Seitan Bacon

There are many vegan "bacon" variants based on ingredients from coconut to radish to rice paper or starch. But seitan still tastes best for me.

This bacon here is pretty easy to preproduce and store in the freezer until you need it. And always having bacon on hand is pretty practical, regardless of whether it ends up on sandwiches, burgers or as a side dish to a full English breakfast.

You can of course make a smaller amount of seitan, but my machines had trouble pureeing a smaller amount really smooth, and more bacon is more bacon, so I don't want to complain. ;)

Duration: 30 minutes (+1 night in the freezer)

Difficulty: medium

Makes almost 2kg of bacon

Ingredients:

White part

80g of liquid/brine from a 400g can of white beans

200g tofu

200g water

25g coconut fat

2g apple cider vinegar

5g sugar

5g salt

225g gluten powder / seitan fix

Red part

Remaining liquid/brine and beans from the 400g can of white beans

200g tofu

200g water + 15g beetroot powder (or 100g water + 100g beetroot juice)

15g yeast extract

30g tomato paste

20g maple syrup

2g apple cider vinegar

30g liquid smoke (possibly more, depending on how strong your concentrate is. Unfortunately there are a few differences from brand to brand)

20g sesame oil

35g salt

7g paprika powder

3g garlic granules

4g onion granules

400g gluten powder / seitan fix

Preparation:

We start with the white "fat" part of the bacon, then you don't have to wash the devices out in between. I also like to be lazy. ;)

For this, all ingredients except for the gluten powder are mixed in a mixer to make the liquid as smooth as possible. Don't worry if your coconut oil doesn't blend in quite as well. The main thing is that the tofu and beans are no longer recognizable.

When the liquid is well mixed, add the gluten powder and mix the whole thing in a food processor for 3-4 minutes. In the end, you have a batter that feels a bit like chewing gum.

The dough can then be taken out of the machine and set aside.

Now do the same with the red part for the bacon. If you don't have beetroot juice or powder, you can of course use food coloring.

This part is quite smoky and salty, if you know that you are more sensitive to the ingredients, I would maybe reduce them a bit.

Let your two seitan dough rest for 10 minutes and then divide it into 6 equal parts.

Then the individual parts are rolled out or you can pull them into shape.

You then alternate between layering the red and white seitan. I made a total of 3 bacon blocks with 2 layers of red and white each. But of course you can also make 2 out of it.

Press the layers together as tightly as possible and then wrap them in baking paper. Try to form rectangular blocks through the baking paper, this will make it much easier to cut afterwards. Then put the bacon blocks in the freezer to make them really firm. I prefer to give the seitan a whole night for this.

The next day you can then unwrap the blocks and cut them into thin slices with a sharp measurement or, ideally, a bread slicer.

The first slices may be a bit uneven, but as soon as your block has a really straight surface, you can cut off really nice slices. If you cut with a machine, I recommend a thickness of about 2mm.

The seitan is now theoretically still raw, so if you sear it with oil in a pan, it will be really nice and crispy on the outside and the inside is still really nice "Chewy" and in my opinion comes much closer to bacon than other alternatives.

The bacon browns relatively quick, so you should definitely keep an eye on the bacon in the pan. ;)

The blocks or the individual slices can be stored in the TK for several months. If you pre-cut the slices, I would recommend separating the individual slices from each other with baking paper, regardless of whether you store them in the freezer or in the refrigerator for a few days, otherwise they will stick together again very quickly.

And then you can already enjoy your bacon, for example as a double bacon cheeseburger. ;)

Guten Appetit!

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