Seitan is a vegan’s dream-come-true, a great high-protein food you can really sink your teeth into. With it, you can turn just about any meat-lover’s dish into pure vegan bliss. It can be hard to find, and it’s especially hard to find cheap, but with some effort you can make it yourself (very cheaply! oh, the irony…). Having said that, I won’t be doing this very often – it’s a ton of work. I’ll keep looking for a great pre-made source. But when you really want to obsess about it… here are the gory details. :> This one is also from Brother Ron, Friendly Foods (pg 140).
UPDATE: This recipe looks MUCH easier, I’ll try it out and let you know when I get a chance…
Ingredients:
- Bread flour
- Cooking stock (water, kombu, ginger, tamari)
- Combine the flour with water to make a dough. Knead the dough until it has the consistency of an earlobe, about 10 minutes by hand. Drop it in some cool water while you make the stock.
- Make the stock by cooking water, a 3″ piece of kombu, a few fresh slices of ginger, and a half cup of tamari. Bring it to a boil then let it cool for later.
- Drop the dough into a large container of water, and knead it submerged. Repeat about 10 times until the water no longer turns milky white. Try not to cry as you see the dough shrink in size.
- Put the dough in an oiled loaf pan to settle into a block shape.
- Boil it in water until it starts to float, about 20 minutes.
- Slice into usable pieces, and cook it in the stock. Let it cook for 30 minutes or more. Pressure cook to accelerate the process.
- Store it in the stock until you’re ready to use it in your favorite recipes. Just make sure your wife doesn’t find it and eat most of it before then!
Mmmmmm…
Today I made a batch starting with Vital Wheat Gluten, which lets you skip the rinse step, very helpful.
It’s also very useful because you can mix spices right into the gluten before adding water to it. I used sage, majoran, onion, garlic and salt, then cooked in a simple soy sauce broth. Turned out great.