Publised on 01/10/2022. Last Updated on 06/12/2024 by Richard
My vegan turkey roast is ideal for a vegan thanksgiving, plant based Christmas or even a vegan Sunday roast! Made from seitan and packed with herby stuffing!
Here she is, your vegan turkey roast - the ideal vegan meat for the perfect vegan thanksgiving dinner, vegan Christmas dinner or even a simple Sunday lunch! This vegan turkey roast is succulent, meaty and packed full of flavour (and vegan stuffing of course!) ideal for serving with all your fave veggies.
Every year at Christmas and thanksgiving I search the entire interweb for the perfect vegan centrepiece for a big slap-up dinner, but this year I just decided to make it myself. And look where we ended up!? With this magical roast in the middle of the table. It's even got a crispy, flavoursome skin - what more could you actually want!? (Well, obviously besides Vegan Dinner Rolls and Dairy-free Mashed Potatoes).
Vegan meat can be a pretty spooky thing to make, but if you follow my instructions, I guarantee you'll be fine. You may have already made my vegan chicken, or my vegan roast beef, so you may well be familiar with the process. Essentially we're making a large seitan roast which we'll stuff with stuffing and cook in delicious broth to make sure it stays flavoursome.
And in terms of sides, you're also gonna wanna whip up some vegan mashed potatoes and some vegan gravy for with this vegan turkey roast. You know - all the trimmings, as we say!
What is seitan?
If you thought vegan meat was a new thing, you're very wrong! Seitan is a plant-based substitute to meat, made from wheat protein, which originated in China in the 6th century. Wheat protein is also known as gluten (so sorry, this recipe is not coeliac friendly) and has a very stretchy gummy texture before it's cooked.
However, once cooked, seitan becomes super meaty and makes a wonderful substitute to anything from chicken to beef AND NOW TURKEY! Seitan itself is doesn't have a huge amount of flavour. This means that we can tweak flavours with herbs and spices to make our seitan taste like pretty much anything.
How do I make this vegan turkey roast?
Hey guess what!? FULL RECIPE for my vegan turkey roast is at the bottom of the page – feel free to skip down there if you're in a rush to be getting on with your vegan roast dinner.
Alternatively, here's a step by step breakdown!
1. Make your vegan turkey roast spice rub
Remember when we said we can make seitan taste like kinda anything?? Well here's where we make it taste like a turkey roast! This turkey rub is the first step! We're going to be rubbing this blend of herbs and spices on the outside of the vegan turkey while it roasts, so we're starting immediately with the big flavours!
We're talking onion powder, paprika, thyme and sage! All the classics from a roast dinner and more!
2. Blend up the seitan
This is where things get meaty! When we add vital wheat gluten to the wet ingredients, we get a very high-protein dough. You now have two options: you can knead the vegan turkey dough by hand OR you can blend it in a blender (my favourite). When you use a blender or a food processor, it slices the dough and helps to align all the protein molecules into long strands. This gives the seitan a stringy gummy texture when raw, but once cooked it becomes VERY meaty.
I use this technique in other vegan meat recipes too, particularly where we're trying to emulate a roasted piece of meat with plant based ingredients.
3. Stuff and roll the seitan
Once the seitan is suitably blended, it's time to stop, stuff n roll! By this I mean remove the seitan dough from the blender, press it into a rectangle and fill with a roll of prepared vegan stuffing. You then need to roll the dough around the stuffing and seal off the edges. Easy peasy!
4. Wrap the vegan turkey roast in rice paper
Our next step in home-made vegan meat is to wrap the seitan in rice paper! These are the rice paper wrappers used in Vietnamese summer rolls. Once dunked in water, they'll begin to soften and will stick to the seitan quite easily. You want to wrap the entire vegan turkey roast as this layer will emulate the skin of the turkey.
It's fine to double up the layers in some places. You'll find that as the seitan cooks, the rice paper will turn to a sticky paste anyway, so don't worry about being too neat with the arrangement.
