Make It Yourself Monday: homemade seitan

As I mentioned previously, I wanted to do a post about making your own seitan. I really don't know why it took so long to post it, or even come up with the idea to do a post about it. We eat seitan on a regular basis, it's kind of a remnant of the time when we had to live very frugally out of necessity when we didn't really have money. Seitan is insanely cheap to make, it's probably the cheapest protein, even beating dried beans. The only downside is that it's not suitable for those with gluten sensitivity/celiac disease. Fortunately, we can just tolerate gluten normally. Even though we don't have to live insanely frugal anymore, I've kept a lot of frugal practices that just make sense to me, and making my own seitan is one of them. 

 This is what seitan looks like (for those new to vegetarian cooking)

So, here's what you need for a big batch of seitan: 

Flour 

Water

And a whole lot of patience 😅

Start off by mixing 2 KGs of white, all purpose flour with approximately 1 liter of water- it could be a bit more or less. Knead it like you would knead a regular bread dough. If it's too sticky, just add in a bit more flour. 

After kneading for at least 10 minutes (kneading well is essential as the dough has to develop the gluten), leave it to rest in a bowl, cover with a damp tea towel. Leave it rest for at least 3 hours. 

Then after 3 hours, take out the dough (it's probably become slightly stickier, but that's ok) and put it in a colander in the sink. Now it will become a bit repetitive, but I'm ok with that. You'll need to rinse the dough under the tap. As you're rinsing your dough, knead gently, just to make sure all sides of the dough are being rinsed equally. 

In the beginning, it will look like this: 

Then after a while, it will look a bit more like this: 

The only way I can describe it really are brains 🤣 As you keep rinsing, the rinsing water becomes less white (like milk coloured) and more white transparant. Keep rinsing until the water is totally clear. By then, the dough has more of a spongy consistency, rather than looking like brains. 

Then it's time to cook your seitan. There are various ways to do this, but I prefer to cook the seitan in a broth. I've also tried to steam it, which is fine too, but it will really stick to the steaming basket and has a bit less flavour, since the seitan gets most of its flavour from the broth. So to cook it, put the seitan/dough in a pot and cover it with cold water, then add salt and whatever seasonings you like. You can keep it simple using salt, pepper and some bay leaves, or you could really go fancy. It's all a matter of preference. Put it on low heat for 45 minutes, it should be simmering and not boiling. The lower the better. After 45 minutes, when it looks like this: 

You just leave it cool down in the broth, preferably with the lid on the pot. This takes quite long and for this reason, it's not advisable to make seitan to use that very same day. I always make seitan in advance. When cooled down completely, get your seitan out of the broth and process it further. I usually cut it in small chunks, similar to meat, and then fry it or cook it. You could also make bigger cutlets, and I've read that some people grind it, similar to mince (but I'm yet to try that!). 

The other day, I made a simple pasta with small chunks of seitan, a jar of red sauce that I canned last summer and some vegetables that were in the fridge and needed to be used up. Everyone loved it! 

• Seitan is very versatile, you can use it in about everything you'd use meat. Some suggestions; pulled seitan, seitan cutlets, pasta and rice dishes, stews, soups, and many more.

• Keep in mind that this recipe is for quite a big batch; for our family, we use it for two main meals, and even then it's still a big quantity per meal. Since seitan freezes very well, just portion how you'd prefer it for your family size. Or just halve the quantities. 

• Also, don't throw away the seitan broth! It's quite tasty and can be used as any other broth.

• Don't waste money on whole wheat flour for this recipe. Since all the starches are going to get rinsed out, using whole wheat is kind of pointless.