Who's ready for summer and BBQ parties with all your friends?! Make a batch of this Peri Peri BBQ Seitan Chicken to take along to grill up and serve over some salad and wow everyone who eats it! They won't believe that it's 100% vegan! The Peri Peri marinade is super easy to make when you use Steenbergs Piri Piri seasoning. Full of all the spices you need, with none of the faff! (NB: This is a sponsored post with Steenbergs)
🌶Peri Peri
Wikipedia explains Piri Piri is a name for a type of chilli pepper in Portuguese. It's also commonly called Peri-Peri in English. The name originates from the Swahili Pilipili which means pepper. (read more here for the full low down on the name and pepper!)
For our purposes with this BBQ Peri Peri Seitan Chicken, however, we're thinking of that spicy sauce and marinade made famous by Nandos and other Portuguese style restaurants. Spicy, herbal, a little acidic and totally addictive! Yum!
The basic seitan recipe is based on my shreddable seitan chicken, but made into filets and marinaded in Peri Peri. Of course you can use any vegan 'chicken' instead of making your own. Serve the Vegan Peri Peri Chicken up with some Chipotle seasoned rice and plenty of salad, maybe with this Lemon Herb Tahini Dressing to top it all off.
📑Ingredients
- Steenbergs Piri Piri Seasoning With a tasty blend of chilli, paprika and other herbs such as ground ginger and cardomam, this yummy blend can be used as a rub, as a marinade or even stirred into a stir fry.
- Seitan Chkn Our classic seitan chicken recipe is used here, but formed into smaller 'chicken breast' type sizes. We marinaded it overnight in the seasoning mix to allow the flavours to really penetrate!
- Garlic Essential addition to the marinade!
- Lemon Juice and Vinegar a combination of both of these acidic ingredients keeps the flavours bright and sumptuous.
- Sugar A litttle sugar added to the marinade ensures that a delicious stickyness happens when you grill the vegan chkn!
👩🍳How To
First make your vegan seitan chickn breasts:
- Blend together all the ingredients for the Seitan Chicken except the Vital Wheat Gluten.
2. Now gently stir in the blended liquid into the vital wheat gluten.
3. Let it rest for a while so the liquid absorbs into the wheat gluten.
4. Knead the dough in a food processor until it's stringy (see photo).
5. Parcel up the dough into roughly 15cm x 5cm pieces and wrap in foil.
5. Steam for 1 hour 45 minutes. Let it cool completely
Make the Peri Peri Marinade
- In a container with a tight-fitting lid, mix together the lemon juice, chopped garlic, vinegar, sugar and 2-3 tablespoons of the Peri Peri seasoning mix.
2. Break open the vegan seitan chicken fillets a little to allow more marinade in! Then rub the marinade all over each piece of seitan chicken.
3. Leave them all in the container in the fridge for at least 2 hours to marinate, or even better, overnight. Turn a few times if you remember, to distribute the marinade.
BBQ the Peri Peri Seitan Chicken
First, get your BBQ or Grill really hot!
- Grill the seitan pieces over a hot BBQ or on a griddle pan.
2) Baste the BBQ seitan chicken with excess Peri Peri marinade so it's super juicy!
❓FAQ
Yes you can. It freezes well, so make ahead and grill as you need it.
You can purchase them online here. (ad) You can also find them in good supermarkets and delis in the UK.
You could use the marinade to baste tofu or tempeh. Or even store bought vegan chicken pieces.
The basic seitan chicken recipe does serve between 6-10 people (depending on how you're using the seitan). Make all the 'fillets' and freeze what you don't need, either as is, or cubed up. Then you have a great vegan chicken substitute ready in your freezer!
You can either look for a peri peri /piri piri sauce or marinade. Or blend hot chilli powder, sweet smoked paprika, ground cumin, ground black pepper and dried ginger to taste.
Vegan 'chicken' is much easier to find at the supermarket now, so go ahead and use your favourite instead making it.
🥗Serving Ideas
Why not serve up the BBQ Peri Peri Seitan 'Chicken' with some of these fantastic sides
- High Protein Quinoa Tabbouleh Salad (Gluten Free)
- Chargrilled Chopped Corn, Tomato & Herb Salad
- Summer Potato, Pea & Dill Salad
And definitely some lovely grilled corn on the cob and the super easy tahini dressing from this recipe : Quinoa Super Salad with Lemon Tahini Dressing
🍽Similar Recipes
For the full low-down on how to make seitan chicken, see here: Basic Vegan Seitan Chicken (no wash method)
Love the idea of seitan? Why not try these recipes on your next BBQ?
