Post Punk Kitchen Forum

The first time I made chickpea cutlets they came out nice and chewy and stringy like they are supposed to be. Ever since then I have tried different cutlet or tender type recipes and even some burger recipes and the vwg doesn't seem to be giving that texture anymore. Basically it all just comes out mushy. How do I get that chewiness and stringiness back? My bag is the Bob's Red Mill Vital Wheat Gluten Flour. Is it because it is a flour?

vital wheat gluten flour is the same as vital wheat gluten. i think what's special about the chickpea cutlets is that they are super thin, so they can easily cook all the way through. when you make burgers or other things, they might be too thick to fully cook. I find that baking rather than pan frying helps things like that cook better.

it is also possible that your bag of bob's red mill isn't good. I use bob's red mill and arrowhead mills, but I've had bad batches of bob's before where my seitan would just come out weird despite using recipes that I know are fine. if all your mushy things have come from the same bag of gluten, then maybe get another bag. otherwise, try baking or making the things thinner. undercooked gluten is so unpleasant.

I will have to give that a try. Seems like the bulk stuff from Whole Foods and my latest month old bag of Bob's has issues. I made seitan roast with it, but since it was my first one ever, I wouldn't recognize a problem. Maybe I will just buy a new bag and see if there is a difference. I keep them in the fridge like the say.

Have you been kneading it until you can see the gluten strands in the mix? You can control the finished bite by how much kneading you do so maybe your second batch had gluten strands that were not fully formed. I usually have the opposite problem with too chewy from over kneading (the baker in my want to knead for bread dough durations).

There are pictures of the strands in the recipe blogif you don't know what to look for.

Another vote for possibly VWG gone bad. That happened to me once. Ditch the bag and try again with fresh VWG. Be sure that it isn't past the best by date.

I actually just got a little bit of new stuff from the Bulk Food Store today to try. I also think that maybe I wasn't kneading it at all because the other recipes did not call for that. We will see. My Bob's Red Mill bag though is way before the expiration date.

i got some gluten from WF's bulk bins just before thanksgiving, and it turns out they accidentally put high gluten flour in there (not the same thing at all) it was awful.

gluten should have a yellowish hue to it, and feel extremely fine and silky. any bit of grit means it's got some starchy/germ parts in there.