Our Veggie Kitchen

There are lots of great Ribz recipes out there, and I've been using many of them to come up with mine. I must say, it was a great experience that started 3 months ago and included pounds of seitan that I felt obligated to eat. For me, ribs have always been about the BBQ sauce, so use your favorite.

The trick here is in maintaining the ribz' consistency. You need to pull them out of the oven when they're firm enough for the grill, but not dry. On the grill, they're basically already cooked, so you just want to char the sauce without turning the ribs into crispy nuggets of coal. It's worth a little experimenting.



Seitan Ribz
Dry Ingredients:
2 cups vital wheat gluten
1 tbs paprika
3 tbs nutritional yeast
2 tsp onion powder
2 tsp garlic powder
Wet Ingredients:
1 cup water
1/2 cup barbecue sauce
1 tsp liquid smoke
1 tbs soy sauce
3 tbs tahini
1 tbs Earth Balance Margarine, melted.
2 cups barbeque sauce for basting

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix the dry ingredients. Combine the water, barbecue sauce, liquid smoke, and soy sauce. Pour into the dry ingredients and stir to combine. Use your hand, it works best. You should have a wet, but kneadable dough. If not, add a little water (too dry) or gluten (too wet).

Roll the dough out with a rolling pin to a thickness of about 1/2 inch, or a little thicker. Turn onto a baking sheet. Combine the tahini with melted margarine and pour half on the dough. Spread with your fingers (really!) and make lots of pock marks in the dough as you go. Flip the dough and do the same on the other side. Bake for about 20 minutes, turning once. The dough will darken, but will still be pliable and soft. Remove from the oven and, when cool enough to handle, cut into rib-sized strips. I will often make them an hour before I'm ready to cook them.

On the grill, the timing will depend on the heat source. I use charcoal, so I never have the same temperature. Basically, you are adding layers of cooked sauce to the rib and letting the sauce char. At cooler temperatures, you may want to cover and wait between bastings. On a hot grill, by the time you're done basting, it may be time to flip and start over.

Anyway, lay the ribz on the grill and brush sauce onto each rib. Flip and brush the other side. When that side begins to blacken (just barely), flip and repeat. You should have enough sauce to brush again, flip, then pull them off the grill. Messy, gooey and delicious.

It's kind of hard to gauge servings here, but a similar quantity (370 cal) of pork ribs had 24g fat, 8g saturated fat, 100mg cholesterol and no fiber. A serving of these ribs have 3g saturated fat, 4g fiber and are a much better source of vitamins & minerals, including iron.

5 Servings: 378 cal (11g fat, 29g carbs, 44g protein)