- Vegan Smokey Seitan and Black Bean Sausages
- Ultimate Vegan Blackbean & Mushroom Seitan Burger
- Easy Vegan Hoisin Seitan Ch'kn Bao
If you love our BBQ Peri Peri Seitan Chicken recipe, please let us know in the comments below, and share with all your friends!
📖 Recipe
BBQ Peri Peri Seitan 'Chicken'
Equipment
Ingredients Note:
For accuracy, I measure all ingredients in metric as standard, then convert and test the recipe for American cup measurements etc.
(Heads up Aussie and UK readers- your measurements in cups are sometimes different, so please use metric or check you have the correct cup and spoon type!!)
Ingredients
For the Seitan Chicken Fillets
- 250 g vital wheat gluten
- 1 onion
- 3 cloves garlic
- 300 g white beans (Equivalent to 1 tin/can)
- 1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
- 1 tablespoon sunflower or rapeseed oil (or other neutral oil: NOT coconut )
- 1 tablespoon white miso
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 350 ml water (* To make up 700 ml liquid total. Add more or less according to what you need.)
For the Marinade
- 3 tablespoon piri-piri seasoning (also known as peri-peri. We use Steenbergs)
- 1 lemon, juiced
- 2 tablespoon white wine vinegar
- 2 tablespoon coconut palm sugar / caster sugar
- 3 cloves garlic
Instructions
For the Seitan Chicken Fillets
- First whizz up all the ingredients except for the Vital Wheat Gluten in a blender until smooth and creamy. You want 700ml of liquid total, so if it is a bit less once the beans and onions are processed, add a little more.
- In a large bowl, gently combine the liquid and the Vital Wheat Gluten.
- Mix and leave to rest for 15-20 minutes to allow the liquid to absorb into the gluten properly (this forms better strands).
- Now knead the dough in a mixer or food processor (or by hand) until you have smooth, very stringy elastic dough. About 15 minutes.
- Form the dough into 15-20cm fillet sized pieces. Then lightly wrap them in foil.
- Steam the seitan in a large pot with a trivet, or using a bamboo steamer, or any other steamer, for 1.5 hours (be careful not to let the pot boil dry).
- Once steamed, let the fillets cool in the foil. Even better, let them rest overnight in the fridge for the best texture!
To Marinate and cook the Peri Peri Seitan Chicken
- Finely chop the garlic.
- In a tupperware or tightly lidded container that will fit all your seitan fillets in, mix up the marinade ingredients.
- Remove the foil from the vegan seitan chicken and break the fillets open a bit (to let more marinade in!)
- Smoosh each fillet into the marinade to ensure it is evenly covered, before squishing them all into the tupperware container. Close the lid & invert it a bit to let more marinade get to all the fillets!
- Leave to marinade in the fridge for at least 2 hours and up to 24 hours. Try and remember to give the container a mix whenever you peer into the fridge looking for snacks.
- When ready to grill, brush your BBQ or griddle with some oil & get it nice and hot.
- Grill the BBQ Peri Peri Seitan Chicken fillets (do some sweetcorn too, while you're at it!)
- While grilling, brush a little extra marinade over the top for extra flavour.
- Serve with salad, your favourite dressing (we like tahini lemon dressing) and love.
Kandi Olive says
This recipe looks delicious and worth a try. I'm wondering what I could use instead of aluminum? Any ideas?
Louise-Claire Cayzer says
You could try wrapping it in clean muslin or cheese cloth. It might stick a bit coming off, but I imagine it would work. Make sure it's 100% cotton or linen though, definitely do NOT put any synthetic fibres in hot steam.
Alternatively parchment/greaseproof paper might work- but it also might disintegrate. If you do try it with that, try with a small piece first. Good luck.
Liz says
Love this idea!! I've always wanted to try peri peri but I'm a vegetarian so this seitan recipe is perfect for me!
Louise-Claire Cayzer says
I hadn't had it either as have been veggie for decades! It's so yummy to be able to try it!
Shadi Hasanzadenemati says
I was looking for a recipe like this, thank you for sharing!
Louise-Claire Cayzer says
Thank you! Hope you like it!
Claudia Lamascolo says
what a fantastic plate of fun plus delicious foods!
Louise-Claire Cayzer says
Thank you!
Caroline says
Seitan is something I haven't really experimented with but I do love peri peri flavors and look forward to giving this a try. The colors of all the ingredients on this plate look great too.
Louise-Claire Cayzer says
Thank you! Seitan is fun to play with once you get the hang of it, and can really take bold flavours being thrown at it, so it's perfect for marinading.
Alisha Rodrigues says
Oh wow !! This looks like the kinda thing I'd like to serve at my party ... My guest would love it and the marinade looks yumm
Louise-Claire Cayzer says
The marinade is SO yummy! It's perfect to make for a party!