5. Add the vegan turkey spice rub
Remember the vegan turkey roast spice rub we made like 500 years ago? Well it's HER turn to shine now! Sprinkle and rub the entire mixture all over the vegan turkey roast and have a nice sniff while you do it! Things are gonna start smelling amazing very soon!
6. Double wrap the vegan turkey roast
When you cook seitan, it likes to expand, kind of like bread. Our aim is to not let this happen! When you constrict seitan during the cooking process, it makes your vegan meat much, well, MEATIER! First layer should be greaseproof paper, as this will come into contact with the super sticky rice paper coating. Next wrap again in muslin or cheese cloth and tie up with chef's twine or natural string.
7. Roast the vegan turkey
For a super succulent vegan turkey, we're going to roast it in an enclosed dish, half filled with veggie broth and a bunch of other flavoursome ingredients. Half way through you'll need to rotate the roast so the other half is submerged in the broth too.
Then finally, when the roast is cooked through, you're going to remove all the wrappings, baste the roast with the remaining broth and return it to the oven with no lid to brown and crisp up!
8. Serve and enjoy!
Let me tell ya! This guy's a WHOPPER! It'll serve a good 8-10 people WITH leftovers for turkey sandwiches the next day. So don't be greedy - invite your mates and neighbours round for a big Sunday lunch or thanksgiving dinner. Actually, the occasion doesn't matter because you've got a MASSIVE VEGAN TURKEY ROAST!
And there it is! Looking for more vegan thanksgiving recipes? You can find my full list here or head straight to my favourites, like vegan Yorkshire puddings, vegan cauliflower cheese, roast potatoes or my exciting vegan roast beef!
As always, it helps me MASSIVELY if you can rate and review this recipe below. This blog is here because people like you actually use it and cook these recipes!
Alternatively, take a picture and pop it on instagram! You can follow me here if you don't already, or use the hashtag #schoolnightvegan when you post!
Vegan Turkey Roast - Seitan
Equipment
- 1 High Speed Blender
- muslin or cheesecloth
Ingredients
For the Turkey Rub
- 1 tablespoon flaky sea salt
- 1 tablespoon soft brown sugar
- 1 teaspoon paprika
- 1 teaspoon ground black pepper
- ½ tablespoon dried thyme
- ½ tablespoon dried rosemary
- 1 teaspoon dried sage
- ½ teaspoon garlic powder
- ½ teaspoon onion powder
For the Turkey
- 700 g silken tofu
- 6 tablespoon vegetable oil make sure it's neutral flavoured: sunflower, rapeseed, canola will do
- 2 teaspoon flaky sea salt
- 2 tablespoon white miso paste
- 2 teaspoon rice vinegar alternatively use apple cider vinegar or white wine vinegar
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder
- 380 g vital wheat gluten
- ½ batch of vegan stuffing see notes below for recipe link
- 4 sheets of rice paper the kind used for summer rolls
For the Roasting Broth
- 3 bay leaves
- 4 sprigs of fresh thyme
- 4 sprigs of rosemary
- 1.5 litres vegetable stock boiling hot
- 1 teaspoon fine sea salt
- 2 tablespoon light brown sugar
- 1 head of garlic sliced in half
- 1 onion quartered
- 1 carrot peeled and quartered
- 2 stalks of celery quartered
Instructions
To Make the Turkey Rub
- In a small bowl combine all the ingredients for the turkey rub and set aside.1 tablespoon flaky sea salt, 1 tablespoon soft brown sugar, 1 teaspoon paprika, 1 teaspoon ground black pepper, ½ tablespoon dried thyme, ½ tablespoon dried rosemary, 1 teaspoon dried sage, ½ teaspoon garlic powder, ½ teaspoon onion powder
To Make the Turkey
- Preheat the oven to 170 °C.
