Seitan recipes

The finished product as cooked by yours truly.

Dry ingredients

250g wheat gluten flour, available at most good health food shops
30g bread flour

Recommended herbs spices
Nutritional Yeast
Paprika

Onion powder
Garlic powder
Salt
Pepper

Wet ingredients

60ml water

60ml soy sauce

Tablespoon of tomato paste/puree (or even ketchup)

Tablespoon of olive oil

2 tablespoons of tahini

Set the oven to 180°C/350°F/gas mark 4.

Mix all your dry ingredients together thoroughly.

In a separate bowl mix all your wet ingredients together thoroughly. Combine with dry ingredients.

Knead thoroughly until you get a very slightly moist dough with an even colouring. The seitan will start off very sticky (it’s gluten after all), but will eventually coalesce into one easy to manage ball. Add more flour if too wet, or more water if too dry. Set aside.

Make your stuffing.

Roll out your seitan into a square about 0.5cm thick. This may take some effort as it tends to spring back into a tight shape, but it will eventually remain flat. Spread the stuffing evenly over the seitan, leaving around a 1cm gap on all edges.

Starting at one edge, roll the seitan over onto itself, and continue all the way to the other edge. This should result in a spiral full of stuffing. If it hasn’t, you’ve done it wrong. Pinch the edges together to close off the interior.

Wrap your seitan log in tin foil, making sure there are no gaps. Make sure you can open the tin foil from the top of the seitan log, for later.

Fill a large oven-proof dish halfway with water, and place the tin foil-wrapped seitan into the water. When cooking, the water will heat up, cooking the seitan evenly on all sides.

Place dish in oven and cook for ninety minutes. The texture inside should be moist but not wet – if it’s still not cooked through, put it back in the oven until it’s done. Obviously.

When the seitan is cooked through, open the top of the tin foil and cook for a further ten minutes to brown the top.

Remove seitan from tin foil and serve in slices to show off the bad-ass spiralisation. Works well as a traditional roast with vegetables and gravy, but also works excellently sliced thin and served cold in sandwiches at 4AM in your underwear.