Seitan and Artichoke Vegetable Soup, Guacamole, Smoked Salt and Pepper Hemp Tempeh (No Added Fat)

My daughter is having some pain in her gums (and some good vegan ice cream is in order for tonight after dinner!) and wanted to have soup. My Instant Pot makes delicious soup. Here is what I did.


Ingredients

• 5 cups of water
• 8 ounces of seitan chopped into approximately 1/4" x 1" strips
• 1 cup artichoke hearts
• 6 kale leaves, stems excepted, and then roughly torn intro approximately 3/4" squares
• 2 cups of carrots cut into about 3/8" slices (about 5 small carrots)
• 2 scallions (all I had) cut into 3/8" slices (green and white parts both)
• 2t finely chopped basil (I used frozen cubes)
• 1t oregano leaves
• Vegan bouillon cube
• 1/2 t (or to taste) salt
• 1T lemon juice

Process

1. I put all of the ingredients except the lemon juice into my Instant Pot pressure cooker and pressed the "Soup" button, meaning a 30m pressure cook time.
2. After the cooking was done, I waited a few minutes and gently released pressure, then added the lemon juice and served.

I also made some simple guacamole and served it over lettuce greens. We love Smiling Hara brand tempeh; I remarked over dinner to my wife that the dry-rubbed smoked salt and pepper hemp tempeh is probably my favorite tempeh, and she agreed. I had sauteed it with no oil on a cast iron pan after cutting the tempeh first in half, width-wise.

Results

We all enjoyed dinner. I had concluded that tofu, but not tempeh or seitan, benefits from pressure cooking, but a long 30m pressure cook time was nice for the seitan in the soup, softening it. We all liked how the artichoke heart tasted in the soup.

Ideas for the future

I should experiment with cooking seitan under pressure over, say, 15 or 20m or more. The pressure cooker makes such great soups - I should make soup more often.