A few years ago, you probably didn’t even know that the stuff that gives bread its chewy texture had a name. It’s a protein called gluten, which is formed when two chemicals, glutenin and gliadin, come into contact and form a bond. When dough is kneaded, this bond creates an elastic membrane, which causes bread to have chewiness.
Gluten is naturally found in the endosperm of wheat, barley and rye, and humans have been eating it for about 10,000 years, maybe longer. It’s one of the most heavily consumed proteins on our planet. When the gluten is extracted and turned into vital gluten flour (also called pure gluten flour), it has a 75-85% protein composition.
The vital gluten flour can then be combined with other dry and wet ingredients and becomes seitan. Seitan may not look like much before it’s cooked, in fact it can just look like a big blob of wet flour, but once it is flavoured and either baked in the oven or simmered in broth, it develops into a surprisingly similar look and texture of animal meat.
Vital wheat gluten flour.
Seitan can also be called wheat meat, wheat protein, wheat gluten or simply gluten. Today, it is infamous among vegans and vegetarians, and seitan has actually been a staple food for vegetarian monks of China, Russian wheat farmers, peasants of Southeast Asia, and Mormons for a very long time.
Delicious Seitan Recipes
Depending on the recipe, seitan can actually be cooked either via baking in the oven wrapped in strong tin foil, or simmered in a flavoured broth on the stove.
Typically, once the seitan mixture has been cooked in the oven or simmered, it’s often cooled to room temperature first before slicing and sometimes placed in the refrigerator for a few hours which enables the mixture to firm up more (e.g. the Italian-style seitan meatballs require this step). Once cooled, it can be sliced and lightly pan fried in seasonings or sometimes served cold in sandwiches.
Seitan Beef
. A common classic that can be used in many versatile ways such as kebabs, wraps and sandwiches, or in tacos or as a Sunday roast with vegetables.
Seitan Pepperoni
. With a perfectly hot cayenne-pepper zing, this pepperoni is perfect sliced thin, fried and cooked on a pizza, or cut thicker and used in a capsicum and red onion polenta bake.
Seitan Chicken Loaf
. An absolute delight perfect for a Sunday night roast with vegetables, or sliced thin for sandwiches.
Seitan Chicken Parmigiana Schnitzels
. An Australian pub tradition, as well as being very popular globally, seitan chicken parmigiana schnitzels with a tomato based sauce and mozzarella cheese can be served up with mash or oven baked chips.
Italian-Style Seitan Meatballs
. Who doesn’t love spaghetti and meatballs? Whip these up quickly and pan fry when you’re ready to drop them into a delicious lentil spaghetti bolognese topped with parmesan cheese.
How to Handle Seitan Once it is Prepared
We’re all used to pan frying or roasting raw animal meat to the point that the muscle tissue is sufficiently cooked all the way through. This is done so that any parasites and pathogenic bacteria that can be transmitted to humans by eating uncooked or poorly cooked meat are killed off.
The way and timing in which you add seitan to your recipes will differ slightly, and this is often the most confusing part to learn.
Instead of buying animal meat prepackaged and stored in the freezer, you will be creating the seitan equivalent as shown in the above recipes. At this point, the seitan has been 100% cooked and is ready for consumption—it is not intended to be dropped into a soup that is coming to the boil for 45 minutes, nor is it to be pan fried at the very beginning of a recipe on high heat as any further long term, high-heat cooking will likely cause it to break apart.
As the seitan has already been cooked, you are simply adding it in cooked and heating it.
For example:
- When preparing a mushroom stroganoff sauce, add the sliced seitan beef towards the end so that it is coated in the sauce and has enough heat applied to it so that it is sufficiently hot to eat.
- Thinly sliced seitan beef can be lightly pan fried in olive oil with seasonings to create kebab-style meat and served immediately.
- Thicker pieces of sliced seitan chicken loaf can be lightly panned fried in a small amount of butter and white wine to sear the edges and then served with gravy and roasted vegetables.
Store any left over seitan in an air tight container in the refrigerator. Typically, the shelf life is around 1.5 – 2 weeks.
Where to Buy Vital Gluten Flour
It isn’t available at supermarkets, at least not in Australia. The cheapest I’ve found online is from Organic Buyers Group where you can purchase a 1kg bag for $10.95 ($10 flat shipping fee across Australia). Melbourne Depot sell 4kg bags for $36 but they sting you with a flat $20 delivery fee.
Alternatively, iHerb sell the well known American brand Bob’s Red Mill for about $10.60 a bag where you’ll received a highly discounted delivery fee if you buy 6 bags or more.
Typically, you’ll use 1.5 to 2 cups of flour per recipe.
Seitan ‘beef’ fried in kebab seasoning.
Complimentary Ingredients for Seitan
While every seitan recipe can be a little different in its own way, there are some common or staple ingredients that go along with any good seitan recipe.
Wet: Water, tamari, vegetable oil, liquid smoke (common in ‘bacon’ seitan), browning essence liquid (common in ‘beef’ seitan), sometimes maple syrup or tomato paste.
Dry: Chickpea/besan flour, tapioca flour, Massel vegan chicken or beef stock cubes and powder, nutritional yeast, onion and garlic powder, smoked paprika, crushed peppercorns, Himalayan salt, vegan bbq chicken seasonings or vegan kebab/souvlaki seasonings (try to stock up on “meat” seasonings for the flavour component).
