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Jul 18, 2010

...and dumplings

Sunday Nights are Family Favorites

So what do you call a dish that originated as 'Chicken and Dumplings' and morphed into 'Seitan and Dumplings'. Naturally, the seitan is flavored and tender. So should it be 'Tender Seitan and Dumplings?' Sounds good to me!

This huge pot of lovely 'Tender Seitan and Dumplings' uses half a recipe of Tender Seitan, baby carrots, onions, celery and homemade feather-lite dumplings. Besides all the other junk that is in that name brand biscuit mix, there is a ton of fat. I used 4 T of Earth Balance in my whole wheat biscuit mix, and even that was painful. Fortunately, they came out just as light as they had in the past when I made them with half-a-cup of fat.
 I wonder how low I can go?

I used Bryanna's Vegan Chicken-style Broth from her site for the flavor pop and  nutritional yeast for added vitamin B12, which by the way, is important even for omnis - there are many people who are B12 deficient even eating animal products. B12 is actually made by bacteria and the animals eat them and then humans eat the animals. With all the factory farming these days, and the feeding of grain to the animals, there is a huge reduction in the animals' consumption of B12. 

Cost Breakdown:
dumplings: $1
seitan: $2
vegetables: $1
nutritional yeast: $.50
hemp milk (dumplings) : $1.50
Total to feed 8 people:
$6.00 





7 comments:

  1. Great info on B12 deficiency and you are right...grain fed animals do not produce the proper bacteria during digesting and the resulting meat if inferior in B12...and conjugated linoleic acids as well.

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  2. Looks fantastic. Thanks for the additional info. I've been trying to play with seitan more and this looks like a winner.

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  3. Thank you for the comment JillyAn. Well said.

    Belinda, I will get the Tender Seitan recipe up by tonight. The Tofu-Seitan would work well also, just has a stronger flavor than the Tender Seitan. Thanks for visiting.

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  4. This does look fantastic. Is the cooking time decreased with seitan over chicken?

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  5. Good question. It has been over a decade that I've cooked chicken, hmm.

    Since the seitan is already cooked, it is only the carrots I am really interested in cooking. The total cooking time, including the biscuit topping, is around 30 minutes. Golden the veggies (5 m), simmering the broth, seitan and veggies, (10 m), and cooking the biscuits (10 m). Total 25 minutes. Is that faster?

    What I am sure about is that this is an awesome meal. My kids love it!

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  6. Since the chicken would have had to be browned prior to being put in with the rest, yes, it definitely takes less time.

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  7. Yes, Kelly! Supplements are the only/best way to go to make sure you get your B12's!

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