I’m sure you’re tired of my various posts on seitan chick’n, BUT in my defense, what I’ve been seeking is the perfect recipe for a chick’n burger.

The problem to date has been that the centre of the patty is often a bit “mushy” according to James. I thought I’d try a combination of the best parts of my seitan chick’n recipes and then try baking the loaf, rather than simmering it in broth or steaming it, both of which methods add more moisture.

However, I was worried that, with the baking, the patties would end up too dry. In fact, the patties turned out to be quite delicious and the texture nearly perfect!!

So here we go with the rather labour-intensive (but less labour-intensive than previous recipes) process:

Air-Fried Vegan Chick’n Burgers

Step One:

Blend in the Vitamix until smooth:

• 3 dried shitake mushrooms
• 3/4 cup almond milk

Add and blend again until smooth

• 1 cup firm tofu
• 2 TBS vegan chick’n broth powder
• 2 TBS tahini
• 1 tsp miso paste
• 2 tsp poultry seasoning
• 1 tsp onion powder
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp salt

Step Two:

Drain, add to food processor, and pulse:

• 1 can of jackfruit

Step Three:

Add to the bowl of your stand mixer and whisk together:

• 1 cup vital wheat gluten
• 1/4 cup chickpea flour

Step Four:

Add the contents of the Vitamix and the contents of the food processor to the mixing bowl and mix using the dough hook. Once everything is mixed together, let the dough rest for fifteen minutes, then run the mixer on low for six minutes to knead the seitan.

Once the seitan is all mixed and kneaded, it will look like this:

Notice that the jackfruit gives the seitan a loose structure, but that’s the idea: regular chicken doesn’t have as dense a structure as seitan, so the jackfruit creates some variety (for lack of a better word) in the otherwise dense structure of seitan chick’n.

Step Five: Roll the dough out to about a half-inch thickness on a cookie sheet on parchment paper and bake it at 375 for 25 minutes; turn and bake for another 15 minutes.

Let cool and then cut into eight pieces:

Step Six: For this step, you create a kind of skin for the seitan chick’n. It’s not as tricky as it seems and is completely worth the extra effort. Just wrap each piece of seitan tightly in the rice paper….like a burrito.

Take a large dish and fill with very warm water and insert (one at a time):

• 8 sheets of rice paper (one for each piece of seitan)

Wrap each of the seitan pieces in one piece of rice paper.

This process is fairly quick and the result looks like this…

Step Seven:

In this step, you bread the seitan pieces. I use Vegg Egg replacer because it creates a gooey vehicle for the coating. You could also use aqua faba, which works very well!

Mix together in one bowl for the dredge:

• 2.5 tsp Vegg vegan egg yolk
• 2 cups water

Mix together in a second bowl for the coating:

• 3/4 cup flour
• 1 cup panko crumbs
• 1/4 cup vegan chick’n broth powder
• 1/4 cup nutritional yeast
• 2 TBS coconut sugar
• 1 TBS cayenne
• 1 TBS dried chilli flakes
• 2 TBS poultry seasoning
• 1 TBS smoked paprika
• 1 tsp allspice
• 2 tsp ground black pepper
• 1 tsp salt

Line up the seitan, the dredge, and the coating….

Dip each piece in the dredge and then coat thoroughly in the coating.

Place the coated piece on the air-fryer sheet.

Spray the sheet with oil, and then spray each piece of chick’n with oil. I know this step adds a bit of oil, but it’s not much and it makes a difference.

Air-fry at 400 for 20 minutes, turning at the halfway point.

Remove the patties and serve them on a well-dressed bun! I added a bit of vegan mayo, avocado slices, shredded lettuce, sliced pickles, and sliced onions.

The result is very good!! The recipe makes eight very large chick’n patties.

James ate two chick’n burgers and is so full he claims he can’t have any of the vegan blueberry cobbler I made for dessert!

And the song of the day is Niall Horan’s “Nice to Meet Ya.” I like the song because he sounds like an upbeat version of Jack Savoretti. Of course, Em made fun of me about this song because apparently Mr. Horan was a member of the boy band, One Direction, but I am unashamed!

I’ll freely admit that I’ve always had the musical taste of a thirteen-year-old girl, so I’m cool with that!