Seitan and Beyond: Gluten and Soy-Based Meat Analogues for the Ethical Gourmet

As a vegetarian for 45 years, I was interested in this book from a different perspective than new vegans transitioning to a plant-based diet using meat analogues. I have rarely used meat analogues since I became a vegetarian and easily create vegan dinners without them. I don't "miss" meat of any kind, but I still enjoy chewing on flavorful, meaty foods. Although commercially available meat analogs have improved in quality over the years, they are often highly processed. I feel that using them regularly is contrary to a healthy, whole foods diet. However, when my local source for fresh, traditional seitan disappeared, I decided to make my own. There was no way I was going to eat what passes for seitan in those little expensive, vacuum-packed packages. This book offered that basic recipe and many other interesting vegan "meats." It is an astonishingly creative book, and over the past couple of years, I have enjoyed making some of these dinners. Chef Conroy's instructions are very detailed and easy to follow to success. Although it does take some time to make these foods, it is really quite simple. The basic ingredients required are vital wheat gluten, tofu, garbanzo bean flour, miso, TVP, and easily obtained condiments such as Tamari soy sauce and vegan Worcestershire sauce. Making these analogs from scratch is not only much healthier than purchasing them but is also much more cost effective. His vegan versions of classic sauces, gravies, glazes and condiments which are included in this book are an invaluable resource all on their own. He recommends making your own simmering stocks, which I agree makes a huge difference, although you can use good quality, prepared stocks as well. This will never be my primary way of creating vegan dinners, but it expands my culinary world to have these recipes in it. I highly recommend the book to all interested in plant-based cooking.

This has become the most important cookbook I own -- now I can take any cookbook and make just about any recipe. So I make Thai chicken with cashews, for example, using the "chickun" strips from this book, and when I make pizza I can now put slices of "pepperoni" or "sausage" on it. I have never in my life craved a meatball parmigiana sub (hero, grinder, hoagie -- whatever they call it in your neck of the woods), but with the meatballs from this book, it's delicious. Tomorrow we're having breaded and fried "porq" cutlets, and the Turkish pizza (traditionally a lamb dish) that I'm making tonight is with this book's "beaf crumbles." Sure, there are lots of good vegetarian and vegan recipes and cookbooks, but humans have been cooking meat since the invention of fire, and every culture has a rich heritage of meat-based cuisine. Now we can make those dishes as well.Don't let the "text-only" nature of the book dissuade you. Sure, pictures would be great. You don't need them.And you should understand that all these things take plenty of work. Lots of them require making a vegetable stock first, lots of them require baking and then simmering, and most of them require refrigeration overnight or thereabouts. You'll be working on tomorrow's dinner, not tonight's. Oh well, enjoy it. The "porq" cutlets I just made were more work than buying pork at a supermarket, but a lot less work than raising, slaughtering, and then butchering a pig...Last thing: If you're thinking you can buy these "fake meat" products at the store and just use those, you're wrong. Those are at best okay every once in a while; they don't measure up in the long run. Maybe one day.

(This is Blake's wife) I have cooked the chik'n cutlets, and tonight I did the Prime beaf, and OMG, heaven in your mouth. I miss meat, I am WFPB (vegan, sort of) for health reasons, had to fix a bunch of medical issues with diet because I seem to be allergic to most medications. I've had to do a little substituting here and there, because of stuff I didn't have access to (where in the hell do you get porcini powder? I had morels that I had harvested and dried from last season, they did just fine), but, so far, this man is a genius. Period. Some of his stuff is a little heavier on the fats than I'd like, but these recipes are awesome. Not a big fan of the porq, but I think that was because my gluten was gone off. Will try again with fresh, and wrap it tighter, it kinda exploded in my oven. Got bunches of stuff I can sub for the fats. Yeah, pics would be nice, but WTH, I can read instructions.After cooking the Prime Beaf and the fako chicken (OMG, heaven when you put the cutlets in an air fryer and dip them in sweet chili sauce), I can get over animal products really easily. I love meat, but I don't love what you get with it, saturated fat, hormones, GMO feed, cholesterol, and these days, who knows what they put in things these days anymore. Not to mention that factory farming is pretty ugly. Animal products were literally killing me, I was in so much pain from a couple of auto-immune diseases. Cut out the animal products, and 4 months later, I was feeling better. But I wanted the occasional meaty tasting food. Thanks Skye. I can now have meat without actually eating it. Can't say enough about this cookbook.

