My husband has been vegetarian for over 15 years, yet he still answers “ribs” when asked his favorite food. Last year for Father’s Day I made him these juicy, chewy, meaty jackfruit ribs and they’ve become a regular meal in our house since then.
Jackfruit has been floating around in the vegan world for a few years now, usually as a pulled pork substitute. It works great to add a shredded texture to these seitan ribs!
I add refined coconut oil and peanut butter to give them a fattier texture, but you could easily substitute both of those out for a more firm result. I also use ground dried shittake mushrooms to add a little “umami”. I find whole shittake mushrooms at my local international store and grind them and store in a jar. If you don’t have these available to you, feel free to omit it.
This recipe calls for an Instant Pot, but if you don’t have one you can use a steamer to steam the ribs or an oven to bake them, whichever is your preference. They are very versatile!
Ingredients:
- 1 1/2 cups water
- 1/4 cup nutritional yeast
- 2 tablespoons paprika
- 2 tablespoons refined coconut oil
- 2 tablespoons peanut butter
- 2 tablespoons soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon liquid smoke
- 1 tablespoon ground dry shittake mushrooms (optional)
- 1 tablespoon onion powder
- 1 tablespoon garlic powder
- 1 10 ounce can jackfruit in brine
- 2 1/4 cups vital wheat gluten
Directions:
- Drain and rinse jackfruit. Shred pieces apart and remove seeds. Chop cores very finely, or remove complete.
- Combine all ingredients up to the jackfruit in a food processor fitted with a dough blade. Blend for 20 seconds to fully combine.
- Add shredded jackfruit and 1 cup vital wheat gluten. Blend for about 30 seconds to combine, then add 1 and 1/4 cup vital wheat gluten. Blend for another 2 minutes until dough starts to become ‘stringy’.
- Dump onto a cutting board and divide into 4 pieces. Score the tops to make each individual ‘rib’.
- Wrap each slab in foil and seal ends tightly.
- Add 2 cups water to Instant Pot. Add trivet and stack foil packages inside. Use the manual setting, high pressure, for 40 minutes. Alternatively, you can bake at 350°F for 40 minutes instead, but wrap each package in an extra layer of foil.
- At this point you can refrigerate or freeze until ready to use, or use immediately. Simply cover in your favorite barbecue sauce and bake at 350°F for 15 minutes.
Avocados and Ales 
I’ve made something similar and it rocked, but I’m looking forward to trying your version next because I love the mushroom idea!
Am I missing what to do with the 1/4 cup wheat gluten that hasnt been used?
I’ll chck again.
No, it is supposed to added to the second addition of gluten!
Ok thanks. I must have missed ot.
I made seitan steaks in the past many times and found them too firm, I liked you idea of incorporating jackfruit into the the seitan and it worked wonderfully. The result was wonderfully moist too. I will be posting my variation of your recipe on my blog soon, but thanks for the idea has to go to you fully.
My ribs were absolutely delicious. I baked them ~40 minutes after adding the BBQ sauce and were even better the next day!
All of your recipes look absolutely delicious 😋 delicious 🤤, but most call for oil. Is the Oil absolutely necessary? If not… can hardly wait to try this!
what exactly does the instantpot do? make the “meat” firmer??? and how large is your instantpot?
I used the 6qt. It does the main cook on the ribs, and makes them more moist as opposed to baking in the oven the entire time.
Excellent recipe, really really excellent.
You don’t quite the weight for the VWG in this recipe but you do for the chickwheat. Am I safe in assuming you use VWG with the same density in this recipe as the chickwheat?
I only ask because I’ve always found that my volume measurements of VWG are inconsistent with a recipe’s weight measurements. For example, in your chickwheat recipe, if I measure out the same volume of VWG as you quote, I end up with about 20 grams less VWG than what you quote.
Hi Dom, this recipe was written before I included weight measurements, prior to owning a kitchen scale. I would assume the same densities-I do tend to pack my cups in volume measurements so add a few tbsp more if the recipe seems too wet.
Oh how delicious! Thanks alot for that recipe. I’m from Germany. We weigh everything so I was so happy that you used a scale for the chickwheat. I do have cups but gramms and mililiters are so much better I think.
I used 65 gr more of vwg in this recipe and it worked great. I ran out of foil so I only used baking paper. They came out awesome. The only thing that only worked on one of the four pieces was that the scores I cut were still shown. Do you have any advice for that? Please excuse any mistakes. All the best, Alice
I would try just cutting the scores a bit deeper next time!