How to Make Seitan - The Best Vegetarian Meat Substitute

By deanarrca

Ingredients

• 2 lbs Wheat flour
• Water
• Salt (soy sauce can be substituted for added flavor and color)
• Vegetable stock (can be reconstituted from powder
• A sink large enough to 'wash' the dough in.A large bowl
• A metal-mesh strainer (a collander's openings are too large)

Details

Servings 4
Adapted from ehow.com

Preparation

Step 1

Step
1
Note 2 lbs of flour will yield enough seitan for 3-4 servings of seitan. (or two very generous portions!)

In the large bowl, add 2 teaspoons of salt (or a couple tablespoons of soy sauce) to the flour. Mix the flour with enough water to make a smooth dough. Knead the dough for 10 minutes. The dough is ready for the next step - washing.

NOTE: Using high-protein flour will increase the yield of seitan. After some children's school projects, we had a few bags of flour in the house, so this lead to the first seitan-making experiments!
Step
2
In this step, you are going to wash the starch out of the dough, leaving behind the high-protein seitan.

Under cool running water, knead the dough continually over a screen strainer. This binds the protein and washes away the starch, and there is about 20 minutes of work involved! Again, high protein flour makes all the difference here - you'll save time and get more seitan.

Knead and wash until the water you run over the dough (now a mass of wheat protein - gluten) runs fairly clear.

I like to clean up the sink, and then stopper it. This allows you to knead the dough under a trickle of running water, and alternately knead it in the water, speeding the rinsing process, and saving a little water!
Step
3
Bring the veggie stock to a simmer. Simmer the saitan for 1 1/2 hours. Strain it out, cool and keep the seitan in the fridge (for up to 3 days) in a sealed container until you're ready to cook with it.

A more traditional broth for simmering is easily made by putting a handful of slided ginger, 2 coarsely chopped garlic cloves and 3 tbsp soy sauce into 3 cups of water and simmering the seitan in this broth.
Step
4
RECIPE SUGGESTION:

Mock-Beef Stir fry (spicy!)

Ingredients:

- Seitan
- 2 big handfuls Broccoli florets (use the stem too, but only if you use organic broccoli, due to the fertilizers in big agriculture)
- 2 cups Napa cabbage, coarsley chopped
- 1 Red pepper, cut into strips
- 3 TBSP soy or sunflower oil
- Soy sauce
- Coconut milk
- Sriracha sauce (a very red hot pepper sauce with an excellent flavor - but use with caution!)
- 2 tbsp chopped fresh ginger
- 2 tbsp chopped garlic
- Thai basil leaves for garnish

DIRECTIONS:

Cut seitan into strips, as if it were steak, and this were a beef stir fry. Place in a small bowl, sprinkle with a little soy sauce and add a pinch of chopped garlic and ginger. Stir and keep it handy.

Place a large frying pan or wok on high heat, and add the oil. When the oil shimmers, add the garlic and ginger and a shot of Sriracha. Add the seitan and broccoli florets. Stir constantly on high heat. The key is to keep things sizzling, otherwise they'll steam and get mushy. This is key to a good stir fry.

After 4-5 minutes, add the Napa cabbage and red pepper strips. If you like it spicy, add another blast of Sriracha!

The pan should keep sizzlin' - but you dont want to overcook the peppers, as they'll change flavor, so 3-4 minutes max. Remove the veggies and saitan to a bowl.

Deglaze the pan with the coconut milk. It will steam up good. Reduce the coconut milk a little, then pour this back over the veggies.

Garnish this with thai basil leaves. Serves two. If you are watching your carbs, serve without rice, and it makes a satisfying meal. With some steamed Thai rice, it's also delicious, and the resulting coconut sauce/aromatic rice combo is a dream!