Chickpea flour and nutritional yeast are non-standard items in Australia—you’ll need to go to a health food store to purchase these, or online at the Organic Buyers Group.
Seitan BBQ Ribz.
Expectations
Expectation can be a hell of a thing. I’ll state quite bluntly and honestly now that seitan is not identical to animal meat. It’s quite impossible to resemble dead muscle and fat that’s had heat applied to it.
While vegans and those on a plant-based diet don’t consume animals, many often state that they still crave animal meat–but really we don’t specifically crave the flesh of animals. What we do crave is fat. We crave salt. We crave texture. We crave flavour. We crave familiarity. We crave a hot dinner at the end of a long day. We crave the feeling of being full. All of these things can be met in a plant-based diet and seitan is one food product that helps people achieve those things and leaves them feeling satisfied in all the ways just mentioned.
Fried pepperoni with capsicum, red onion and herbs.
Don’t Give Up!
Mastering seitan can be a bit of a challenge. It’s unlike anything that most people have cooked with before so there is a learning curve and it’s likely there’ll be a few mess-ups. Sometimes even a temperamental hot oven can result in seitan turning out more like bread than meat, but don’t give up!
The spice and seasoning combinations are plentiful so don’t be afraid to make a few mistakes and learn from each recipe you create. I managed to blunder several seitan recipes until I started to learn the in’s and out’s of the seitan world but it is very much worth the effort.
Seitan chicken loaf with homemade gravy and roasted veggies.
Common Myths About Wheat Gluten
In recent years gluten has become the latest nutritional boogeyman, a substance that increasingly more people remove from their diets because of its “evil qualities”. A 2014 survey by Consumer Reports National Research Center found that a third of Americans were buying gluten-free products or trying to avoid gluten in other ways, and more than 6 in 10 believed that a following a gluten-free diet would improve their health or mental well-being.
True, there are a small number of people (1% of the world’s population) who have celiac disease, an autoimmune disorder triggered by gluten, who often get really sick if they eat it. But if anti-gluten evangelists are to be believed, the stuff is also incredibly bad for the rest of us. They claim that it causes woes ranging from obesity to cancer, but medical and nutritional experts take a dim view of many of those claims.
Myth #1 – Today’s Wheat Has More Gluten in it
This is an appealing myth, because it fits nicely with popular conceptions about giant agro-businesses and their insidious role in ruining our health with high fructose corn syrup and genetically modified Frankenfood. There has been an increase in the incidence of celiac disease in the second half of the 20th century. And wheat that’s been genetically pumped up with extra gluten would provide a nice simple explanation for that phenomenon.
Inconveniently for gluten conspiracy theories, though, in a study published in the Journal of Agricultural Food Chemistry in 2013, researcher Donald D. Kasarda analyzed data about wheat breeding, and found no evidence that wheat contains more protein than before. Additionally, Kasarda noted that there isn’t any GMO wheat used commercially in the US, so gluten content isn’t being increased that way, either.
Myth #2 – Lots of People Are Gluten-Intolerant
Actually, it’s only a small number. About 1% of the world’s population has celiac disease, an autoimmune disorder that injures the small intestine and prevents patients from absorbing other nutrients from food when they ingest gluten. It can cause all sorts of awful side effects, from gastrointestinal distress and chronic fatigue to anemia. Additionally, another 6% of the American public may have a controversial condition called non-celiac gluten sensitivity (NCGS), in which they don’t test positive for celiac disease but complain of some of the same symptoms. As of 2015, there was no lab test for NCGS..
Interestingly, even for some people with NCGS, gluten may not be the real problem. In a study published in 2013 in the journal Gastroenterology, researchers examined 37 subjects with NCGS. They found that when a broad class of nutrients called FODMAPS−which includes everything from fructose to the fiber found in bananas, asparagus and wheat−was cut out of the subjects’ diets, they suddenly stopped having gastrointestinal distress, even when they ate gluten.
Myth # 3 – Avoiding Gluten Will Give You More Energy
Another claim you’ll hear on anti-gluten websites is that eliminating the protein from your diet will make you feel less sluggish and increase your vim and vigor. This is supposedly because your body will be expending less energy to digest gluten.
However, no studies have found that the gluten-free diet leads to more energy. It is true that some people seem to experience such a boost, if their regimen includes cutting back on foods that are high in sugar, fat and calories and consuming more fruit and vegetables. According to the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Medicine and Public Health, if someone starts eating a healthy, well-balanced diet, he or she may feel that they have more energy, whether or not that person is eating gluten.
Myth # 4 – Gluten Causes Cancer
Some websites claim that gluten causes cancer, and therefore should be avoided by everyone. It is true that people with celiac disease who don’t follow a gluten-free diet will increase their risk of developing several types of cancer, including intestinal lymphoma; small bowel cancer; and liver, esophageal and pharyngeal cancers. But again, remember, that’s only 1% of people in the world.
According to the American Institute for Cancer Research, studies show that avoiding gluten doesn’t provide any additional protection from cancer for people without celiac disease. In fact, as the organization notes, a gluten-free diet may actually increase the risk, since whole grains containing gluten are good sources of fiber and antioxidants that do protect against cancer.
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