Easy, homemade Seitan

With it’s savory taste and chewy texture seitan is a great replacement for meat. Just replace any dish a few pieces and you instantly have a environmentally friendly meal. It also has a crazy amount of protein per serving so it’s great for athletes and bodybuilders alike.

First of all I’d like to validate the cost benefits of Seitan. Seitan is basically just boiled wheat gluten (aka the protein from gluten) with spices and flavouring. The recipe that I use also has nutritional yeast added so I’ve included it in this analysis.

Let’s pull out Excel.

Food	Calories per 100g	Protein	Protein % per calorie	Price per 100 cal	Price per 20g Protein
Boneless Skinless Chicken Breast	110	23	84%	$2.00	$1.91
Boneless Skinless Chicken Thigh	119	20	67%	$1.02	$1.21
Pork Chops	123	21	68%	$0.89	$1.05
Lean Ground Beef	254	17	27%	$0.55	$1.66
Sirloin Steak	143	21	59%	$1.28	$1.74
Lean Ground Chicken	143	17	48%	$0.85	$1.44
Salmon	208	20	38%	$0.95	$1.98
Gluten Flour	370	75	81%	$0.35	$0.35
Nutritional Yeast	281	50	71%	$0.83	$0.94

All of these numbers were taken from nutritionaldata.self.com and prices were taken from the local grocery and bulk food store in my area. The below links show the full spreadsheet and prices.

Spreadsheet
Prices

The important numbers to note are that both Gluten Flour and Nutritional Yeast are significantly cheaper than the meat products and yet still relatively high in protein density (only being lower to boneless, skinless chicken breast).

Clearly if you’re looking to be economical, seitan is something you should look into.

On to the recipe!

For a step by step process check out the video

Ingredients

2 cups gluten flour
1/2 cup nutritional yeast
1/2 tbsp chili powder
1/2 tbsp onion powder
1/2 tbsp ground cumin
1 /2 tbsp salt
1/4 tbsp pepper
3 tbsp soy sauce
1 vegetable bouillon cube
2 x 1 cup of water

Directions

1. place the bouillon cube in one cup of water and microwave for 1 minute or until dissolved
2. mix all dry ingredients together until combined
3. pour the dissolved bouillon cube, second cup of water and the soy sauce into the dry ingredients and mix. Be careful as the mixture may be hot
4. kneed the mixture until all of the powder is combined. You may need to add a bit more water if the gluten flour isn’t being absorbed.
5. Let the dough sit for 20 minutes and start to boil a large pot of water
6. Once rested for 20 minutes, cut half of the dough into 1 inch pieces and drop into boiling water
7. Allow to boil for 5 minutes or until all pieces are floating and have stopped exanding
8. using a strainer, remove the seitan pieces and repeat steps 6 and 7 for the other half of the dough

A quarter of this recipe will give you:

286 Calories
13.3g Carbs
1.3g Fat
51.2 Protein

Now that your seitan is ready, add it to anything!

Pizza!

Sushi!

Or even stir fried with your favourite sauce

Give it a try and let me know what you think!