Country Fried Steak

OHHHHH Seitan you tempted me sooo…

One of the yummiest meals ever is Country Fried Steak drizzled with gravy and served with mashed potatoes and vegetables.  It would only be natural for me to want to try and veganize this meal. 

I set out on Tuesday evening after an extremely long day at work to make something that wasn’t steak taste like steak.  In order to do this, I had to make Seitan which is Vital Wheat Gluten.  I used the gluten and added nutritional yeast and spices to try and replicate a sort of steak flavor.  Once the Seitan was formed into steaks, I soaked them in a broth which consisted of mushroom broth, liquid aminos, Worcestershire sauce, spices, herbs and other consumable ingredients for about 12 hours.  This was supposed to allow the seitan steaks to absorb the flavor. 

Wednesday, I fried up the seitan using flour, almond milk, and flour as the coating.  Grilled some asparagus spears, roasted yellow squash, zucchini, tomatoes and garlic and made a delicious garlic mashed potato.

After plating, it was now time to dive in and taste this creation…

The girlfriend loved every bit of it and didn’t have anything left on her plate.  She even took the leftovers home because she loved it so…

But, for my journey and for this blog it’s about trying to make things taste just as good, if not better than the real thing. 

For me… this dish was a fail.  It tasted spongy and bland and regardless of what or how you treated this seitan, I feel that there is not a way to make this taste or fool your taste buds into thinking that this is steak.  For me, dinner was mashed potatoes, asparagus and roasted veggies.

This is definitely a vegan NOT for me.

I give this 3 devil pitchforks out of 10.