- 1 cup vital wheat gluten. I have only tried Anthony's vital wheat gluten
- 1/3 cup pea protein powder
- Onion powder, to your own taste (roughly 1/2 tbsp)
- Garlic powder, to your own taste (roughly 1/2 tbsp)
- Soy sauce, wing it but probably around 1-2 tbsp
- Water, quantity depending on how soft you want seitan to be, but roughly 1 cup
- (optional) nutritional yeast, wing it but probably around 1 tbsp
- Start boiling water in a pot if you plan to simmer or steam the seitan. If you are baking, preheat the oven. (So far, I have only tried simmering)
- Knead all ingredients in a mixing bowl for 5+ minutes. (The more you knead the dough, the chewier the seitan will be)
- Separate into 2-3 equal chunks.
- Add soy sauce to pot and reduce heat to simmer chunks for 45 minutes. (When simmering, make sure that the simmer is not too vigorous or else the seitan will not hold its shape as well)
- Remove seitan from pot, store in fridge. (This should keep in the fridge for a long time. It would last about a week, or more)
- Stir frying the seitan by itself in some neutral oil is really nice. Deep frying is also quite good. Would not recommend eating the seitan without doing these things because the Maillard reaction definitely improves the flavor noticably.
- Put in stir fry, curry, or anything else that you desire.
- No matter what, you should probably wait for the seitan to cool before trying to fry it. The reason is because if the seitan is still hot when you fry it, then the water in it will more easily evaporate, and when it does, it will combine with oil droplets to create hazardous oil splatters. This is the same phenenomenon as a grease fire. This is also speculation - maybe there are other reasons, but this seems like it checks out to me.
- Bread cooker. Is very easy, more meaty texture, but less tasty in my opinion because the result does not retain moisture as well.
- This is my MVP seitan - I haven't done a lot of experimentation. However, I think this version tastes pretty good.
- I haven't tried not adding nutritional yeast, so I'm not sure what it would taste like without it.
- I have also not tried omitting pea protein powder. The internet tells me that this gives better texture, and also it balances the amino acid profile so that the seitan has complete amino acids, so I just do it. Plus, I just had some pea protein powder lying around, so...
- Some recipes will say to add cayenne and a bunch of other spices. To be quite honest, I can't tell the difference between when cayenne and no cayenne when I experimented with that. Maybe worth some experimentation to test spice types and quantities.
- In general, there is a lack of rigorous food science about seitan preparation. I think such a study would be incredibly valuable to the world because seitan is sort of a miracle food because it's pure protein. Could change the mindsets of a lot of fitness minded omnivores. At least, that is my story.