Warm, Comforting VEGAN Beef Stew

People who live where I live have no right to complain about the weather. We do it all the same. It's been cold the last few weeks. The wind picked up the other night and the doors on the plastic shed-like thing in the back yard were flapping and banging and the cat's bed flew around the yard and the stringed lights under the porch awning were clanking against each other and when I went out in my pajamas to secure the fort, my robe flapped around my ankles and my hair whipped around and covered my eyes. And it was COLD. Not like Wisconsin or Canada or Alaska cold, but cold. Possibly even 40 degrees outside. Cold like I want to eat a nice, hot, cheap, comforting bowl of Dinty Moore Beef Stew. That's exactly what I might have done when I was 13 years old, but now as a former-meat-eater-turned-vegetarian I can't eat Dinty Moore anymore. We (in my family) used to call it Denny Moore. Or maybe that was just me. Ahh. Denny Moore.

K, so I have a great beef stew recipe. It's 100% vegan and since I can barely remember what Dinty Moore tasted like now, I tell myself that this recipe is as satisfying--nay, more satisfying than Dinty Moore. Or at least as satisfying. If you knew how high a regard I had for Dinty Moore as a girl you'd realize that this is a seriously good recipe.

Vegan Beef Stew, preparation time: 45 minutes

Stew Ingredients:

1 8oz package seitan, cubed

1 large onion chopped

1 quart vegetable broth

5 tablespoons vegan Worcestershire sauce

1 tablespoon tamari

2 cloves garlic finely chopped

4 of each large carrots and large peeled potatoes coarsely chopped

1 tomato seeded and diced

2 teaspoons salt

1 teaspoon each of pepper and basil

3 tablespoons soybean margarine

5 tablespoons cornstarch mixed with water until not lumpy

Gravy Ingredients:

1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/3 cup chopped onion
5 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
4 tablespoons light soy sauce
2 cups vegetable broth
1/2 teaspoon dried sage
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

Stew Instructions: Combine stew ingredients and heat over stove until the potatoes and carrots are cooked. We like our beef stew really thick in my house, so while this is cooking, I make a separate gravy.

Gravy Instructions:

Heat vegetable oil, onion and garlic in a pan on medium heat until onion is soft and translucent. Stir in flour and lower temperature. Add the rest of the ingredients and stir occasionally.

Serve stew in a bowl with a spoonful of gravy on top. Mix. It's delicious.

As a side note, I like to prepare this the night before and put it in the crock pot on a low setting. I make the gravy when I get home (gravy takes about 10 minutes).

Wine Marinaded Seitan Recipe

Grilling is a huge activity in my family. Huge. We do it literally every weekend, weather permitting. It's cheap, it's fun, it keeps us entertained for hours. The Other Adult recently purchased a metal fire pit which really isn't much of a pit IMO, but actually a metal bowl on legs. Whatever--it provides light and heat for night grilling, which has opened like a whole new world for us.

Our normal grilling fare includes corn on the cob, grilled eggplant sandwiches (recipe to come sometime in the future), and kabobs with mini heirloom tomatoes, mushrooms, onion, pepper, squash, tofu dipped in barbecue sauce and wine marinaded seitan.

Seitan is a relatively new staple item in our refrigerator. It's kinda like tofu but it's made from wheat gluten, and its texture more closely resembles real meat. Unlike tofu, which seems to have no inherent flavor, seitan has a veggie-brothy kind of flavor that also makes it a little more meat-like, even without any additional flavoring.

Seitan is totally delicious and it has a lot of practical applications in the kitchen. I recommend it for any vegetarian. We use it in fajitas, stir fry meals and vegan chicken nuggets. I buy our seitan at Whole Foods and have a hard time finding it at other stores, but the Other Adult's parents, who live in rural-ish Illinois, have managed to find seitan at their local supermarket. Grocery stores that stock seitan usually stock it with the tofu and other refrigerated vegetarian or health foods, or sometimes with the refrigerated Asian food products.

The seitan marinade recipe I use is adapted from this recipe on veganappetite.com. I adapted the recipe for the ingredients I had in my cupboards the first time I made it, and I loved the results so much that I haven't modified it.

Wine Marinaded Seitan
8 oz seitan, cut in chunks
1/4 cup red wine (I use 2 buck chuck, shiraz:)
1 Tbsp soy sauce
1 Tbsp minced garlic
1/2 Tbsp fresh rosemary chopped
1/2 Tbsp thyme
salt and pepper
olive oil
3/4 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp dried leaf oregano

Combine ingredients and marinade seitan for at least one hour. I usually save the leftover seitan for the next time we grill, so sometimes it marinades for a week.