Chef Jason Wyrick of The Vegan Culinary Experience (the worlds only all vegan culinary magazine) shares a delicious one-pot meal, perfect for a Sunday night dinner.
Mushroom Seitan Hot Pot
Serves: 2 (if you want more, double recipe)
Time to Prepare: 40 minutes
Ingredients
- 1 onion, sliced into thin strips
- 5 cloves of garlic, minced
- 1 tbsp. of grated fresh ginger
- 4 Szechuan peppercorns, ground (about 1/8 of a tsp., omit these if you cannot find them)
- 1 tbsp. of fermented black bean paste (Substitution: Use ¼ cup of tamari instead of black bean paste – the taste won’t be the same, but it will impart a dark flavor to the sauce)
- 2 cups of mushroom stock + ½ cup of mushrooms stock
- 1 tbsp. of rice vinegar
- 1 tsp. of sugar
- 6 dried chiles (tien tsin chiles work quite well, but you can also use the more common chile de arbol)
- 8 fresh shiitake mushrooms, destemmed and sliced (Substitution: 1 cup of sliced cremini mushrooms if you can’t find fresh shiitakes)
- ½ cup of seitan strips
- ¾ cup of broken vermicelli or soba noodles
Instructions
Slice the onion in half, then slice the halves into thin strips. Mince the garlic. Grate the ginger. Combine the ground peppercorns, black bean paste, 2 cups of mushroom stock, vinegar, and sugar. Bring this to a low simmer. Add the chiles, onion, garlic, ginger, and seitan and simmer this for about 20 minutes. While this is simmering, remove the stems from the mushrooms and discard them. Slice the mushroom caps into semi‐thick strips and set them aside. Add in the ½ cup of mushroom stock to replenish any liquid that has boiled away (you will want about 2 cups of liquid in the pot before you start the next part of the recipe). Raise the heat to medium. Once the liquid is boiling again, add the mushrooms and noodles and cook until the noodles are soft.
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Clay Pot Option: You can prep all the ingredients, then add them to all to a clay pot at the same time. Cover the pot and bake the dish on 350 degrees for about 35 minutes. I usually do this in a clay pot and bake it in the oven. When I do that, I make sure that I place the noodles in the broth first and then follow that up with the seitan and mushrooms. That way they are the top ingredients on the pot.
Time Management: If you want to save some time and don’t mind missing a touch of flavor, you can skip the 20 minute simmering part of the recipe and just go straight to cooking the noodles and everything else together.
Where to Shop: I get my Szechuan peppercorns at my local spice store or at an Asian market. Black bean paste can also be found at most Asian markets as can fresh shiitakes. Ready‐made seitan strips can be purchased at Trader Joe’s. The Beefless Strips are the ones I choose. Don’t worry if you can’t find the special ingredients. You can use tamari or soy sauce instead of black bean paste and you can completely omit the peppercorns. The rest of the ingredients are easy to find and if you are at the Asian market to pick up some of the special ingredients, you should be able to find everything else there, as well.
Approximate cost per serving is $2.00.
How It Works: Simmering the broth with the seitan infuses the seitan with all those wonderful flavors, makes it extra tender, and also develops the flavor of the broth. Black bean paste is incredibly strong, salty, heavy, and sharp in flavor. When used in small amounts, it gives broth a dark, full body. The vinegar and sugar work together to add a sweet and sour note to the broth. The mushrooms are added in with the noodles so that they don’t cook so long that they disappear into the dish. They need to have some bite to them, even if it is a soft bite.
Chef’s Notes: I usually don’t think in terms of one‐pot noodle dishes, so this recipe started out as a challenge to develop. Once I started putting together the broth, though, I was hooked and this soul‐satisfying Asian inspired dish came together in a pinch.
Nutrition Facts: (per serving) Calories 274 Calories from Fat 18 Fat 2 g Total Carbohydrates 37 g Dietary Fiber 5 g Sugars 7 g Protein 27 g Salt 560 mg
Interesting Facts: Shiitakes have been cultivated in the Far East since prehistoric times.