Meat Free Everyday - Food for Thought

Cooking with seitan

You probably don't know it but you're already eating seitan. Seitan is gluten protein. Gluten flour is often added to bread or pasta to increase protein levels. I often substitute wheat and other flours with a bit of seitan to increase protein in my foods. You have to add the gluten flour when it is dry and mix it well with other flours first as it becomes quite rubbery on it's own and then it is too late to mix it with other ingrediants. You can't only use gluten flour in baking as the texture is not conducive to a batter or dough. It becomes too tough.

If you are not baking, then you can use it straight. Why not try mixing plain gluten flour with liquid and slice it into dumpling type pieces. I use a seasoning in the liquid to give the seitan flavour. Seitan is like many vegetarian proteins in that it doesn't have the flavour oomph of animal proteins. A bit of Marmite, maybe soy sauce or veggie stock in warm water does the trick for me. Once you have sliced your dumplings, you can either boil them till they're cooked. About 20 minutes is enough. Then add them to stir fries or meals. Or add them to soups and stews and let them soak up the flavours and cook at the same time.

Gluten flour isn't expensive and with 75g protein, 8g carbohydrate and 1g fat it is a low fat, low carb and high protein vegetarian food. Back in my early vegetarian days I made what I called gluten "steaks". I would mix flour and water to a dough. Then I would wash the starch from the dough in a bowl of water. It's amazing how much milky white starch comes out. Finally all that is left is a gelatinous substance that I would fry with onions, mushrooms and cream. That was one of my favorite early vegetarian meals.

Chinese restaurants often use meat substitutes made from seitan. My brother's local Chinese spot has mock spare ribs, mock duck and mock beef amongst a bunch of mock up meals on their menu. I like going there as they will make any one of their meals, but with a seitan version. It's one place where I can read the full menu. How nice is that? You can do the same with your seitan. Season it with a spicy bean sauce or sticky plum seasoning and bake or fry. You can also make a sumptious suace to give it some kick in lieu of heavy seasoning and keep the seitan au naturelle.

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