Venus Rising

Food for SoulIssue: Aquarius 09 - The Change Issue

Yes Seitan!

Chinese Calligraphy by Philip GaligaThis time of year, our menus lean toward the comfort food zone. Unless you live in sunny California, the typical American family is currently dining on meat, potatoes, and a perfunctory vegetable. If you feel stuck in this rut, why not give wheat gluten (seitan) a try? Wheat gluten can be an amazing substitute for animal mainstays and is an easy, nutritious, and delicious way to introduce change to your carnivorous habits.

Wheat gluten, most frequently made into what we know as seitan, pronounced “say tan,” is often called “wheat meat” or “mock duck,” “mock beef,” “mock pork,” and so on…because of its ability to be transformed into a main ingredient that has remarkably similar characteristics to most meats depending on how it is handled and seasoned. The most recognized mock dish, Chinese mock duck, is made with wheat gluten. It is a staple in most Chinese restaurants. However, home cooks can find ready-made wheat gluten in blocks, chunks, or strips at health food stores and cooperatives. In its block or chunky form it is commonly packaged in sauce flavored with mushrooms or BBQ. In strips, it is ready to eat, much like beef jerky. It is also prevalent in Asian markets where it is sold in cans with rich Asian sauce or vegetable broth. Wheat gluten cooked with ginger, soy sauce, and Kombu (Japanese seaweed), is the traditional recipe for seitan.

Seitan is an ideal meat alternative because it is high in protein. To make it, wheat flour is washed with water to remove most of its soluble starch and what remains is the insoluble protein of the wheat, the gluten, a substance with trace fat, few carbohydrates, no cholesterol, and high protein. With 80% protein per serving, wheat gluten exceeds the amount of protein per serving found in most animal meats.

While this may be a revelation to some, it is not newfound knowledge. Chinese Buddhist monks, who had already been using soy as a meat substitute in their dedication to a vegetarian lifestyle, discovered the transformative and nutritional powers of wheat gluten and made it a mainstay in their diets a long time ago. Otherwise known as Buddha beef, as Buddhism spread so did the use of wheat gluten. When it reached Japan, it was used with local ingredients, including soy sauce and sea kelp. It is here that “seitan” was created. But the Japanese used seitan less as a meat substitute, and more as a star ingredient. Creating things like mock shrimp and mock eel was more of an art than a nutritional necessity. Seitan became popular in Western cultures when vegetarianism was the rage in the 60’s and 70’s. Hippies may have made seitan slightly more mainstream during this era, but Mormons had been using wheat meat since the turn of the century. And, when times were tough, as in the Great Depression, it was often used as a meat substitute in meat loaves.