the people's republic of sole

After many failed attempts and some pretty terrible looking outcomes, I've finally perfected homemade seitan. It's from a recipe I found online, but I tweeked it a bit. Thought I'd share the recipe.

You'll need:

2 cups of vital wheat gluten flour
1 tablespoon of ground ginger
1 tablespoon of nutritional yeast
1 tablespoon of garlic powder
1 & 1/4 cups of veggie broth
3 tablespoons of soy sauce
2 tablespoons of toasted sesame oil

mix the flour, ginger, nutritional yeast and garlic powder together in a large bowl. whisk together the broth, soy sauce and sesame oil in a separate bowl and then add to powder mix. quickly mix it with a fork. When it becomes stiff and doughy, kneed it about 20 times.

let the dough rest for 5 minutes, then kneed it about 5 more times. Let it sit, uncovered for another 15 minutes.

while it's sitting, get together about 6 cups of vegetable broth. I use veggie boulion cubes and hot water. boil it up in a large pot.

after the 15 minutes is up, slice the dough into 8 steak-like cutlets. Put the cutlets into the boiling broth one by one and then reduce the heat to a simmer. Let the cutlets simmer for 1 hour.

after the hour is up, you got some damn fine seitan steaks. you can either cook with them right away or freeze/refrigerate them.

I made a batch this week and used them in a bunch of different ways. One night I decided to make a soul food dinner. So I made cornbread, kale, mac n cheese (the alfredo Annie's kind), and breaded "pork chops". Shit was off the hook.

Give it a whirl.

sounds very different then the recipe i tried, and that one came out tasting like spongecake. im fucking with this.

yup , seitan requires special knowlegde.most recipes I've tried definately sucked.


it was good at the omega institute...

www.eomega.org/omega/retreats/dstyjdstyjes

that sounds good, i have always wanted to try to make my own. sounds pretty easy. where do you usually shop iggity?

thanks man, we're totally going to try this one out... been wanting to make seitan for a while now.

ive made this two weeks in a row. i add a bit of hickory flavoring to the vegetable broth so that the seitan is a bit smokey. but this is by far the best seitan recipe i've messed with. its so simple & fun. plus seitan is expensive as hell, this way you can flavor it the way you want and eat tons!!!! GOD BLESS AMERICA!

hey brendon, what ratio of veggie bullion to water do you use in place of the broth?

i'm just realizing that we have everything we need already, don't know why i've been waiting.

I usually put 2 bullion cubes for the 6 cups of water...but you can freak that however you want, I would assume....Tim also suggested to me the other day of cutting the vital wheat gluten flour with some garbanzo flour....I did this on Saturday....I used 1 and 1/2 cups of gluten flour, and 1/2 a cup of garbanzo flour....it made the seitan a bit more soft, but not spongey....

let us know how your batch turns out Tom....

the other thing i found, is the longer you let it marinate the softer it gets. if you leave it in the boullon mixture in the fridge for a few days its quite soft as well, but the garbanzo does help...

the other thing i made with this was terriaki skewers. pretty simple. terriaki sauce, lots of maple syrup, sugar, pepper, soy sauce. slice em into thin little rib like slices.... hit em up with a wooden stick... barbecue or bake that shit.

I have been meaning to make seitan for a long time now but never got around to buying the flour. Well a few days ago I was at the store and holy crap is that vital wheat gluten flour expensive! It was over 25 cents an ounce, while the normal wheat flour was less than 4 cents an ounce. So I just bought the normal flour and I'm going to try making it the old fashioned way by kneeding in water. I'd still like to try it this way too, maybe I can compare the 2.

good luck with that man, thats a long process.

i made these tonight, came out awesome...

thanks for the recipe..

did 1 and 3/4th gluten, and 1/4th garbanzo... i might up the garbanzo slightly in the next one, i think that'll cinch it.

also needs a little more garlic and hickory, i guess i didn't put enough in... also everything always needs more garlic for me anyways.

the texture is definitely really good. we fried them up tonight with vegetables, real nice.

rock! let me know what other ways you use this.

Fuckin A it is! I usually LOVE making stuff completely from scratch just to see if I can do it, but this seitan is pissing me off. After about 2 hours and seeming to be running myself in circles with it (it would fall apart so much I would have to add more flour to bring it back together) I just called it a night, maybe tomorrow will bring better results.

I guess I should have just paid the extra few bucks for the gluten...

yeah, one thing you have to factor in is the amount of seitan 12-14 ounces of gluten makes. it makes a lot. it ends up being crazy cheaper than buying premade seitan in the store, so it's completely worth it.

i think that other process takes hours to do, if i'm not mistaken.

hey dont buy the gluten in the boxes. buy em in the bulk section... its WAY cheaper that way...

this week i had the seitan again, i made it with more vegetable broth and hickory and it was very smokey. we baked it with barbecue sauce(homemade barbecue sauce is simple, mainly just garlic, maple syrup, onion powder, tomato sauce, and a habenero and some pepper).

i love seitan tacos. just cut up the seitan really small, or shread it. fry it with cumin and paprika and maybe a red or green pepper. throw that shit on a taco. booyaka.

the other day i made it with 2 cups of gluten one cup of garbanzo, it became spongelike as i simmered it, so i got nervous, took the patties out and instead simmered them on a baking dish in my oven on 350 for an hour, they came out amazing as well. i think once you realize seitan is just water + wheat gluten flour, get the feel of it, you can do whatever you want!

next stop. pastrami.

nice... i was thinking of trying pepper steaks next... let me know how the pastrami rolls.

tried this again with 1 1/2 c gluten, 1/2 c garbanzo, tripled the garlic, added a little pepper, came out bomb... more of a chicken like consistancy.

i just made a double batch and we're going camping! barbecued seitan!

nice! we're going to try it again this week, maybe make some pepper steaks or something... it's amazing how well they soak up marinade though, considering how dense they are.