Seitan

One of my favorite things at my favorite restaurant is Seitan. I’ve tried about 5 or 6 different recipes to recreate it at home, to no avail. Recipes from the very difficult and involved, to ones that called for elusive ingredients. None turned out well. Not even close to “good”.
Today I ran across a really simple looking one and thought, “I have all that stuff, worst case scenario: I’ve wasted a little time.”
I’m glad I gave it a shot because it turned out really decent.

Here’s the entire ingredient list:
1 cup vital wheat gluten
1 cup flour
¼ teaspoon baking powder
Seasonings
8 cups broth
soy sauce

It didn’t call for garlic, but I like garlic… so I also used a few pinches of garlic granules.

First I brought a stock pot of the broth up to almost boiling and backed it down to a simmer. I shook in a few splashes of soy sauce and let it simmer while I did the rest.
(You could probably toss in some onions or whatever else you’d like to flavor it with at this point).
I mixed the wheat gluten with the flour and baking powder.
I shook in about a half tablespoon of the seasoning I like best and the garlic I decided to toss in. You may need more of whatever you use. The stuff I use packs a powerful punch.
I also shook in about a tablespoon of Old Bay seasoning, because I like that hint of “lobster broil” flavor.
I mixed that all up and used about a half cup of the broth to make the mixture ready to knead it. (Probably about 10 minutes of doing that.)
I flattened the mixture out on a cutting board and cut it into little square chunks. Each chunk got smashed flat (the thinner, the better) and dropped into the pot.

After simmering for about two hours the result was not too dissimilar from the Seitan at the Flat Top Grill. In looks, anyhow.

I decided to test a few chunks and see how the fam liked it.
I sliced them up and tossed them in a skillet.

The end result was very “pork chop” ish (probably from the seasoning I used, because it’s widely used as a sausage seasoning).
It got a thumbs up from the fam all the way around.


I think I’ll try the “freeze it/thaw it” trick with some of it to get more of a chewy texture on the inside. I'll probably be topping a salad with these and some grilled onions. Or maybe BBQ some strips or even fake a BLT-ish sammich with them.
There are a lot of possibilities and it made quite a bit. I've got two large rectangular Tupperware™ containers storing it - one completely full and the other half full.

Special thanks to reader Lancelot Link for helping me get the pics to post. I didn’t grab my camera, but I DID have my camera phone…so I snapped some pics and sent them in a text. LL graciously downloaded and emailed them back to me on my pc.
Niiice.