Xinjiang Cumin Lamb Seitan | 孜然素羊肉

I know this auntie from the Hui tribe and Xinjiang cumin lamb is her signature dish. She always cooks this when entertaining friends and—as it’s never vegan—I can sadly only smell and salivate. After being provoked by a whole bunch of social media posts, I finally decided to make a seitan version.

The seitan-making technique for this dish is almost exactly the same as on this Vegan Cola Chicken WTF Seitan | 可乐素鸡 post. So, please hop over there to read up on the instructions. The only difference is that I added brown food colouring in the making of the initial seitan dough ball. This gives the seitan a realistic colour when cooked.

The flavours in this vegan Xinjiang cumin lamb made with seitan are sooooo good. I don’t really know how to explain it, but it tastes so extremely authentic and lamb-y. This dish is a prime example of how the majority of what we believe is the flavour of meat is really the flavour of the complimenting herbs and spices.

Tips

• If you can’t be bothered with making seitan, you can totally use tofu.
• Cumin seeds are better than cumin powder so use those if possible.
• If you like it sweeter, use yellow onion instead of spring onions. Or use both!
• If you are adverse to bigger pieces of ginger, you can grate the ginger instead.
• Adjust the chilli flakes to your spice level, but make sure the spiciness does not overpower the cumin flavour.
• To replace Chinese white wine (白酒), you can use sake or soju. Or simply replace it with vegetable stock.
• In this dish, the garlic is meant to be slightly raw. If you don’t like that, you can add it in with the ginger and spring onion.

This recipe time is only for cooking this dish and does not include the time spent used making seitan.