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We love vegan junk food! Sure, being a healthy vegan is cool, and most of the time we eat our fair share of veg, but sometimes you get a pass...you're helping make the world that little bit better every day, after all. Our vegan fried chicken, or VFC, is top-notch junk food - just look at it!
If you're familiar with vegan junk food, or vegan meat-replacements, you've probably guessed that we use seitan for this recipe (homemade of course). Hail seitan!
It's not the quickest recipe in the world, but it's going to be worth all that effort and will impress even your carnivorous friends. Not sure what to serve it up with? This time we're going to be serving it up with some Vegan Macaroni Cheese, but we also love serving it up as the ultimate junk food breakfast with pancakes.
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Vegan Fried Chicken
- Prep Time: 24 hours
- Cook Time: 2
- Total Time: 24 hours 2 minutes
- Yield: 8 pieces 1x
Ingredients
For the vegan fried chicken:
- 1 cup vital wheat gluten
- 2 tsp onion powder
- 1 tsp garlic powder
- ⅔ cup water
- 1 tbsp white miso
- 1 tbsp rapeseed oil
- ¾ tsp salt
- ¼ tsp chicken seasoning
- 140g pressed extra firm tofu (really important to press this for at least 2 hours, preferably overnight)
For the stock:
- 12 cups veggie stock
- 2 tsp onion powder
- 1 large carrot – unpeeled and roughly chopped
- 2 tsp garlic powder
- ¼ cup nutritional yeast
- 1 tsp ground black pepper
- 4 tsp chicken seasoning
- 1 tsp thyme (dried)
- 1 tsp parsley (dried)
For the batter:
- 1 cup plain flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 ½ cups oat milk
For the dry coating:
- 1 ½ cups plain flour
- 2 tsp onion powder
- 2 tsp garlic powder
- 2 tsp salt
- 2 tsp smoked paprika
- 1 tsp ground black pepper
Lots of ground nut oil for frying
Instructions
For the vegan fried chicken:
- Preheat the oven to gas mark 4/180c
- Put the vital wheat gluten, onion powder and garlic powder in a large mixing bowl
- Add the water, miso paste, rapeseed oil, salt, chicken seasoning and tofu into a blender – whizz up until smooth
- Scoop the tofu mix into the bowl and combine well with the dry ingredients
- Place the dough in a food processor or mixer (with the appropriate attachment) and mix for one full minute. You can knead by hand if you prefer – vigorously for 4 minutes. The kneading is very important so don't skip it!
- Cut the dough into 8 even pieces. Stretch each piece of dough out until it's about to tear, then let it contract - you'll end up with something 'chicken-y' shaped. It should be lumpy and uneven so don't try smooth it out
- Put in a non-stick roasting tray and cook for 10 mins, turn then cook for another 10 mins. Take out once done.
For the stock:
- In a large pan add all of ingredients and bring to the boil
- Add chicken pieces into the stock and immediately reduce heat so it's at a gentle simmer
- Cook for 20 mins turning the pieces occasionally. It's very important not to overdo or under-do the temperature, it needs to be a gentle simmer
- Take the pan off the heat and leave chicken to cool in the stock for a few hours
- Transfer chicken to tupperware and add a ¼ cup of broth to each pot you use
- Refrigerate overnight – minimum of 8 hours. Take 'chicken' out of fridge, remove from stock and pat dry and let it come up to room temperature before frying
For the batter:
- Whisk batter ingredients together until smooth. It will be quite a thick batter – like a thick smoothie
For the dry coating:
- Mix all ingredients together in a bowl
To finish the vegan fried chicken:
- If you have a deep fryer set it to 180c. If you don't heat a sufficient amount of groundnut oil in a large pan or wok to the same temperature - if you don't have a thermometer you're going to need to wing it a bit here...just get it nice and hot and use your best judgement!
- Cover each piece in the dry mixture, then the batter (completely covered) and then the dry mixture again. It should be evenly coated
- Put into the hot oil for 2-3 minutes on each side. The batter will turn a lovely golden brown colour
- Once done, place on a plate lined with kitchen roll to get rid of excess oil, and serve!
- Category: Breakfast
- Method: Fry
- Cuisine: American
Keywords: vegan fried chicken
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