We really like seitan. If you’re not familiar, it’s a meat substitute made from wheat gluten (the protein part of wheat). You can cook it pretty much like chicken. It’s more flavorful and has a better texture than tofu.

Unfortunately, like many things, it isn’t easy to get here. It’s mostly available at health food type stores, which are in short supply.

Imagine my delight when I found a recipe for making your own in one of my new slow cooker books!

The first recipe I found described what seemed like a complicated method for getting gluten out of regular wheat flour by rinsing and kneading a dough several times to separate the gluten. Then I discovered you can buy wheat gluten. I was able to get 5 pounds for about $13. Pretty cheap.

Last week I tried making it. The process was quite simple. You mix wheat gluten and a few other ingredients (in this recipe, chickpea flower, nutritional yeast, soy sauce, onion and garlic powder, salt and pepper) with water. You knead the resulting dough for just a couple minutes. It was quite springy unlike usual bread dough. Here’s what the dough looked like before cooking.

Then you cook the dough in the slow cooker in a broth of water, soy sauce, and onions for a few hours. Here it is what it looked like after that – pretty much looks like what we buy at the store. (Note: You cook it again after this to make the final dish.)

And finally here are a couple dishes made with seitan. The first is ropa vieja, a Cuban dish normally made with shredded meat.

Then there was this barbecued pulled pork…um, seitan.