The Best Seitan Corned Beef Recipe Ever (Vegan) (2024)

Make this vegan corned beef for your St Patrick’s Day feast, or any time! Serve it with cabbage and potatoes any time you want a good hearty main dish for dinner! (It also makes amazing vegan corned beef reuben sandwiches!) This meaty homemade seitan recipe – with beets for that bright pink color – is made in your slow cooker before being baked with a black pepper crust. The result is 100% worth the time that goes into it!

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Let’s get in the kitchen, pour ourselves a drink, and turn up the Irish music. We’re celebrating St. Patrick’s Day vegan-style with this delicious recipe for Vegan Corned Beef!

For those of you who aren’t already familiar, corned beef & cabbage with boiled or mashed potatoes is a dish many Irish-Americans see as a quintessential component of their St Patrick’s Day traditions.

During the weeks leading up to the feast day, we see this dish listed as a special at almost every Irish pub in Philly. So obviously, we had to make our own! And friend, it is the real deal.

How to Make Traditional Corned Beef Vegan

Traditionally, corned beef is made by taking a fatty piece of beef and soaking it in a salty / vinegary brine for several days. Because this brine often contains nitrites, the meat has a bright pink color for which it’s known.

It’s then often glazed or rubbed with some fresh black pepper and pickling spice blend and baked low & slow. All this results in a tender roast with an incredible flavor. It’s like the Irish version of beef brisket.

For our corned beef meat alternative, we kept a lot of the methods and flavor of the traditional way but updated the ingredients. Once again, this recipe is the real thing and proves that one need not surrender one’s ethics in favor of one’s traditions.

Also, leftovers are perfect the next day on some rye bread with a little vegan Swiss cheese and vegan Russian dressing for an amazing Reuben! Possibly my favorite sandwich. I also think it would make an amazing vegan meat substitute for corned beef hash.

Ingredients for Vegan Corned Beef

The ingredients list for this seitan corned beef may look long, but a lot of it is spices and simple stuff, so don’t let yourself get overwhelmed too quickly!

I’ll walk you through an overview of what you need for each component of the recipe. But remember the full recipe with ingredient amounts can be found in the recipe card below!

For the beet puree, you’ll need: A can of sliced or whole beets. Make sure you don’t get candied beets!

To make the seitan itself, you’ll need:

• Vital wheat gluten – This is a key ingredient in all seitan recipes! You can sometimes find this at the grocery store in either the “natural foods” section or with the flour and other baking ingredients. We usually order it in bulk online. Popular brands we use: Bob’s Red Mill and Anthony’s Goods.
• All-purpose flour – Instead of chickpea flour or nutritional yeast, try adding some all-purpose flour to your seitan dough. It sounds totally weird, but it improves the texture by leaps and bounds. No more chewy, tough seitan! We got this tip from Connie’s Rawsome Kitchen on Youtube and highly reccomend following her if you want to get better at making seitan!
• Brown sugar – Feel free to reduce or cut this if you want, but I like the slightly sweet balance it adds.
• Seasonings: sea salt, ground cumin, onion powder, garlic powder, ground cinnamon, ground allspice, and ground mustard
• Refined coconut oil – Melted. Make sure you get a coconut oil lableed “refined” and not one labeled “unrefined” or “virgin”. If your seitan tastes like coconuts, this is where you went wrong!

For the spice rub, you’ll need: Ground black pepper, sea salt, ground mustard, ground allspice

For the brine, you’ll need:

• Reserved water from canned beets – Reserve that canned beet water! Adding this to the crockpot when you cook your roast will help amp up the color (which will fade when it cooks)
• Water
• Beet puree
• Mushrooms – These are optional. They just add a nice earthy flavor to our vegan meat!
• Garlic cloves – Crushed. No need to chop, these are just for flavor!
• Rice wine vinegar
• Ground black pepper and sea salt
• Allspice berries (whole spices)
• Ground mustard

A Note for Beet-Haters

But for my beet-haters out there, I feel it’s important to let you know that the end result does not at all taste like a beet.

Trust me. I’m someone who has to hold her nose when cooking beets because the five-year-old picky eater in me just simply cannot.

But I do know how healthy they are, so I’m super pumped I found a way to make them virtually unrecognizable but still attain some of the awesome health benefits. Always a score with that one!

How to Make Vegan Corned Beef

This recipe definitely takes some time and planning ahead, but I can say from experience it is worth it!

