Yes, this is indeed a meatless, guilt-free version of the classic chicken wings with a homemade Louisiana style hot sauce.

If you're feeling brave you can also make a larger batch and freeze both the seitan and the hot sauce, as you'll want to make them again.

I've made this a few times and folk went nuts for them, meat eaters and veggies alike.

This is one of my favourite hot sauces - I once managed to finish a whole bottle in work one day just dipping whatever I could into it.

If you haven't heard of seitan or wheat gluten before, well, the possibilities are endless when it comes to cooking with it.

This is a pretty easy way to introduce yourself to it.

I like to serve this with a wedge of lemon squeezed over the seitan and with a classic tomato, red onion and pickle salad dressed in a sweet dressing of your choice.

 

Makes 5 servings

 

Ingredients

150g vital wheat gluten

40g gram flour (you can buy both types of flour in your local whole foods store, larger supermarkets, Asian supermarkets or online)

30g nutritional yeast flakes  (Holland & Barratt, whole foods stores or health food shops carry this)

1 finely diced onion

6 finely diced garlic cloves

2 tsp fresh or dried herbs (I use fresh oregano and thyme but you can use whatever you have lying about)

300 ml of water

900 ml of stock for simmering seitan

Method

1 Add all the dry ingredients in a bowl including herbs, garlic and onion and mix briefly to even everything out.

2 Add in the water and stir to combine all the mix

3 Work the dough for at least 5-10 min, you can pop it onto the countertop as soon as it starts binding

4 Roll it out into a long roll and let it sit for about 5 min again

5 Slice the roll into strips, making them thinner than you would like as it expands when cooking

6 This is a good time to get your stock on the stove, I use a deep baking tray but you can use a large pot, whatever you use make sure there's enough room for the seitan to hang out in.

7 Drop the pieces of seitan in one at a time, try and not let them stick together too much. The stock should just cover the pieces, if you need to throughout the cooking add more stock to keep them immersed

8Cover and simmer away for about 45 minutes

9 Once its ready - and you can tell this by making sure its not too wet looking and has puffed up enough - you can either fry off straight away or if you are only prepping for later, let cool then refrigerate

10 When ready to cook, I fill a shallow pan with vegetable oil and heat to gas mark 4/5

11 Dust your seitan with some seasoned flour (you can also add some paprika or cayenne pepper to this) and drop into the oil using tongs, fry till golden and crisp on both sides and dry off on kitchen paper

 

Homemade Louisiana style hot sauce

15 long red chillies / cayenne chillies

1 garlic bulb

500ml white wine vinegar

2 tsp salt

Cup of water

Method

1. Chop up your chillies and garlic, slow fry them till soft, add in the vinegar and salt and cook for about 20 minutes

2. Let it cool then blend till nice and creamy adding water to loosen up if needed