Seitan-ic Delightfulness (Piles of Shit)

Seitan!

Now before you whip out your holy water and 3-foot-tall crosses, let me explain myself.

Seitan is a meat substitute made from wheat gluten flour. It's PACKED with protein and tastes eerily like meat. It even has that smokey, earthy flavor that meat has.

Seitan is delicious specifically as a beef substitute, which is probably why I rarely use it (I never particularly loved beef). The other reason I never really used seitan?

Wheat meat is PRICEY, ya'll.

So I conducted an experiment. I invested in a $6 bag of wheat gluten flour and decided to try my hand at making this stuff myself. To see if A) I could do it, and B) if it were cheaper.

I used Isa's recipe from Vegan With A Vengeance!

Homemade Seitan Pg 157

1 cup vital wheat gluten four
3 tbsp noochy (nutritional yeast)
1/2 cup cold veggie broth
1/4 cup soy sauce
2 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp olive oil
2 cloves garlic, pressed or grated on a microplane grater
4 more cups veggie broth
4 cups water
1/4 cup soy sauce

So to start, you will be mixing the wheat gluten flour and noochy together. :)

Then you're gonna whisk together your cold veggie broth, soy sauce, lemon juice, olive oil, and garlic.

 

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and combine!

Then comes the fun part. KNEAD THIS CRAP!

When you poke it, it should be a little bouncy because of the gluten. :) Heeheeheehee...it's fun to poke!

I forgot to mention that your four cups of water / four cups of veggie broth / 1/4 cup soy sauce should be getting ready to boil in a huge pot on your stove.

When you've got your dough kneaded and your soy sauce / veggie broth mixture is boiling, cut up your seitan into chunks. It should look disgusting, like piles of shit.

I didn't take any more pictures of the next few steps. Why? Because these little turds are then put into a pot of boiling brown water. Appetizing? If you find a public toilet appetizing, then perhaps.

Regardless, you should know that you're supposed to simmer these bad boys for 45 minutes in a pot with the lid loosely covering it. Then you let them sit for 15 minutes and then chop up your turds; then store them in the poop-water until you're ready to use them. Gross.

HOWEVER.

This really is seitan, and it really does taste like a meat substitute, and it really is EXTREMELY high in protein. It's good stuff, guys. I also learned that it is CHEAPER to make this shit than to buy it; I made a huge amount of seitan for about $3 worth of ingredients.

RATINGS:

Deliciousness: 4/5 
It tastes like seitan, which is excellent! It's just as legit as the store-bought stuff. Next time I'll spice it up, maybe throw in some more noochy and a little basil.

Ease of Preparation: 3/5
Kinda messy, kinda time-consuming. But not easy to mess up.

Prettiness: 1/5
IT LITERALLY LOOKS LIKE PILES OF SHIT. PILES OF SHIT SITTING IN A TOILET.