“Food and Beverage” from Nathan Upchurch

Making a Decent Vegan Ranch Dressing

2026-05-25T00:00:00Z

If, like me, you have ever lived in the U.S.A., and if, like me, you are of a sufficiently distinguished BMI so as to rank highly the invention of comestibles, you will agree^[1] that Ranch (enPR: rāyŭnch) dressing is one of the great American inventions—right up there with the cotton gin, surgical anesthesia, and the modern assembly line.

This bottle is about half empty already.

For those unfamiliar with the condiment, Ranch dressing is a tangy, herbaceous, and unsettlingly white sauce of moderate viscosity intended for use as a salad dressing. In practice, it is also used as a dip for everything from fresh vegetables to fried foods, and a general purpose condiment that you might find in or on anything from pizzas to sandwiches. These days, Ranch dressing is essentially a cool, green-flecked, less-sweet alternative to ketchup, only limited in its uses by your imagination. The flavor is peculiar. It’s creamy, tangy, savory, and herbal all at once in a way that is all its own. Is it any good? Here’s what Dan Howell of the internet’s most famous gaslighting gay couple had to say about it:

They could hide their relationship for sixteen years, but nothing could obscure Dan’s love of Ranch dressing.

I’ve been vegan for some twelve years now, and store-bought vegan ranch dressing is unfortunately expensive and rarely scratches the itch for me anyway. Dry Ranch seasoning mixes usually contain dairy, so they’re out of the question. Surprisingly, even if this were an affordable avenue, not a single vegan restaurant in the city of Chicago seems to have a decent Ranch dressing either, so I set out to see whether the carnists might have a recipe that I could adapt. I landed on a homemade Ranch seasoning mix recipe from The Pioneer Woman. The recipe helpfully includes instructions for making a dressing from the mix, which I also adapted. Making it is easy. Simply whisk together the following dry ingredients:

Qty	Unit	Ingredient
1	Tbsp	Dried Parsley
2	tsp	Dried Dill
1	tsp	Dried Chives
1	Tbsp	Garlic Powder
1/2	tsp	Ground Black Pepper
n/a	n/a	MSG to Taste
1	Tbsp	Onion Powder
n/a	n/a	Salt to Taste

then whisk the mixture with these wet ingredients until well combined:

Qty	Unit	Ingredient
1/4	cup	Lemon Juice
1	cup	Vegan Mayonnaise
2/3	cup	Vegan Sour Cream
3/4	cup	Water

Now store your homemade vegan Ranch dressing in the fridge, and use it within five days. I’m sure this won’t present a challenge.

By continuing readers agree to indemnify, defend, and hold the author harmless from any and all claims arising from or related to neck sprains and other injuries sustained through vigorous nodding in agreement. ↩︎

Incense Gum? Reviewing the Viral Nathan and Sons Underbrush Remineralizing Gum

2026-02-23T00:00:00Z

Maybe this is just my algorithm, but I just can’t escape Nathan and Sons Underbrush Remineralizing Gum on Instagram. In case your feed isn’t absolutely inundated with Underbrush content like mine, Underbrush is a chewing gum brand that uses natural botanicals rather than the, well, plastic that is commonly used as a gum base. Instead, Underbrush contains chicle, mastic, spruce, and acacia gum, myrrh and other natural ingredients. Are you beginning to see why I’m interested in the stuff? Some of these ingredients might sound more at home in an incense build than something you put in your mouth, but the truth is that plant gums have been chewed for centuries. Hell, people died over mastic in antiquity, such was its acclaim as a herbal medicine, flavoring, and chewing gum. Native Americans used spruce gum in this way, and frankincense has also traditionally been used as a chewing gum.

Naturally, I had to try a gum made, essentially, out of incense materials. The price deterred me for a while, but my curiosity eventually won out. I elbowed my way through the aggressive salesy cruft on the Nathan and Sons website and put in an order for the berry variety (the only vegan option).

Of course I put the stuff on my dusty wee heater.

Underbrush as intended: gum #

With a texture nigh-indistinguishable from any gum you might find on a supermarket shelf, I found Underbrush pleasantly sweet with a mild berry flavor as I began to chew. Unfortunately, this only lasts for, quite literally, seconds before settling down into an ashtray meets lapsang-souchong smoky black tea flavor. It’s genuinely pretty shocking how quickly the flavor changes. I can only assume that the lingering note comes from the myrrh. It really is quite unfortunate that this is the only resin with any flavor left in it—myrrh is infamous for its bitter flavor^[1].

In the ads for this gum, they show the resins being heated in order to mix them together, and I can’t help but wonder whether that’s the culprit here. With plain old frankincense or mastic, the pronounced flavor of the resin lasts for just about as long as you can be bothered to chew. As an incense maker, I am well aware of how quickly heat can evaporate out all of those lovely aromatic volatile compounds—even now I’m grinding some costus root twenty seconds at a time, ensuring that the temperature of the material doesn’t rise beyond 100°F with an infrared thermometer. I don’t really care about the berry flavor, but it seems like abject sacrilege to have all of these nice, rare, and expensive tree resins in a product with their flavor cooked out of them.

After spending close to $40 for 36 pieces of gum, my disappointment is immeasurable. That said, I didn’t buy the stuff just to chew it all anyway. If it’s no good as a gum, how will it fare as incense?

Underbrush as not intended: incense #

At 185°C the gum presents a candy-like sweetness and a fruity acidity with maybe a tiny hint of mastic? Imagine a bag of skittles left in a hot car. The fragrance didn’t change at 250°, but at 300° a toasty note enters and the acidity ramps up before it begins to darken in color and smell burned.

