @ 4:35 PM