Sweet and sour seitan recipe 🥡 - James Strange (2024)

Updated Oct 14, 2019

I am a big fan of sweet and sour dishes. But not the kind you find at most Chinese American Buffet places. Most of those are just sweet. But as a gout sufferer, fried pork is definitely not on the menu.

Today’s recipe uses seitan in place of meat. The sauce has a nice balance of sweet and sour. The breading stays crispy even in the sauce. All of the things that I am looking for.

The picture above is from when I recently cook this recipe again but changed up the vegetables. Same sauce, the same recipe for the seitan, but veggies used chunky bell peppers. I think I might actually prefer the dish with bell peppers.

The first thing we need to do is bread our seitan. It’s a three-step process using dry, wet, then dry again. This will give us a nice thick coating. The cornstarch in the breading will make it extra crispy.

We had just a little leftover. The following morning the breading was not soggy. No longer crispy but not soggy.

To a bowl, add 2/3 cup all purpose flour, 1/3 cup cornstarch, 1/4 teaspoon salt, 1/4 teaspoon white pepper, 1/4 teaspoon granulated garlic. Mix all of this up.

Remove 1/4 Cup of the mixture and place into another bowl. To this bowl, add three tablespoons of water and mix. This is our wet mixture.

Place your seitan into the bowl with the dry mixture and coat the outside with a dry mixture. Pat off the excess and add to the bowl with the wet mixture.

Coat the seitan with the wet batter, then return the seitan to the dry mixture. Coat with the dry mixture and let sit for at least fifteen minutes. The longer it sits, the less chance it will come off when frying. You will lose some, but that is no big deal.

While waiting, we will make the sauce. Start with one Cup of vegetable stock, 1/4 cup ketchup, 1/4 cup dark brown sugar, one Tablespoon raw sugar, two Tablespoons soy sauce, two Tablespoons black vinegar, one Tablespoon pineapple juice, and two Tablespoons crushed pineapple. Mix all of this and set it aside.

Make a thickening slurry with 1/2 Tablespoon of cornstarch and one tablespoon water. Mix it up and set it aside. This will need to be remixed before adding to the sauce.

Cut up your veggies. I used 1/2 cup of each of the following zucchini, onion, red bell pepper, green bell pepper, and cabbage. But you can use whatever combination that you like. I like using red and green peppers for the color.

While the oil (I like peanut oil for frying) is heating up, bring your sauce to a simmer and add the onion and cabbage. Reduce the heat to low.

Working in batches, fry the seitan until golden brown. The seitan is already cooked, but if you put too much into the oil, the oil temperature will go down. Then the breading can get soggy.

When about half of the seitan is cooked, add the bell pepper and zucchini to the sauce.

One serious note at the end of frying this batch, I did have one pop and sprayed hot oil. So please do be careful.

When the seitan is almost finished, check the thickness of your sauce. If it’s a little thin, turn the heat up and add your thickening slurry and mix. After the cornstarch has thickened, the sauce turn the heat back to low.

When the seitan is done frying ad it to the sauce and toss it to coat, or you could put the seitan on the serving plate and pour the sauce over the top.

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