Seitan Class

Matthew Woolen is a master pastry chef and has worked in a variety of Seattle restaurants, including gastropub Old Sage, Zhu Dang, and a gluten-free restaurant called Capitol Cider.

Matthew Woolen

This recipe produces tender shreds of seasoned wheat protein, perfect for adding to soups and stews, stuffing into tortillas for tacos, or tossing with a dressing or sauce for sandwiches. Call it the other, other white “meat”!Seitan is essentially just pure gluten, or wheat protein, and it’s often used to create “meat substitutes,” since you can easily manipulate the long chains gluten forms to produce a wide variety of textures. Gluten is relatively bland, too, so it can be seasoned with whatever you like. I’ve found that a mix of seasoned salt, nutritional yeast, and smoked paprika approximate the “meaty” flavor of chicken well enough; I don’t think anyone will think, “Wow, this is chicken!” but I’m pretty sure they’ll think, “Wow, this is good!” The point of meat substitutes isn’t to mimic meat exactly, after all, but just to get pretty close.And a lot of that comes down to texture. For this recipe, I instruct you to stretch the dough out, roll it up into a tight log, knot the log at several intervals, and then fold any excess dough underneath those knots. The combined effect of the knots and the rolling and tucking in the excess dough is that, once steamed, the seitan has all these distinct layers, which, when shredded, mimic closely the way braised meat fibers shred.

Shredded Seitan Chicken