• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
Cooking Chat
  • About
  • Find a Recipe
  • Wine Pairings
    • Wine Pairing Help
    • Wine Pairing Weekend & Other Wine Pairing Events
    • White Wine Pairings
    • Red Wine Pairings
    • Wine Pairings for Seafood
    • Summer Wine Pairings
  • Work with me
  • Resources
    • Food Blogger Resources
    • Cookbooks and Kitchen Tools
    • Collards and Kale Cookbook
      • Collards and Kale Affiliate Program
  • Navigation Menu: Social Icons

    • Facebook
    • Instagram
    • Pinterest
    • RSS
    • Twitter
menu icon
go to homepage
search icon
Homepage link
  • Irish Recipes
  • Soup Recipes
  • Vegetarian Pasta Recipes
  • Mexican Recipes
  • Podcast
  • Appetizers
  • Recipes using leftovers
  • Salad
  • wine pairing
  • About
×
Home » vegan » Seitan Rigatoni with Pepper and Onions

Seitan Rigatoni with Pepper and Onions

Published: Feb 24, 2016 · Modified: Aug 16, 2020 by Cooking Chat · This post may contain affiliate links

Jump to Recipe·Print Recipe

Seitan Rigatoni with Onions and Peppers is a tasty and healthy vegetarian pasta recipe with plenty of meaty substance. The wheat-based seitan is used in similar fashion to sausage in this pasta dish, making for a hearty, vegetarian pasta dish. Recipe is vegan if you skip the optional cheese topping, or use a substitute. 
seitan rigatoni on a white plate.

Have you tried seitan? It’s a wheat-based protein source that can be a great meat substitute. It really does have a hearty substance to it, so it can appeal to carnivore types skeptical of foods like tofu.

Jodi was eating a primarily vegetarian diet when we first met, and seitan is one of the new foods I learned about at the time. Though she enjoys a steak and other meat now, eating a mostly vegetarian diet for awhile was a great way to pick up some plant based protein sources that can be featured regularly in meatless meals here.

Today we serve up Seitan Rigatoni with Onions and Peppers featuring Italian style seitan. I used the the Upton’s brand, and it was flavorful with garlic and Italian herbs.

When I saw this seitan on sale, I had the idea of featuring it in a seitan rigatoni pasta dish as I might otherwise use sausage. The seitan crumbled easily into bite-sized pieces, similar to sausage when the casing is removed. Thus the texture and taste was a nice alternative to sausage.

If you can’t find Italian flavored seitan, you could make this seitan rigatoni by using plain seitan and increase the amount of garlic, plus add some Italian seasoning–some combination of dried basil, oregano and rosemary.

Seitan Rigatoni with Onions and Peppers

This pasta dish can be on the table in 20 minutes. Add the pasta to boiling water at the same time you start simmering the seitan and garlic, and you are on your way.

I list the parmesan cheese passed at table as optional. You can make this seitan rigatoni dish a vegan recipe by skipping the cheese, or using a vegan parm cheese product. Our son, who can’t eat dairy, likes the GO Veggie! Dairy Free Grated Parmesan Topping. I’ve included a link to where you can get that on Amazon, but it’s about ⅓ the price at Whole Foods. Figured I’d put the link in just in case you had no other way of finding it.

Wine Pairing 

When I made this dish most recently, I paired it with the 2015 Scalliwag Chardonnay ($17 , 13.25% ABV) from Hugh Hamilton Wines, located in McLaren Vale, Austrailia. This is a good quality chard for the price, full-bodied, lemon fruit with some stone notes. A pretty good pairing for the dish.

Italian sparkling wine made from the Famoso grape can be a good pairing for a pasta dish made with sausage or seitan.

Though the Chard is a good wine and paired reasonably well, I recall liking the sparkling wine pairing better for this seitan rigatoni dish. We had this pasta with the Divo Spumante Extra Dry, made with Famosa grapes. I don’t have tasting notes on the wine, but recall liking it. And the Famosa grape is a special one for me, as it was the 200th wine grape varietal I documented sampling. But that is another story.

Print

Recipe card

Seitan Rigatoni with Pepper and Onions

Seitan Rigatoni with Onions and Peppers
Print Recipe

5 Stars 4 Stars 3 Stars 2 Stars 1 Star

5 from 1 review

Hearty wheat-based Italian seitan provides substance and flavor to this healthy vegetarian pasta dish.

  • Author: Cooking Chat
  • Prep Time: 5 mins
  • Cook Time: 20 mins
  • Total Time: 25 mins
  • Yield: 5 servings 1x
  • Category: Main
  • Method: stove top
  • Cuisine: Italian
  • Diet: Vegetarian

Ingredients

Scale
  • 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil, divided
  • 1 onion
  • 1 colored bell pepper
  • 2 garlic cloves, minced
  • 8 ozs Italian style seitan, crumbled into bite-sized pieces
  • ⅓ cup vegetable broth or white wine
  • handful spinach
  • 8 olives, sliced
  • 12 ozs rigatoni pasta
  • parmesan cheese to pass at table (optional)

Instructions

  1. Heat 1 tablespoon of the oil in a large skillet. Put a pot of water on to boil for the pasta
  2. Add the onions, sauté on medium for 5 minutes until they begin to soften. Add the peppers, sauté for another 3 minutes.
  3. Stir the garlic and seitan in with the peppers and onions. Cook for a minute, then add the broth and spinach. Simmer covered for 5 minutes. Remove cover and stir, then cover again and keep warm while the pasta finishes cooking
  4. After you add the garlic and seitan to the skillet, add the pasta to cook in the boiling water. Cook according to package directions. Drain, then toss with the remaining tablespoon olive oil, and the seitan mixture.
  5. Plate the pasta and top with a sprinkling of olives. Pass the parmesan cheese for people to add to their pasta, if desired.

Did you make this recipe?

Tag @CookingChatWine on Instagram and hashtag it #CookingChat

Recipe Card powered byTasty Recipes

 

« Arugula Salad with Maple Vinaigrette
Roast Cod with Herb Pesto and Wine Pairing »

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Jessie Skumatz

    September 20, 2016 at 8:05 pm

    This was simple & delicious! I couldn’t get Italian style seitan so I just added a bunch of Italian seasoning.

    Reply
    • Cooking Chat

      September 20, 2016 at 8:25 pm

      glad it worked out for you! good idea to use the Italian seasoning you had.

      Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Seitan Skillet with Peppers and Onions | Cooking Chat says:
    October 23, 2016 at 6:52 am

    […] do like to mix in several meatless meals each week, thus we have seitan with some regularity. Our Seitan Rigatoni with Pepper and Onions is another recipe you might want to try. I pretty much always find myself cooking seitan along with […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recipe rating 5 Stars 4 Stars 3 Stars 2 Stars 1 Star

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

Hi there! I'm David. I love creating tasty, (mostly) healthy recipes, finding great wine pairings, and sharing good food with family and friends. learn more about me!

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • RSS
  • Twitter

Recent Posts

  • Gruyere Cheese Wine Pairing
  • Pasta with Peas, Pecorino and Onions
  • Ep. 48: Historic Livermore Valley Wines with Aly Wente
  • Ep. 47: Spring Wine Pairings and More with Martin Redmond
  • Alto Adige Wine Pairings

Copyright © 2025 Cooking Chat · Privacy Policy.