Meatless Monday: Seitan

maddie cookt this wondurful dich for the famaley!yay for maddie. (Hahahaha! I had to leave the computer for a little bit, and when I came back the above text was there. Very funny, Maddie) This week's recipe idea for Meatless Monday is Seitan. That is pronounced "Say-tahn", by the way. This is a high protein, meat substitute that you can make yourself at home. It is denser, and chewier, than tofu and my hubby, for one, prefers it's texture. I also find that it is easy on my tummy (I guess I'm not a celiac!) and it doesn't turn me into a "bloat-goat" like tofu does.  So, how on earth do you make this stuff? Well, it's super-duper complicated... Get yourself some Vital Wheat Gluten or HIGH, 80%, gluten flour (around here you can get this at the "Horn of Plenty" or at the "Bulk Barn"). Take one cup of the flour and mix it with 1 cup of water.  Yep, that's it for step one! You need to knead your dough (which will come together very sticky, very fast...because of all that gluten) well in order to produce a nice, dense, seitan (vs. a puffy, light version). So, if you are hand kneading...work away on it for about 5 minutes.  Once you've got your dough ready, roll it into a bit of a log and cut off 1 inch chunks to throw into your awaiting broth...  As for the broth...well, most that I have seen call for about 4-5 cups of liquid along with flavour agents. The one I just used was from the book "How it all Vegan" and it used mostly water with a 1/4 cup soy sauce and some spices. If you use soy sauce make sure it is low sodium and very good quality!! The seitan is going to soak up the flavours of your broth like crazy and me, not being a huge soy sauce fan, well, I didn't love how this turned out...so I will be trying out different versions of a broth for mine. I think I'll also try out adding some spices to the flour right at the beginning. I'll let you know how that goes (if you have a great broth recipe you'd like to share...please do!!!).  Anyway...once you've got your seitan dough cooking away in the broth you just have to stir it every 10 minutes or so until the broth has reduced. This will take about an hour.  Now you can go ahead and use your seitan as a (already cooked) meat subsitute in many recipes. Just cover it in whatever sauce you like, serve it with some veggies, and/or some rice or pasta, etc. It will be great! As long as you like the flavour of your broth! :0) 

Happy Meatless Monday!  
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