- Place all the turkey ingredients except for the vital wheat gluten, stuffing and rice paper in a high-speed blender and blend until completely smooth. If your mixture isn’t quite smooth, pass it through a fine mesh sieve to remove any chunks.700 g silken tofu, 6 tablespoon vegetable oil, 2 teaspoon flaky sea salt, 2 tablespoon white miso paste, 2 teaspoon rice vinegar, 1 teaspoon garlic powder
- Return the blended mixture to the blender and add the vital wheat gluten. Blend until you have a rough dough then stop the blender and leave to rest for 10 minutes. Blend again for around 2 minutes or until the seitan is stretchy and gummy.380 g vital wheat gluten
- Remove the seitan from the blender and press into a rectangle. Add the stuffing in a line down the centre of the flattened seitan then roll into a cylinder. Set aside.½ batch of vegan stuffing
- Fill a wide bowl with water and dunk a sheet of rice paper a few times until lightly moistened. Lay the rice paper over the rolled seitan. Repeat with the remaining 3 pieces of rice paper until the seitan is completely covered.4 sheets of rice paper
- Being careful not to remove the rice paper from the seitan, sprinkle the surface with the turkey rub and gently spread across the entire surface with your fingers.
- Cut out a rectangle of baking parchment and a larger rectangle of muslin or cheese cloth. Carefully wrap the seitan in the baking parchment and twist the ends to seal, like a christmas cracker. Next, wrap the seitan again in muslin or cheesecloth like a burrito then tie up around the length and width with chef’s twine or natural string as though it were a regular turkey roast.
- Place the vegan turkey roast in a large dutch oven and add all the roasting broth ingredients. Cover with a lid and place in the oven to roast for 45 minutes.3 bay leaves, 4 sprigs of fresh thyme, 4 sprigs of rosemary, 1.5 litres vegetable stock, 1 teaspoon fine sea salt, 2 tablespoon light brown sugar, 1 head of garlic, 1 onion, 1 carrot, 2 stalks of celery
- Lift the lid and rotate the vegan turkey roast so the opposite side is submerged in the broth. Cover with the lid again and roast for another 45 minutes.
- Remove the dutch oven from the oven and carefully remove the vegan turkey roast. Use scissors to snip the twine and unwrap the muslin. Return the vegan turkey roast to whatever broth remains in the dutch oven. Use a brush to baste the top of the seitan and place back in the oven for a further 20 minutes without the lid.
- Serve the vegan turkey roast sliced thinly with your favourite vegetables and gravy.
Notes
Nutrition
WANT MORE VEGAN MEAT!?
Why not try:
Katrin Kramer
The recipe was easy to follow and my vegetarian friend loved it. From a cooking prospective I would skip the rice paper at this stage and add it when I put the roast back into the oven to brown. I will try it again as some kind of fried "chicken" tenders. I think this recipe has endless possibilities for vegetarian/ vegans. Thanks for it !
Poppy
Made this as a belated Christmas dinner and omg wow, it was actually really easy to make and turned out delicious. I did all stages except the final lid off cook the night before so it was easier on the day. Also think this was a good technique as it absorbed lots of the liquid overnight and firmed up too. Thank you you made our Christmas.
Elsie
Also U.K. here. This recipe was non viable.
Can only echo what others have said with regard to it becoming a thick congealed lump in the blender with the friction from the blades fighting the solidity of the goo and is heating up and partially cooking it into a solid lump of material at the bottom of the blender.
This is extremely bad for equipment and will destroy the blender if the thermal shutoff is ignored. Possible difference is the US using an inferior electricity supply, while most of the world uses 240v which would explain the overheating, but there is no way that less torque from an American machine would result in the blades spinning more freely as my kitchenaid wouldn't even rotate at all on any settings.
It's difficult to understand why, and again I can only echo what others have said with it potentially being a difference in the naming of the ingredients somewhere. Yes we had to convert from American into global standard metric, but a few grams here and there shouldn't make such a huge difference in a viable or non viable outcome.
I attempted this last night for today's Boxing day meal and was a write off, but fortunately I have a vegan backup bought from the store.
Unless you are American, DO NOT USE THIS INCORRECT RECIPE.
