Make your own Seitan

If you've done any vegan cooking at all, you know that there are a ton of recipes that call for seitan. And if you've gone grocery shopping for seitan you have learned a couple of things:

1. Store-bought seitan doesn't taste like much of anything

2. You only get a few ounces in each package, which is barely enough for one recipe

3. It costs a small fortune.

Remember, seitan (sometimes called "wheat meat") is just the gluten from flour once all of the starch has been rinsed out, so you're basically spending your hard earned cash on flour and water...I bet you have that at home already, huh?

Now that you understand the absurdity of purchasing seitan, let's talk about making it at home.

There are basically two ways to do this.

The first is to combine flour and water with the spices of your choice, knead it to activate the gluten, and then rinse out the starch. Yes, it's that easy.

But the second way is even easier!

You can buy Vital Wheat Gluten (Bob's Red Mill sells it in quantities large enough quantities to make it reasonable), mix it with spices and water and viola! You have seitan.

Of course, whichever option you choose, you'll need to cook it. The most common way to do this is to cook it for about 45 minutes in some kind of water-based broth but it's not the only way. For a firmer seitan you can make it into a log, wrap it in aluminum foil, and bake it for an hour or so.

I know both of those sound like they could be a bit of an undertaking but they are super easy.

Ask anyone I know, I have been on a major seitan kick lately.
Lucky for you readers because I have a bunch of recipes to share!