A while back, my running buddy Mr Ireland lapsed from his vegan diet, returned to meat-eating, and gave me some of the ingredients he would no longer use. He also handed me two lovingly printed and laminated lists: one of vegan protein sources and another that also includes plant-based foods that are high in calcium, iron, zinc and omega 3. I was intrigued to see that something I had never heard of was top of the charts for protein, namely vital wheat gluten, aka seitan. My interest suitably piqued, I ordered six jars of the stuff via Yahoo! Shopping, and this was the sight that greeted me when I opened the box.
Mrs M went on to incorporate seitan in some stir fries and nimono (煮物/not quite soup, but vegetables and so on simmered in a slightly sweet, soy sauce-based stock – Mrs M, incidentally, usually uses our rice cooker for this dish rather than a saucepan), and I was suitably impressed with the chewy, meat-like texture. At 28.6 g per 100 g, seitan also has an impressively meat-like protein content. What’s more, the ingredients list is miraculously short for a processed food product, consisting of just wheat protein and soy sauce.
However – and I honestly don’t know how this one slipped past the tasting and testing stages – the ratio of the two is skewed towards the latter, so that the taste is way too salty. It says on the label that you can de-saltify (desalinate?) the seitan by soaking it in water for 30 minutes before cooking or eating, but this hardly made a difference when I tried it.
As such, this blog post has actually been written to deter you from buying something rather than encourage you to do so. As a footnote, though, there is a wheat protein product that is readily available in Japanese supermarkets and not at all salty. Fu (麩) has the appearance and texture of dry bread and is normally included in miso soup. This makes it soggy and spongy in a way that I don’t really like, and after some experimentation, I have yet to find a more appealing method for cooking it (Mrs M’s mother deep fries it as tempura, but I have neither the cooking skills nor the motivation to do the same). When I do, I’ll post the recipe here and possibly start a fu revolution.
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