HAIL SEITAN! The Weird World of Homemade Wheat-Meat

Foodies (and other top-hatted, monocled, highbrow goons and goofusses), don’t like processed food, distrust “food products,” and look down on Taco Bell consumers (“I say! Look at those mindless sheeple at the local purveyor of Industrialized American-Mexican fare!”).  I kind of like food and want to make choices that indicate my mindfulness of the effects of my consumption and my love for the planet (I love it but I’m not… in love with it), so I continue my journey to find simple, delicious substitutes for meat. The implication of the term “substitute” is that it can’t stand by itself or is in some ways a lesser option, but the reason I use this terminology is because a plate should have a protein, and the protein of choice in a traditional Western diet is meat. So I seek another way.

My hope is to help encourage a “non-soy-based, non-heavily-processed, local-focused veg diet, [which] is the definition of low impact.”

So when I’m at the grocery store and I see something labeled “wheat-meat” and is supposedly both “mock duck” and “mock pork” simultaneously, I was immediately intrigued (like characters in Dracula, both entranced/repelled).  I imagine that this is some kind of vegetarian frankenproduct, but it turns out that’s really not the case if you make it yourself.

A Kirk Cameron’s depiction of the animal seitan comes from

Though it appears to be a highly processed mock-food, seitan (pronounced SAY-TAN), actually only contains two ingredients:  vital gluten flour and water.  Seitan is basically high-gluten boiled bread; it’s obviously not gluten-free.  If you don’t feel like spending time locating vital gluten flour (which you can pick up at any health food store and at some supermarket organic sections) or if you don’t want to make this recipe for whatever reason, you can find commercial seitan in Asian/international markets or in health food stores (but the mark-up on seitan is incredibly high:  12 oz of seitan will run you about $4.00 (and that was at Kroger)–however, making it only costs about a buck a pound).

Canned from an international store is the cheaper albeit more dubious option

But don’t waste your money!  Don’t eat something out of a can you can’t read! Make seitan yourself! I’ve been improving this recipe for awhile and have worked out the kinks.  You won’t have to sell your soul for this meat substitute (har, har, har).

Invite SEITAN into your household in SIX simple steps!

You Aren’t What You Eat: Vegetable Stock

Vegetable stock has so many uses and can elevate just about anything it’s added to; it’s become essential to my kitchen setup.  It’s also really cheap to make a ton of it, so I find myself making it quite often.  I used to prepare it according to the free recipe online that has “5 Stars” (if you trust the pedestrian masses and their derivative “star system”, go ahead and use that recipe (but it’s a blunder, I say!)).  That recipe was fine until I started shopping around and trying other recipes.

I’ve adapted Mark Bittman’s recipe from his great book How to Cook Everything Vegetarian.  This is the best vegetable stock I’ve tried.  Once prepared, you can use this surprisingly hearty stock to build a soup (I’ve made everything from vegetarian chili to tortilla soup with this stock), sauce, to fortify grains like quinoa (use stock in place of water), or you can just sip it on a hot summer day (if you’re into that).

I like to make about two quarts (1/2 gallon) at any given time—you can cut this recipe in half or double it depending on how much you want to make, but bear in mind that it only takes a few more minutes of prep to double or triple this recipe.  (Storage information follows):

You Aren’t What You Eat: A Beginning

Given that the industrial meat complex is “one of the largest contributors to environmental degradation worldwide, and modern practices of raising animals for food contribute on a massive scale to air and water pollution, land degradation, climate change, and loss of biodiversity,” we should be mindful of what we eat.  (As a side-note, please don’t let your kids wander around the industrial meat complex; it’s kind of easy to get lost).

But with the emergence of foodstuffs with names like “Tofurky,” “Tofutti,” and the dreaded “Tofuncula”; and food movements with names like “Freeganism” and “Locavorism,” some (who identify as regular folks) are hesitant to throw themselves head-long into these presumably godless, commie, hippy-dippy lifestyles.  But there’s an obvious difference between trying to cut back on the consumption of animal products for logical reasons and taking on a cultural movement as the pillar of one’s identity (remember folks, you aren’t what you eat).

As Amurcans, we have to consume.  However we’re fortunate enough to live in the digital age—if we so choose, we can empower ourselves with the totality of human information on the internet (though more likely we will play Farmville and repost chain letters on the topics we feel strongly about on Facebook (e.g., Obama’s incessant push for the legalization of gay-bortions, how women’s health centers give us the heebie-jeebies, the tyranny of government-mandated gravy rationing, Bieber Hairstyle 2.0, etc.)).  If we aren’t sure how the proverbial sausage is made, we can Google “how do they make the sausage?” (Safe Search: On) and find out pretty easily.

Porcine seppuku is so delicious.

Therefore the “out of sight, out of mind” argument as it applies to the industrial meat complex is really just a sign of laziness or apathy.  Now let me show you some actual pictures of actual cows from an actual industrial slaughterhouse.

Ah, a joke. Delightful.

If you need to see pictures like this to be convinced that you should be mindful of the meat you consume, it’s your choice to seek out these pictures.  To use scare tactics here however would be offensive and moreover ineffective (See: How it’s working for PETA).

If you’re interested in learning more, you should see the film Food Inc for a well-rounded overview of the problems in industrial food production.

The world of meat alternatives is a weird one though, and I wish I would have had someone to help me navigate it.  I ended up spending tons of money on organic ooze and processed soy glop that still visits me in dark and dreadful dreams.  A lot of the meat substitutes you see at supermarkets are questionable in nature, so I want to help you find tasty meat alternatives.

Let me open the floor for questions:

A voice from the audience cries “What will the other guys at the office think if I bring in a veggie burger to work?!”

Another ejects “Hey! Where’d that guy get a pitchfork? I want a pitchfork!”

Calm down folks, in the same way the smoking Marlboros won’t make you John Wayne, eating tofu isn’t going to make you a hippy—you’ll still just be one of the guys.

Another voice:  “What’s your point?  Where do you fit into all of this?”

Ah, glad you asked.  In the upcoming weeks I plan to start an open series (anyone who wants to add food items/commentary to this working list, feel free) on reasonable substitutes for animal products in culinary applications.  My food philosophy is centered on taste, so I’m only going to advocate applications of meat substitutes where you’ll be hard pressed to taste a difference from the real thing or where the substitute tastes better than the original.

That’s it, there you have it.  My hope is that these posts inspire you to try new things and practice personal responsibility.