How to Make Your Own Seitan at Home

To make your own seitan at home, the first thing we will do is prepare the broth where we will cook the gluten. You can prepare the vegetable broth yourself or buy it ready-made in cartons. You can even use stock cubes if you wish. If you have it already made, you should add the soy sauce and let it boil.

While the broth is preparing, add in a large bowl all the other ingredients for this DIY seitan recipe. This means you add the wheat gluten, chickpea flour and breadcrumbs.

Mix all the ingredients until you achieve a uniform dough and add the spices to taste, in this case we will add garlic powder, turmeric and paprika, as well as a pinch of salt to taste and a tip of a teaspoon of yeast.

When the vegetable broth starts to boil, turn off the heat and keep it aside.

When the ingredients are well integrated into the dough, make a hole in the center and add the broth, which we will have previously mixed with the soy sauce. Add it in when it is warm, but not when it is boiling hot.

Now, remove with the help of a fork or a spoon, mix the dough until it forms a paste. Be careful not to burn yourself if the mixture is still hot.

Once it has come together nicely, knead the dough on a flat surface. This process is somewhat slow and you will have to knead for a long time in order to activate the gluten.

When you see that the dough has become elastic, form 2 or 3 balls depending on the size you want to get from your homemade seitan. Keep in mind that the dough will double in size during cooking.

With the dough ready, it's time to cook. You can cook the seitan in various ways. You can cook in a broth like you would with dumplings which is a little quicker. You can also add the balls of dough to an piled saucepan and let them cook for approximately 40 minutes over medium heat.

Once the seitan is cooked, turn off the heat and let it cool to room temperature. Your DIY seitan is now ready! The cooked seitan is ready to use in various vegan and vegetarian preparations. It is especially good if you want to use it as a substitute in many different meat dishes which you want to make into plant-based meals.

Learn other vegetarian and vegan meat alternatives with our recipes for how to make vegan chicken nuggets or how to make easy vegetarian lentil burgers.

If you want to read similar articles to How to Make Your Own Seitan at Home, we recommend you visit our Recipes category.

Tips

• When kneading the seitan dough you can divide the dough into different parts to make it easier to manipulate. The idea is to knead each one of them for at least 5 minutes or until you notice that the dough becomes elastic.
• Once you have the seitan ready, it is important to know how to keep it in order to use it as many times as you want. You can leave it in the fridge for a week as long as it is in an airtight container together. It is best kept with its cooking broth.
• Another option for preserving homemade seitan is to freeze it, this time without the broth. You can freeze the balls whole or cut into portions, whichever is more practical for your daily use.
• Although seitan can be made using only gluten, we recommend adding some type of flour (in this case we have used chickpeas) in order to improve its texture.
• The spices are totally optional, but you must remember they will give distinct flavor to the seitan, as well as will the vegetable broth and the soy sauce. In case the soy sauce is not to your liking, you can substitute it with a little more salt.
• You can prepare your own vegetable broth or use a packaged one. In case of using water to prepare the seitan, you should know that the result will be a less tasty version.
• With seitan you can prepare numerous dishes and you can even make hamburgers, sausages, scallops or whatever it is. Simply prepare various meat dishes, but use the seitan instead. Seitan can often be much easier to use since it is not as delicate as many meats.