I made my first batch of seitan (’say-tahn’) last weekend, and I couldn’t be happier with it.  Seitan is a protein-rich meat alternative made of wheat gluten.

Non-vegetarians (and non-Japanese) may be more familiar with another name for it:  mock duck.  That’s how I originally encountered it, and I quickly discovered that I was very picky about seitan.  Larger pieces tended to taste very wheat-y, which I did not like.  Small pieces absorbed the flavor of whatever sauce they rested in and were quite toothsome.  In texture, this form of seitan is usually very soft and spongy, another reason that the larger pieces were less appealing.

But depending on how seitan is prepared, the texture and flavor can be very different.  I learned that I loved it when it was denser, chewier, and — let’s be honest about this — more meatlike.  And when it’s seasoned well it doesn’t taste anything like wheat.

Enter Vegan Dad, whose daily blog is full of amazing vegan recipes.  He posted a recipe for a veggie lunch meat that looked a lot like the Tofurkey slices I often eat, and which would be a heck of a lot cheaper.  The next day he posted a shaved seitan BBQ sandwich using the previous day’s lunch meat, and the photo alone was enough to convince me.

A few days later I took the plunge.  I’d previously been a little intimidated by the thought of making seitan, but I’ve been using vital wheat gluten — the key ingredient in seitan — more and more in other things, and I finally realized that it’s nothing to be scared of.  Vegan Dad’s recipe calls for both steaming and baking it.  (The steaming phase cooks the dough without drying it out too much, then the baking phase removes the liquid and toughens it up.)

It worked perfectly, and we used it that night to make the barbecue sandwiches, with vegenaise and some nice bread from a local Somali bakery, and a salad of our CSA lettuce on the side.  I’ve also been snacking on the seitan all week, and we still have a good-sized chunk left.  (We’ll probably mix up a batch of the BBQ to take on our camping trip this weekend!)

———

We’d registered for a cooking class at the Mississippi Market, entitled “The Vegetarian Trinity: Tofu, Tempeh, and Seitan”, which was held last night.  (The instructor was Liz, who writes the blog Food Snobbery is my Hobbery.)  Props to Fast & Furless, the Minneapolis-based vegan boutique whose email newsletter brought the class to my attention.

I’ve felt for quite a while that I’m way too reliant on processed meat substitutes like Boca and Gardenburger.  (I feel especially guilty about buying Boca because it’s owned by Oscar Mayer, so I feel like my vegan dollar is actually supporting hot dog production.)  We took a giant step toward healthier eating when we joined our CSA, but my continued reliance on frozen veggie burgers and fake-chicken patties was an obstacle yet to be surmounted.

Between Liz’s class and my own recent success with the seitan log, I really feel like we’re making headway toward healthier, more sustainable eating.  I’ve been cooking with tofu for years, and feel very comfortable improvising with it — it helps that I’ve developed a taste for tofu, even when it’s pretty bland — but I’ve never had much success baking it.  For one demonstration, Liz baked crouton-sized cubes of lemon-peppered tofu which worked equally well eaten atop a salad or just picked up with fingers.  We’ll probably modify the recipe tonight to make tofu jerky for the camping trip.

For the second demonstration, she mixed up a seitan dough, pressed it into strips and baked it, then broke the strips into smaller pieces and simmered them in barbecue sauce.  These were also delicious, and the longer they sat the tougher and “meatier” they got.

For the last demonstration, she crumbled tempeh — a fermented cake made of cracked soybeans held together by a lattice of mold, which tastes way better than that sounds! — and mixed it with molasses, maple syrup, and an assortment of spices to make little patties that looked and tasted like breakfast sausage.  (It was good, though we might have to cut back on the fennel seed.)  I was pretty stoked about this one, because I’d like to stop buying processed fake-bacon and make my own, and the recipe was a step in that direction.

It was a fun class, and definitely fired my imagination for some other things I’d like to try with each of the veg-protein trinity.  Now, if I can just convince them to hold a class on gobi manchurian…