Step 1: Make the beet puree.

First, get your beet puree ready: Open your cans and drain the water out of each of them, reserving it in a bowl for the brine. Then, add all the sliced beets to your food processor and blend until a puree is formed. Set this aside for now.

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Step 2: Make the seitan dough.

Next, you’ll make the seitan dough: In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the gluten, flour, and all the spices. Make a well in the center of the mixture and pour in your melted refined coconut oil and 2/3 cup of the beet puree. Stir until combined. Then, get in there and knead the dough with your hands for about a minute.

Step 3: Add the rub.

Add the rub: ​Cut a piece of plastic wrap into a large rectangle and sprinkle on a pinch of black pepper, ground mustard, ground allspice, and sea salt. Place the seitan dough on top of the seasonings and sprinkle the spices again on top of the loaf.

Then, wrap the seitan dough tightly and stick it in the fridge for at least an hour or overnight. I know this extra step makes the process that much longer, but a little planning ahead can go a long way. After we tried this tip, our seitan texture rocked.

Step 4: Slow cook the vegan corned beef.

Slow-Cooker: While your dough rests, get your brine ready by adding all the ingredients to your slow cooker and turn it on low.

When time’s up, take your seitan out of the fridge, unwrap it, and add it to the slow cooker. Cook on low for 2 hours, then flip and cook on high for another 2 hours.

Step 5: Prep the seitan corned beef for baking.

Prep for the oven: When the seitan has about 15 minutes left in the slow cooker, preheat your oven to 275F and grease a 9×9 casserole dish.

Sprinkle 1 tsp black pepper and 1/2 tsp sea salt into the bottom of the baking dish and carefully place your roast on top of it. Take about 1/4 cup of liquid from the slow cooker and pour it on top of the roast. Then, sprinkle it with another 1 tsp black pepper and 1/2 tsp sea salt.

Step 6: Bake the seitan.

Bake the corned beef seitan: Pop that baby in the oven and bake at 275F for 45 minutes. Then, use a spatula to carefully flip the roast, pour another 1/4 cup of liquid from the slow cooker on top, and once again sprinkle with salt and pepper. Bake for another 45 minutes.

Step 7: Finish and enjoy!

Finishing Touches: When the time is up, allow your roast to cool at room temperature for at least 20-30 minutes before you slice it.

Serve with cabbage & boiled potatoes for an awesome traditional meal. Enjoy!

Seitan Corned Beef Tips and Tricks

This seitan recipe is a bit different from ones we have posted in the past, thanks in part to the AMAZING Connie from Connie’s RAWsome Kitchen on YouTube.

If you’re looking for some serious outside-the-box cooking inspiration, she’s totally your girl!

Here’s what we learned from Connie that helped make this dish incredible:

• Once your seitan dough is made, wrap it in plastic wrap and set it in the fridge for at least an hour. I knowww this makes the process that much longer, but a little planning ahead can go a long way. After we tried this tip, our seitan texture rocked.
• Have FUN with it! Sometimes, especially when developing recipes starts to become your actual job , you forget that cooking is supposed to be fun and experimental. Mistakes and miracles are both going to happen when you pursue anything remotely creative (and I 100% believe cooking is a creative endeavor). But you can’t be so afraid of the mistakes that you stop trying new things. If you do that, you’ll never get to the miracles. And this vegan corned beef recipe is one of the miracles, btw.
• Embrace the beet! Connie also uses beets in many of her seitan recipes like we did in this seitan ham roast. That’s something I knew I definitely wanted to do for this corned beef. It’s the perfect way to add that iconic bright pink color to your vegan corned beef, sans the terrifying effects of nitrites. Seriously, Google search that stuff. It’s pretty frightening.

More Vegan Seitan Recipes

• Seitan Ham Roast with a Pineapple Mustard Glaze (a holiday favorite!)
• How to Make Seitan Sausages
• Stuffed Vegan Roast for Thanksgiving
• Be sure to check out ALL our favorite vegan Saint Patrick’s Day recipes!

If you try this recipe for St Patrick’s Day or anytime, we would LOVE to know how it went and see your beautiful creations!

You can rate the recipe and leave a comment below or tag us in your drool-worthy photos on Instagram. If you’re not already following, we’re @theplantpowercouple, with the ‘the’.

We hope you enjoy this vegan corned beef recipe as much as we enjoyed creating it.

Happy St Patrick’s Day, friends!