Seitan Pot Pie

The uncut pie looks rather uninteresting, but there’s plenty of goodness inside!

December has been all about the comfort food.

The seitan I made for Thanksgiving was rather huge, so I cut a bunch of it up into chunks with the intention of making seitan pot pie later. I ended up having to freeze them until I had both the time and the inclination to make it, but I’m glad that I did!

You know, I’m not sure that I’ve ever made a pot pie from scratch? Mostly I’ve had the frozen variety. They’re a bit tricky to make!

Believe it or not, I made this after work. I had made the pie crust the night before, so that just had to be rolled out (I used the olive oil crust from Vegan Pie in the Sky, using white whole wheat flour). I had also cooked the veggies the night before, so that left the gravy to be made, the veggies and seitan thrown in, and then the whole thing to bake. It was fortunate that it happened to be a day where I didn’t come home starving hungry from work, too, as it does take while to bake. 🙂

Seitan Pot Pie

• 1-double pie crust, bought or homemade
• 2 cups seitan, cubed (use less if you need to, such as if you’re using store bought)
• 2-3 carrots, sliced
• 1-2 stalks celery, diced
• 1 cup frozen peas
• 2 cups veggie broth
• 1/2 cup non-dairy milk
• 2 Tbs margarine
• 1/2 of an onion, minced
• 2 Tbs flour
• salt, pepper, celery seed, thyme, rosemary to taste

1. Preheat oven to 425F
2. Prepare the pie crusts. Have bottom crust ready in the pie plate.
3. Bring a pot of water to a boil. Add carrots, cook for 15 minutes; add peas and celery for the last 5 minutes; drain and put aside. Mix with seitan.
4. Melt margarine in a skillet; add onion and cook until translucent. Sprinkle flour and mix well with the margarine/onion mixture.
5. Slowly pour in the broth, whisking as you go and making sure to break up all clumps of flour. Do the same with the non-dairy milk. Add in spices.*
6. Cook over medium heat, whisking constantly as the sauce thickens and comes to a boil. When it looks like gravy, it’s done. Taste for spices/salt, and then add the seitan/vegetable mixture to the gravy.
7. Ladle the gravy/veggie/seitan mixture into the prepared pie crust. Put the top crust on, trim, and pinch together/flute the crust. Cut at least 5 slits in the top of the pie to vent steam.
8. Bake 45 minutes, or until crust is browned and flaky.

*If you’re cool, you’ll add dry spices to the pan when you’re sautéing the onions. Leave fresh for the end!

I won’t call this a healthy weeknight meal, as there’s a lot of fat (crust), and it’s not easy to make when you get home from work unless you’ve done all the prep work ahead of time. It would be nice for a Sunday dinner, though!

Note, you can also make this up to the point to baking and pop in the freezer, then put it directly in the oven when you’re ready to bake. If you are using a glass pie plate, do one of two things:

1. Put a layer of aluminum foil in the bottom of the pie plate, with a layer of plastic wrap on top, then put in your bottom curst, as proceed with the recipe. Cover with more plastic wrap and foil before freezing, and once frozen, lift the whole pie out of the pie plate, and put the pie back in the freezer as is. Remove foil/plastic and plop back into pie plate when ready to bake, and bake in a preheated oven (will take longer than regular recipe).
2. Alternately, no foil/palstic in the bottom of the plate, just to cover when in the freezer, leave pie in the pie plate. When ready to bake, put the frozen pie/pie plate in a COLD oven, then turn up the heat. Never, never put a glass pie plate straight from the freezer into a hot oven.

There you have it! This is a really flexible recipe- you can add in whatever veggies you like/have on hand. Pasrnips or potatoes would be good, for sure!