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On Fourth of July, rather than going out and battling the crowds (and the heat), we decided to do something that Shelly has wanted to do as a family for several weeks now… make Seitan.

What’s Seitan? From Wikipedia:

Wheat gluten, also called seitan ([ˈseɪtɑn]), wheat meat, gluten meat, or simply gluten, is a food made from the gluten of wheat. It is made by washing wheat flour dough with water until all the starch dissolves, leaving insoluble gluten as a gummy mass, which is subject to further processing.

We followed a recipe from one of our Native Foods cookbooks, and it all together took something in the ballpark of 4 hours to complete. This is not bad considering how little the ingredients cost, and how much we generally pay at Whole Foods for the pre-made stuff.

Mixing the dry goods with the sifter, kneading the dough and then finally rinsing the dough were Lane’s favorite steps. He didn’t seem to care for the process of adding water to the dry goods and making the broth.

After the dough had simmered in the broth for an hour and a half, and cooled off on a plate, we prepared our Fourth of July dinner. Lane helped me puree carrots, potatoes and turnips for a base. Shelly steamed and then pan fried asparagus spears with sesame oil. And then we pan fried some steaks made from our homemade Seitan.

Man, was this ever delicious. All the hard work throughout the day really did make the whole meal taste a lot better! And, now we have a whole bunch of Seitan on hand to use over the next few weeks! Hurray!