Sweet Italian Seitan Sausage

Today I spent much of the day on the phone. Needless to say it is difficult to cook with a phone stuck to your head so I need to come up with something tonight that wasn’t going to take a lot of time. Pasta always comes to the rescue when I don’t have much time. To go with the pasta I decided to make sweet Italian seitan sausage because it is also fast.

The spices and flavorings I used were taken from the Charcuterie book. As usual I added bread crumbs because I like what they did for the texture. This time I chose to leave out the fat to see what impact that had on the sausages (I love experimenting with my food).

Sweet Italian Seitan Sausage
Makes 8 sausages

Ingredients:

3 cloves of garlic
2 tablespoons of wine vinegar
2 cups of water
1 tablespoon of agave
2 cups of fresh whole wheat bread crumbs
1 tablespoon fennel seed
1 tablespoon sweet paprika
1 teaspoon of freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon of kosher salt
10 ounces of vital wheat gluten

Directions:

Combine the garlic, wine vinegar, water and agave in the blender. Puree until smooth. Pour the contents into a bowl that is large enough to knead the dough. Add the breadcrumbs and stir so that they are thoroughly saturated. You want them to be very moist, like wet bread. Add the fennel seed, paprika, black pepper and kosher salt and stir to combine. Add the vital wheat gluten and knead to form dough. If any of the gluten remains dry add a little more water a few tablespoons at a time. You want the dough to be wet and fairly easy to knead. It should be softer than if you are making a seitan roast.

Put the dough on a cutting board and form into a ball. Cut the ball in half and make it into two balls and cut those in half. Continue this process until you have 8 roughly equal balls of seitan dough.

Form each seitan ball into a snake about 5 – 6 inches log. Roll each snake up in aluminum foil and twist the ends closed.

Put a steamer insert into your pressure cooker. Add water to the bottom of the steamer insert. Place the sausages in the pressure cooker and bring the cooker up to pressure with the heat on high. Set a timer for 15 minutes and turn the heat to low. You want the heat as low as you can set it but still have steam escape. After 15 minutes turn the heat off and allow the pressure to reduce naturally.

When the pressure has reduced open the cooker and remove the sausages to another place to cool for at least 10 minutes so that you can remove the foil. The sausages can be use used or refrigerated.

Nutritional information:

Amount Per Serving
Calories - 210.95
Calories From Fat (6%) - 12.2

Total Fat - 1.39g
Saturated Fat - 0.12g
Cholesterol - 0mg
Sodium - 389.46mg
Potassium - 81.13mg
Total Carbohydrates - 20.72g
Fiber - 3.09g
Sugar - 0.67g
Protein - 29.99g

Comments:

Good flavor from the fennel and sweetness from the agave and paprika. The sausages have a good texture. They are tender but have a nice chew. I was surprised that the oil I have been adding seems unnecessary. Going forward I won’t be adding oil to the wet mixture for the seitan.