Vegan Fried Chick’n .

Recently, Ellen’s vegan chef guru guy, whatever his name is, I forget, published a cookbook of dishes he whips up for Ellen and her wife. Yes, that Ellen. The one with the show. I know I am known to hate just about everyone and anything, but I kinda like Ellen.

So, this dude made a cookbook,and in this cookbook,he has fried chicken. Well, he has fried non-chicken, using spring roll wrappers as a way of making a skin. I found it rather genius and went about trying it out.

Frankly, I think his batter needed a bit of work, and I did a few things differently.But, the idea of spring wrappers is all his, I think. I mean , I am assuming it was his idea.Has anyone else done that? Whatever, who cares?

This will lead to a mess in your kitchen, I can tell you that, but the results will have you licking your fingers, or whatever it is people do when they eat fried chicken.

Fried chicken has a long history.A crispy history, too. What we consider modern day fried chicken can be traced back to African slaves, who were not allowed many livestock, other than chickens. Well, they made it into their own.Here is a shocker:fried chicken is also traced back to the Scottish. Yeah, the Scottish. Kilts and fried chicken. Who knew?

The Scotts liked to fry their chicken, while their jerk neighbors to the south, the English, would either bake or boil it.I am not saying this is true, but it is highly possible that Braveheart himself, William Wallace probably was fighting the English over fried foods.

I just made that up.The part about Braveheart, not about the Scottish frying chicken.

So, to recap: Scotts brought fried chicken to the Americas, slaves perfected it, and some white guy in a white suit made millions off it. That is fucked up.

Anyway, so I got this Ellen Vegan cookbook, so that dude came up with the spring rolls as a “skin” I just made it my own. Or something.Whatever.

For a ” chicken” style seitan, I must use a few key ingredients. Vital wheat gluten is, well, vital. But for seasonings, I use celery salt, some sage, poultry seasoning, and some rosemary.

You have your own seitan? Then skip ahead, bastard. Otherwise, we will make the seitan first.

Seitan Ingredients.

- 10 cups of water.
- 3 tablespoons of Braggs liquid aminos
- 2 tablespoons of celery salt.
- 1 tablespoon of poultry seasoning.
- 2 teaspoons of sage.
- 1 teaspoon of marjoram.
- 1 teaspoon of paprika.
- 2 cups of gluten.
- 1 tablespoon of thyme.
- 1 tablespoon of rosemary.

Okay, so toss all the ingredients up to the gluten in a large pot, with a lid.I suppose placing in the pot would leave one with less a mess, but I am not here to judge.

Place the gluten in a bowl. and add a cup of the broth you just made in the large pot.Now, add the thyme and rosemary to the pot.

Do I have to mention you should be stirring these things together?I figured this would be assumed on your part.

Bring the broth to a gentle boil over medium heat.

Your gluten should be mixed with that cup of broth.If you need a bit more broth, add it carefully. Mold the gluten into some shapes, similar to a cutlet.Place the gluten cutlets into the large pot, and lower the temp to a nice simmer. Place the lid on the pot, with a small crack of an opening, and well, let it simmer.

I stir my cooking gluten from time to time, and see how it is doing. Do not be disturbed if it grows to supersize and the pot seems to be over-filling with gluten cutlets. They will decrease in size.

Now, after an hour or an hour and a half, they should be done. Let them cool a bit so you do not burn your precious hands, and then you can cut them into the shapes you want.

You will want to heat up your cooking oil. Do that. Add about two inches of oil, probably vegetable oil, or an oil of your choice to a pan.

In one bowl add 4 tablespoons of egg-replacer, a cup of soy milk, and a tablespoon of vinegar. This will give you a thick, almost buttermilk like substance.

In another bowl, mix all this:

Fried Batter Ingredients.
- 2 cups of flour.
- 3 teaspoons of celery salt.
- 2 tablespoons of paprika.
- Dash of pepper, or two dashes.
- 3 teaspoons of chili powder.
- 1 teaspoon of oregano.
- 2 teaspoons of basil.
- 1 teaspoon of garlic powder.
- 1 teaspoon of onion powder.

You could also toss in some MSG if you had some, I sadly, did not.

Dust a baking pan with corn starch, and place to the side.

In another , larger bowl, add some water.

Grab your spring roll wrappers, you have them , right? Take a wrapper, place in the hot water for about 30 seconds, and then proceed to wrap each piece of cut seitan/gluten in the spring roll wrappers. Placing them on the corn starch dusted baking pan.

Once you ave completed this task, it is now time to batter them. First, dunk them in the flour mixture, then in the milk mixture, then back in the flour mixture.

Repeat till you baking pan is now filled with battered pieces of seitan goodness.

Now it is time to fry these fuckers. Oh, yeah.

I did them in batches, and let them drain and cool on a cooling rack I had covered in paper towels.
Place four or so pieces in the hot oil, cooking on each side for several minutes a side. You can flip them easily and safely if you use some cooking tongs. You want a golden brown and crispy ” skin”

Vegan Fried Chick’n with spring roll wrapper “skin”.

You have now made country fried seitan.You could even put them all in a bucket if you so desired.Or perhaps feed them to your friends wearing a white suit with silly tie. I dunno. You could.