The best seitan I've ever made. This book shows you how to blend tofu and wheat gluten for really amazing results. The only substitution we made was adding mock chicken flavoring to the water in the chicken recipes but everything came out amazing. Recipes for everything from chicken nuggets to chorizo. Lots of recipes using only wheat gluten also. This is full of very detailed, very helpful information on how to do seitan right. The chicken nuggets were the best I've ever made. If you are interested in learning how to use wheat protein to replace animal protein then this is the book for you. Highly recommend.

Excellent. A book destined for the serious experimenter who wants/needs to learn the bases before actually taking off. Everything one ever wanted to know about making Seitan, tofu & Co look and taste like meat. (Which of course I am not really in the position to judge since I don't eat meat) The dishes I have tried so far are pleasing to meat eaters and vegans alike. Well worth a buy. No pictures, just good old verbal instructions. I did take some time though to accumulate all ingredients not that easily available in rural Europe. Thank goodness for Amazon, I say. 😜

I like to think that I'm quite a generous reviewer on these pages and where possible I like to give a 5 star if the product meets my expectations. The problem with giving out 5 stars is that it leaves you nowhere to go if, on occasion, you buy something that is utterly, life changingly brilliant like this book. It is crammed with fantastic recipes and although there are many variations on a theme (seitan beaf, seitan chickun, seitan porc) this book goes beyond that and provides recipes for many of the products that you might need to create the 'main recipes'. For instance, the first recipe that I used was the 'Worcester Sauce' one that forms a basis for a great deal of the other recipes. I know that you can get vegan worcester sauce (Henderson's Relish, isn't it?) this isn't always that easy (unless you live in Sheffield).I read one or two reviews which suggest that some photos of the finished dishes would be helpful but the lack of these isn't a problem for me on the basis that the descriptions are fairly good ("roll out into a narrow log, about twelve inches long"). Also, I think that when you are a cook of my limited ability photos can be detrimental because my attempts rarely look exactly like the professional (and airbrushed) images that accompany the recipes.This book, along with  Aquafaba: Sweet and Savory Vegan Recipes Made Egg-Free with the Magic of Bean Water  are so great if you want to create brilliant, original, animal-free food - I wish I'd known this stuff 20 years ago when all that was available to vegans was TVP and tofu.Just in case you're wondering - I'm not a professional reviewer nor did I receive any copies of the books mentioned or any other form of inducement to write this review. I just love the fact that these books exist and want to share my enthusiasm Aquafaba: Sweet and Savory Vegan Recipes Made Egg-Free with the Magic of Bean Water

Ich kann die bücher von Skye Michael nur empfehlen. Für alle, die gerne in der küche rumtüftlen und nicht immer fertigprodukte kaufen wollen, die meist auch extrem teuer sind, sind seine bücher unentbehrlich. Die Rezepte sind relativ trottelsicher, aber man muss viele zutaten kaufen und in deutschland auch fähig sein, die ami zutaten mit etwas anderem zu ersetzen. Deshalb sollte man schon willens sein, solche gericht öfter mal zuzubereiten und nicht z.B. nur ein mal im jahr ;) Da der autor die bücher selbst herausgibt, sind keine bilder vorhanden, wer diese unbedingt haben möchte kann die bücher auch von seiner webseite im digitalen format downloaden. Ich habe viele vegane kochbücher, verwende aber eigentlich nur die von diesem autor.

I am slowly growing my collection of Chef Skye’s cookbooks. I love how carefully each detail of each recipe is explained. I am not confident in the kitchen and these plant based cookbooks have been so inspiring. I miss the ‘tradition’ of meats and comfort foods I grew up eating and now that void is filled. Every new recipe I try feels like a science project. I just made ‘lobster’ for my ravioli tomorrow night from seitan + beyond!