Post Punk Kitchen Forum

I really want to try the steamed seitan sausage recipe from The Everyday Dish. I've seen versions (all online) with beans instead of chickpea flour, and different seasonings. However, they all seem to call for nutritional yeast, and I've had no luck finding it! Health food stores around here seem to only carry brewer's yeast, and the one place I've found online that carries Engevita Nutritional Yeast have been out of stock for a month.
Is there a good sub? Or a combination of things? I've seen nooch described as "nutty and cheesy" in flavour, how about a combination of sheese and nuts? Or miso, for savouriness?

it's a dry ingredient, so you could just add more vital wheat gluten to absorb the moisture - if you use soy sauce and other seasoning it'll probably be plenty flavorful. could you link us to the recipe you're planning to use?

I would not add more gluten, primarily because I'm pretty sure it absorbs water very differently than nooch does. If anything, I would add a bit more whatever flour you're using. I've often cut back the nooch by half and made no additional substitutes with no ill effects.

When the recipe calls for nutritional yeast as one of the seasonings, I just leave it out. I don't like the stuff at all. Blech.

i recently made two of the Vegan Brunch sausage recipes, and i added some extra gluten powder because the dough seemed a bit wet. the texture for both seemed fine once they were cooked.

Something like this http://www.theppk.com/2008/02/on-sausages-and-community/. It seems to be a hit with a lot of people.
Is nutritional yeast salty at all, should I use more salt?

When I don't have nooch, I just leave it out of sausages and don't sub anything (or add a simdge of extra regular flour). They turn out fine.

Nutritional yeast isn't salty. Don't increase the salt.

In the recipe above, I would make it as written, omitting the yeast. If the mixture seems a bit too wet, add a tablespoon or two of flour. I don't think you would want to sub an equal amount of flour for nutritional yeast because the flour is heavier. It won't hurt the finished seitan if the raw mixture is a bit damp. You just don't want it to be really wet and gloopy.

I've both left it out and or subbed chickpea flour or soy flour and it comes out fine. seitan sausages are surprisingly forgiving.

The only time I had an extreme failure with them was when I made joanna's beer brats and didn't let the beer sit out long enough, so it was still fizzy when I made them. The sausages totally exploded in the steamer.

Are you able to order from Amazon.com? That's where I get my nutritional yeast.

^ This exactly. I'm on team "I love nooch put it in everything" but when I'm tragically out of it, I just leave it out of recipes and add a bit of flour if need be. Your sausages will still be scrumptious, promise!

I agree with what others have said... based on that recipe I would just omit it, and if the texture is too "wet" just add a little flour to compensate. I have made seitan sausagey things in this way and they turned out fine. If you really can't find it locally, I'm pretty sure iHerb delivers to Sweden and they have several brands to choose from.

Thanks everyone for your advice! I'll probably get my hands on some nooch sooner or later (I definitely want to try it), but now I feel confident about trying sausage recipes without it! Beans are defrosting right now and I'll probably get mixing and steaming tonight after dinner.

we do have some members in Sweden, you might want to check out the regional forum (the square) for that area.
if not, i'm sure i've seen several european members talk about ordering products online.

we simply don't have nutritional yeast here and i bring it when i travel -and use it VERY sparingly. it provides a cheesy, umami kind of flavor that you might approach (not replace, but approach) with miso. make sure you reduce your wet ingredients accordingly.

Amonik, I live in Denmark, and Sweden is so much more veggie friendly than DK is, so I am sure you can easily get your hands on some "bjäst flingor". MATAS sells it in DK. And most health food shops should have some as well, they do here.

lycka till ;)

Have you checked the supplement section of the health food stores? Here in the Netherlands, it took me a while to find the nutritional yeast because it wasn't with the foods but rather with the supplements. Also, it helped to know what I was looking for. For the longest time I thought it just wasn't available here, and then I realized I just had no idea what the Dutch name for it would be (edelgist). Once I figured out the name and where it was hiding, I suddenly started to see it everywhere.

I always ordered it from Amazon before I lived near a Whole Foods.

A lot of the vendors that sell food on Amazon won't ship to Europe. I've just checked three brands (Bob's Red Mill, Red Star, and KAL) and none of them will ship to Europe. (Sometimes it says right away on the product page that it won't ship to your default address, sometimes you have to go through checkout to discover this.)

I've never had a problem with iHerb though. I think they ship everywhere within Europe, and if you keep your package under 4 lbs, the shipping costs are doable. That said, if you can find a local source, even better, and I see that there's a wikipedia page in Swedish about nutritional yeast, so I suspect there should be somewhere in the country you can get it. Like someone already mentioned, there are a few Swedish PPKers active here. They should be able to steer you in the right direction.

I still haven't checked this out myself, but you should be able to find it here. There's a branch 500m from me, but they're always closed when I go shopping, so I'm just using the box I got from Germany and I brought back a container of Engevita from England when I was there recently. If you're going to try Amazon, I would go with UK or DE.

ETA: Goodstore.se seems to have Engevita, but you have to search for "Marigold" on their site to find it.

I'll look into it! Meanwhile, the sausages are tasty. I forgot the instructions and made ten tiny ones, which work fine in a bun with ketchup.

Tack! Bjäst is everywhere, but seems to be quite different in flavour. The online vendor I keep looking at is veganlife.se (have ordered stuff from them before) and I've been to a few health food stores in Borås and Gothenburg, but no luck so far. It feels a lot less urgent now that I was able to make great sausages without it though :-D