Planetlady wrote:Can someone tell me if these products are interchangeable?
"Interchangeable" as in a recipe calls for seitan and you want to use tofu, and vice versa? Sometimes.
Tofu is made of processed soybeans and usually packaged in water in plastic or aseptic boxes. A lot of people first drain the water then press their tofu between sheets of paper toweling for a bit to dry it out, which gives it a chewier texture. You can also freeze it first the then press the water out, which makes it a bit denser yet. After pressing, you can slice and use the tofu as-is, but it has a pretty neutral taste, so many people marinate it in a flavorful liquid first for a few hours, or coat it with flavorful things.
One of my favorite ways is to marinate it in home made fat-free salad dressing for a while, then use that marinade as the "wet" and panko bread crumbs for the "dry" and bread them and roast for about an hour in a 350º oven. The texture is very much like thin sliced breaded chicken patties. Bryanna Clark Grogan used to share a recipe on her board on VegSource called Chiken Brests, or something like that, which was basically breaded and roasted tofu with some seasonings.
Seitan, on the other hand, is cooked gluten. Your recipe probably calls for vital wheat gluten powder, some liquids and flavorings. Bryanna Clark Grogan has a load of seitan recipes in her books, but my favorites come from other places, like Vegan with A Vengeance (recipe on-line at their web site
http://www.theppk.com/recipes/dbrecipes/index.php?RecipeID=112 . Another favorite is from Susan V at her site:
http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/2007/04/veggeroni-seitan-pepperoni.html
The first one is a nice, neutral tasting seitan that's boiled. To this basic recipe you can add an assortment of spices and flavorings and it'll taste different every time. As-is it's great to use in any recipe that calls for cooked seitan, like the Portabella-Seitan Stroganoff recipe, also found in Vegan with a Vengeance or here:
http://www.theppk.com/recipes/dbrecipes/index.php?RecipeID=113
The second one is a nice spicy loaf that's baked instead of boiled. It has a much firmer texture and is great sliced very thin and used in place of deli meats on a sandwich, diced and added to pizza or spaghetti, or just plain as a snack.
You can also find loaf & burger recipes that use both tofu and vital wheat gluten, as well as tvp, another soy product.
But remember, these are higher protein products and Dr. McDougall doesn't want us to use them too often because of that. I, myself, use one block of tofu a week as tofu ricotta cheese split between our weekly lasagna and pizza. I also use rice milk instead of soy because of this tofu usage. I try to have a batch of the flavored seitan sliced up in the refrigerator at all times for lunches for the family, and if I need seitan for a dinner recipe I'll make up a batch of the VwaV stuff.
Have fun, and post your recipe so we can all enjoy it, too.
by Planetlady » Sun Sep 23, 2007 11:53 pm 
, but the two are actually quite different. I probably preferred seitan as a "meat substitute" because it's texture seemed more meatlike to me than tofu. If you freeze tofu then thaw it before cooking, it becomes a bit chewier like meat. With good flavors added, both can be really tasty. Unfortunately, I didn't switch to this way of eating much before I found out my intolerances, so don't have a lot of experience with either and am not much help in terms of actual recipes, but I'm sure others will have lots of other advice.