Kris
This turned out amazing for the second time! The flavour is spot on. I did a few things differently this time around: I used a better food processor (Ninja brand) that did not overheat and worked the seitan into a good texture. I left out the stuffing because it was just too much extra work. A few days before Christmas, I put half the rub on the roast, wrapped it in parchment and cheesecloth and then I baked it for 1.5 hours, flipping halfway through. Then I froze it until Christmas Eve when I took it out to defrost for dinner the next day. I put the rice paper on it then and the rest of the rub and put it in the oven at 350°F for 1 hour. It worked beautifully. Great recipe!
For those leaving really nasty comments: Seitan is finicky and it takes a lot of practice to get right. Google and YouTube are helpful. School Night Vegan is not a "fraud". His recipes are excellent. Maybe you should have done a test run before Christmas day to see if you can even handle making seitan? Don't blame the experienced recipe developer for your lack of skills in the kitchen.
Elsie
Ninja isn't a good brand globally, it's like George Foreman stuff, just a brand slapped on to generic Chinese tat. Americans fall for marketing every time.
My equipment is all Kitchenaid, hardly a downgrade or a poorly made product, they are the gold standard of home cooking and baking, and am still experiencing the same issue others are reporting throughout.
This comment stinks of being a sock puppet account from the feckless idiot who wrote this nonsense recipe.
As others have mentioned you don't put tofu into a seitan recipe as they are designed to be two distinctly different products, and as there is no standard for the amount of liquid in any brand of Tofu, this recipe calls for no other liquid of any kind so of course it is going to fail. The clown who wrote this is obviously completely oblivious to critical differences in products being used as ingredients on a global marketplace. It's unlikely any of the brands used by Americans are bought and sold internationally, yet they are being used here as if the person who wrote it thinks they are standard throughout the world. Tofu comes from many brands with various levels of water content, you can't just write "700g of Silken Tofu" and expect to create something universal. It's not peanut butter.
This website should be geoblocked to the US only, instead of trying to make AdSense revenue with a fraudulent recipe.
Heather Hackney
It would be helpful if the recipe used either millilitres and cups for measurements instead of grams.
I also question the measurements called for, for example 380 grams of vital wheat gluten did not seem to be enough, and the quantity of vegetable broth seemed to be way too much, and such a waste. Perhaps it could have been used for the gravy, along with a corresponding recipe, considering all of the ingredients that went into the liquid around the turkey.
The stated oven temperdid not even reach 350 degrees(converted to Fahrenheit) it was 338 degrees which there is no such number on the oven. Those are my thoughts about this recipe.
Elsie
"Cups" is not an international unit of measurement. If you ask anyone who isn't American to put a cup of something into a recipe, they will of course grab an average sized coffee mug from the cupboard and fill that up with the given ingredient. No one outside of the US has any measuring devices on that basis. If Americans say "a table spoon" then the world opens their cutlery draw and grabs one of the larger spoons used for eating meals. They don't even convert to metric into a rounded number, a table spoon is 14.17 grams. You need a damned calculator if it calls for three and a half of this, two of the other.
The world uses metric: grams, kilograms, milligrams + litres, centilitres, millilitres. Either get with the global standard or geoblock the website so only Americans can use it with their medieval imperial nonsense and seemingly their own version of generic ingredients, as they are costing people a fortune due to arrogance and laziness.
Mark Fry
Nope.
My bosh food processr refused to deal with this in the blender, causing it to overheat, shut off and smell of burning. It's a £500 device.
The mixture is too gummy and thick to the point of preventing the blades from spinning at the bottom.
I tried spooning some out and doing it bit by bit but that didn't work either. So all the pre-measured ingredients have been wasted and now in the bin on xmas morning.
Thanks for ruining xmas!
