Seitan Wings with Pineapple Habanero Sauce

 This is all I could think about for days. Andy and I were so excited to make this meal! We would text each other things like, “I can’t stop thinking about the sauce!!” …and this was before we even bought the ingredients. We scoured the internet for good wing sauce recipes, but most of them were something along the lines of “Add a stick of butter to a bottle of Frank’s.” Well that’s not exciting! We wanted something super spicy, and it had to be extra delicious because we were going to make it to celebrate two years of being together!

We wondered around the produce section and ended up with these ingredients: 10 habaneros, 2 serranos, 1 poblano, 1 bell pepper, 1 banana, and a container of pineapple. We bought tomatoes but ended up not using them.

 

I got to work on making the sauce long before Andy came over to make sure it sat for a while before we used it. It smelled SO good at this point! Well, it was almost kind of dangerous to smell because it was so potent. Oh, and I didn’t wuss out and take the seeds out of the peppers…it’s totally not worth it without the seeds!

 

I also added 6 cloves of garlic and about 1/8 cup apple cider vinegar.

 

When we were ready to make the wings, I cooked the sauce on the stove with some butter. It simmered on low for about 30 minutes. As it cooked, the flavors got pretty intense, and it started to taste less like salsa.

 

We’ve only had seitan at restaurants and have never bought it in a grocery store. Not really knowing what we were doing, we got this chicken-style seitan. There were quite a few options, but this looked like our best bet.

We were definitely expecting a block of seitan. I don’t know why. They’re actually slightly funky-looking pieces of different shapes and sizes. I guess this is to make them look more natural…?

We were pleasantly surprised when they turned a lovely golden-brown in the skillet! Andy cooked them in butter and olive oil until they were nice and crispy (a good while after this picture was taken). We couldn’t figure out who should have the honor of actually cooking the seitan. Andy is a meat-cooking master, and I’m a tofu-cooking master, so who cooks the fake stuff that looks like chicken? Andy took the honors since I slaved away at the sauce earlier.

    

On the side, I made potato wedges for Andy and sweet potato wedges for me. They were so tasty! I also cut up a TON of celery and carrots. Totally necessary!

After the “wings” were done cooking, they had a nice bath in the sauce. They tasted SO GOOD!! So it definitely won’t fool someone into thinking it’s actually chicken, but that’s not what we were going for. In fact, I was expecting the store-bought seitan to have more of a tempeh-like texture. I think this is because my two favorite places to order seitan wings must use homemade seitan. It’s like they mush a bunch of grains together. Anyway, maybe next time we’ll be more adventurous and make our own!

 

I can’t believe I forgot to take a picture of the blue cheese sauce! It was incredible and SO simple. I just mixed together a small container of 2% plain Greek yogurt (thinned out slightly with some almond milk) with a small wedge of Maytag blue and some black pepper. This also sat in the fridge for a few hours and ended up being so amazing. I think I’m going to make it all the time and dip everything in it!