I miss sausages so much. Sausages and ketchup is one of my favourite foods. With the no pork rule on my low histamine diet, and not being able to have tomatoes, this is a meal I can no longer have.

So, I started doing some research on meat substitutes. Most of these contain soya, or some kind of pulse, so that was a no for me. Even most of the recipes did too.

Then I came across seitan. While all of the recipes did contain chickpeas, chickpea flour, beans or lentils, I thought that rice would make a good swap. I’ve given this a few goes now, and I think I’ve got the balance of flavours right. The first batch was far too fennelly, but now I think it’s a pleasant undertone.

Cooking the rice in stock is a really important stage, as it adds flavour usually brought by things like tomato paste and soy sauce. I use chicken stock for mine, but you could easily use vegetable stock instead.

Ingredients

Instructions

• Cook the rice. Place rice and stock in a pan, bring to the boil, cover and reduce heat to cook for about 10 minutes. You shouldn’t need to drain it once it’s done as all the liquid should be absorbed.
• Heat a pan over a medium high heat, and fry the celery in oil. If it starts to catch, you can add a little stock to the pan.
• Once soft, add a drop more oil and add the fennel seeds. Let them cook until they start to pop, about a minute.
• While the celery is cooking, assemble the other ingredients except the vital wheat gluten in a food processor.
• When the celery and fennel are done, add them in too, and whizz until well mixed together. You don’t want the rice to be completely blitzed as this will add texture to the sausages.
• Add the vital wheat gluten, and whizz gently until the mix all comes together. This will happen quite quickly.
• Divide the mix into four and roll them into sausage shapes. It doesn’t matter if they’re not particularly neat, everything will even out in the steaming process.
• Roll each sausage first in greaseproof paper then in foil, twisting the ends like a cracker. The greaseproof is important so the seitan doesn’t stick to the foil.
• Steam the sausages over boiling water for 40 minutes, turning them over halfway through.
• Leave to cool until you can handle them, then take off the wrappings.
• Serve as desired. I like to fry mine up over a very gentle heat and slice them into a sandwich.

Tips

• This recipe has an upped salt content as I have dysautonomia, so feel free to reduce if you’re not dealing with that too.
• You could try switching the rice to another type, just follow the instructions for cooking.
• There will be too much rice, but I’ve used the leftovers in summer rolls, or just doubled up this recipe. I decided it would be hard to cook less than 1/4 cup of rice.
• You can freeze these sausages after steaming. To eat, thaw completely then cook as desired- fry, bake, grill until piping hot throughout.
• You can double the recipe, but I’d recommend whizzing it in batches of 4 sausages so as not to clog the processor.