Xan Nicholls
can confirm exactly the same. there is something wrong with these instructions and method. the bottom of the blender was just a solid lump of brown gum getting darker as the blade spins but not cutting through anything untll the blender overheated, on the minimum setting. turning it up to higher settings doesn't result in any increase in speed because the gum is too thick.
adding some water didn't help either, just ended up with slightly wet mix at the bottom of the blender and everything above the blades just solid in place. spooning some out and adding one spoon at a time doesn't work and most of the stuff i spooned out is like a huge lump of chewing gum
i've wasted a huge amount of money on this buying all the ingredients, spending 45 minutes measuring everything out to the letter in separate bowls before combining them.
the person who wrote this has left our Christmas lunch as nothing more than some veg and gravy. nice one, you fraud.
remove this from the internet immediately before you do any more damage
Mark Fry
Looking at the time you posted, are you UK too?
I wonder if this is a classic case of Americans calling something a different name to the rest of the world, like they do with "tomato sauce". To them that's the thing they use as a base in pasta and pizza, but to us tomato sauce is ketchup. Many of them who aren't actually professional chefs are completely clueless to it so they write recipes (using their weird imperial measurements of spoons, cups etc), so the whole world has to translate their badly written recipes while they think they're the standard. They really need to get out of imperial measurements, gallons, ounces and the rest of it if they want to talk to the internet and be understood.
Whatever the reason, no one should be using anything from this website. The amount of money I've wasted here getting things I've never heard of before now leaves me throwing the lot away as much of it simply doesn't appear in anything else I make.
I bet something similar is happening here by an inexperienced person who thinks they are a chef and assumes the whole world calls their ingredients the same thing but it ending up being something different. I've no idea what's gone wrong here, but the exact ingredients measured out to their weird imperial stuff has resulted in disaster.
Worst possible recipe on the worst possible day of the year. Just don't make anything in future which appears to be coming from Americans, stick with metric or don't waste your time and money.
Mark Fry
oh and in case you didn't realise, a "dutch oven" is what the world outside of america (including the Dutch) calls a casserole dish. i have no idea why they rename things to such bizarre strange names. "english muffins" despite not actually being a muffin, instead of grilling they say "broiling" but also still use grilling interchangeably. they call chips "french fries" despite france having nothing to do with that, and crisps are called chips. its like decades ago someone mishears something and it ends up sticking. hamburgers that neither contain ham nor come from hamburg!
they are a mess and you only need to watch gorden ramsey to see just how badly some of them are while they think they are good but are in fact atrocious. they should stick to their "national dishes" (co-opeted from other nations and corrupted) of "hamburgers", "hot dogs" and "pizza", all the high fat, high salt, high sugar garbage that has made them so overweight with a pallet about as wide as a shoelace.
never trust an american recipe, they are the corruption of food.
Mary Ann
I am in the process of making this but I only used the blender for the wet ingredients, poured it over the vital wheat gluten in a bowl and mixed it by hand. Maybe you've never used gluten flour before? And oh, why slam "Americans". Not really called for. Merry Christmas!
Mary Ann
The guy's a British isn't he???
Elsie
The wet ingredients? Plural? There is only one ingredient with any water content at all in the wheat meat, the Tofu. What brand of Tofu is this person using? What is the water content? This is pretty important as the recipe doesn't call for a single drop of water for the wheat meat at all. It's just another example of America giving incorrect names to internationally recognised food. Seitan is an Asian dish. The entire point of Tofu is that it's an alternative made with soy beans for those with gluten intolerances.
Sjur
After reading the process and recipe, I am wondering about one thing; Do you use 700gr Tofu or Seitan?
Adam
You're not using seitan, you're making it. It's 700g of tofu.
Mark Fry
It seems the world outside of America doesn't create "seitan" with Tofu, it is supposed to be an alternative to Tofu. What they are doing here is creating their corrupted version of "Satan" by throwing tofu into it as if it's a required component of it. It's not what the rest of the world calls seitan. The whole point in seitan is that it has lower fat than Tofu. Here they are combining two separate things and still calling the result "seitan".
Them naming and pronouncing it "Satan" by them ought have been the clue to avoid it..