Homemade Seitan

An easy recipe for this 1,500-year-old food whose name roughly translates to “made of protein.”

In our ranking of protein-packed plant foods, seitan comes out on top. First discovered about 1,500 years ago by Chinese Buddhist monks seeking a meaty texture without causing harm, they learned that when wheat dough was rinsed to remove the starch, what remained was a dense, chewy mass of protein. Japanese monks later incorporated it into their temple cuisine, and from there it spread into the general population before eventually reaching the West.

The word seitan is actually quite modern. It was coined in the 1960s by George Ohsawa, founder of the macrobiotic movement, and roughly translates to “made of protein” (sei = life/made, tan = protein). In China, it was known as miànjīn, meaning “wheat muscle,” which perfectly captures its role as a protein-rich, plant-based meat.