First up: Seitan isn’t just high in gluten, it is mainly gluten (wheat protein), so coeliacs/gluten intolerant folks: don’t even look at this recipe!
Secondly, gluten is a protein, however unlike most meats it contains only 8 of the 9 essential amino acids required to be useful as building material for human biology: it’s very low in lysine. So this means it should be eaten with foods higher in lysine or lysine should be added somehow – pulses are usually good for that. Indeed chickpeas (garbanzo beans) are high in lysine, so this recipe adds the lysine simply by including chickpea flour (gram flour). This also modulates the texture. Pure gluten is very very rubbery, the more chickpea flour (and/or water) one adds, the softer/foamier the resulting Seitan becomes.
Ingredients
For the Seitan:
- 300g Essential Wheat Gluten flour
- 50g Gram flour (chickpea flour), or 100g of cooked drained chickpeas mashed up
- 2 heaped teaspoons of garlic powder
- 2 heaped teaspoons of onion powder
- 1 optional heaped desert-spoon of nutritional yeast
- some optional paprika (about 1 teaspoon)
- some optional turmeric (about 1 teaspoon)
- about 120ml room temperature water
For the stock:
- One stock cube, mushroom stock is good for a ‘beefy’ flavor or a light veggie stock for a ‘chicken’ substitute
- an inch of water in a large pan or pot
Methods and Materials
You will need a large bowl, a chopping board, a very sharp knife, a fork or spoon and clean strong hands.
1 – Place all the dry ingredients together in the bowl
2 – Thoroughly mix all the dry ingredients together
3.a – Remove any stray pe(s)ts
3.b – Take the water…
3.c – pour it on top
3.d – mix well with spoon or fork
4 – Knead well with fingers
5 – Form into a ball and fold it in on itself repeatedly with your thumbs
6 – Let it sit for 10mn
8 – Place the stock cubes in the water and bring to the boil
9 – Place your ball of Seitan on the chopping board and get ready to slice it with a sharp knife
10 – You want 3-4mm slices
11 – They tend to stick together so place them straight into the boiling stock, they swell as they cook but will shrink again once cooled down
12 – Let them simmer and reduce the stock
13 – Once the stock’s almost reduced we’re done!
Although it’s obviously already cooked and edible as-is, you can now let this cool down and use the Seitan as you would raw meat in your dishes: fry it with some oil, stew it, grill (broil) it on skewers with peppers and onions after marinating in soy sauce and crushed garlic…the possibilities are almost limitless!
The Bored Vegan 