Even as incense, the resins are practically nowhere to be found. What a shame.

Conclusion #

I’m not at all enamored with this stuff. While the gum circumvents the usual issues inherent to chewing resin with its excellent texture, all of those beautiful natural ingredients present little to no flavor. The added flavoring disappears so quickly that it may as well not be there. I can’t speak to the health claims made by Nathan and Sons, but in purely sensory terms, I prefer the stuff on an incense heater. And I don’t like it much there.

On an emotional level, cooking the flavor out of these beautiful resins—precious materials that wars have been fought over —feels like an Ecce Homo moment. Continuing on the religious theme, perhaps more apt is the famous line from the Gospel of Matthew: “…neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet….” Whether you’re looking for something to chew or a fragrance to enjoy, my recommendation would be to use a chunk of mastic instead.

Honestly, it’s quite difficult to make myrrh smell nice in incense too. ↩︎

The Secrets of Scrumptious Seitan

2023-07-18T00:00:00Z

Seitan: carnists tremble at the sight of it, and sadly, due to the difficulty in its culinary execution, so do many of my fellow leaf-loving, tofu-eating, nooch-sprinkling vegans. Little known in the west, seitan is a food comprised almost entirely of wheat gluten that was invented hundreds of years ago by Buddhist monks as a protein-rich meat substitute. While fundamentally a simple dough of wheat gluten and water, then steamed or simmered, seitan is notoriously tricky to get right. Even here in Chicago where there are a wealth of vegan restaurants, some of which have been operating for decades, there is a dearth of good seitan; too chewy, not chewy enough, spongy, and flavorless seitan is endemic to the western vegan foodservice canon. Now, I’m no expert, but I’ve certainly picked up a few tricks over the years, and I prefer my seitan to just about any restaurant here in Chicago, with a single exception, but I’ll spill that tea at the end.

Nailing the texture #

While texture is easily the most difficult aspect of seitan making, there are a few simple tricks that will help you nail it every time:

1. Simmer down #

Boiling seitan will give it a loose, spongy texture full of air holes. Keep your pot at a very gentle simmer for the entirety of the cooking time for a close, cohesive texture.

2. Don’t use gluten alone #

Gluten alone will produce seitan that’s tough as an old boot. While many add tofu to their dough, I prefer to make mine using approximately three cups of gluten mixed with one regular can of vegetarian refried beans. This will give the seitan just the right texture: neither too chewy, nor too soft. Because there is water in the beans, add liquid sparingly until the dough looks just hydrated enough.

3. Wrap your seitan #

Tightly wrapping your seitan in cheesecloth and kitchen twine will help keep its texture tight, while also retaining a shape other than the amorphous blob often produced by simmering naked seitan.

Building flavor #

Wheat gluten doesn’t have much flavor of its own, and may even have a characteristic off-flavor if you’re not going the extra mile and using the washed flour method. Here’s how to make your seitan hold its own in a dish:

1. Season, season, and season some more #

Think about how you intend to use the seitan while making the dough and season accordingly. Are you making meatballs? Maybe throw in some minced garlic, chili flakes, and toasted fennel seeds. Making a chicken stand-in? You can’t go wrong with some fresh herbs or even a dried poultry seasoning blend. Even when aiming for a versatile, neutral result, salt, pepper, MSG, and garlic powder are nigh-on essential. Check your seasoning by tasting the dough (but you may not want to swallow it as it’s like chewing-gum at this stage), and season your simmering water well; try adding stocks, broths, water used to rehydrate dried mushrooms, soy sauce, or even marmite to enhance, rather than dilute, the flavor of your seitan as it takes on liquid during cooking.

2. A spoonful of vinegar #

A splash of vinegar will help get rid of that undesirable vital wheat gluten flavor. Choose a vinegar that will accentuate the target flavor profile of the finished seitan. For example, if you’re making a beefy seitan for use in stews, a red wine vinegar may be just the thing.

3. Fat and heat #

Once your seitan is simmered, it’s tempting to use it as is, but that isn’t how we’d treat actual meat, and it isn’t how we ought to treat seitan. Let your seitan rest and cool first, and sear your seitan, taking advantage of the maillard reaction and incorporating some flavor-carrying fat in one fell swoop. Giving seitan a good sear in a hot pan doesn’t just help it taste better; it improves the texture and chew, while presenting yet another opportunity to add flavor by blooming garlic, herbs, or spices in the oil. In some instances, such as making large, flat steaks for chicken-fried seitan, you might wish to roll the dough and sear before simmering to preserve its shape.

The best seitan in Chicago #

Now taking all bets: will it be Chicago Diner? Urban Vegan? Kal’ish? Kitchen 17? None, I’m afraid. In fact, I’m sad to report that the very best seitanic supper in Chicago is no more. The Bacon Ranch Cheeseburger from Liberation Kitchen, formerly known as Upton’s Breakroom, is a wonderful burger made with a TVP-based patty like Beyond or Impossible. Before the modern meat substitute craze, however, Liberation Kitchen made the most incredible seitan-based patties for the sandwich, in what appeared to be the double-cooked style à la Field Roast. The Field Roast school of seitan burger making is a truly unique (and laborious) process that involves cooking one batch of seitan, grinding the faux meat, and then binding with more wheat gluten and a generous amount of fat, shaping, and finally steaming the seitan, resulting in positively sumptuous patties. So sumptuous, in fact, that I often preferred Liberation’s seitan burger over those of its contemporaries using beyond-style TVP based patties.