Whole Story

I fell in love with seitan (say-tahn) at the Whole Foods Market Lamar store in Austin about two years ago. The Living Green venue makes vegan seitan gyros that are as good, if not better, than most of the gyros I’ve had in all of Austin (admittedly, we’re not known for our Greek food in this town). Are you wondering what seitan is? Seitan is a food made from the gluten of wheat. Its texture is dense and a bit on the chewy side and it can be substituted for meat in many dishes. At Whole Foods Market, I find seitan in the dairy aisle with the tofu and tempeh. It’s sold in various forms, including strips and crumbles. A package usually has about two servings and keeps pretty well if you want to prepare one serving at a time, just make sure you use (or freeze) by the date on the package. My favorite dish to make with seitan is a Greek salad. It’s as easy as getting a package of seitan, placing a bit of olive oil in a pan and bringing it up to about medium-high. Add one serving of seitan into the pan and season with ½ teaspoon of dried oregano and salt and pepper to taste. Sauté the seitan until it’s heated through and you see a little bit of a crust on the slices. Then build your favorite Greek salad using items from your store’s salad bar. I like Romaine lettuce, red bell pepper, cucumbers, tomatoes, red onion, feta cheese and Kalamata olives. Later in the week, you can use the other serving of seitan to make a stir-fry using some vegetables from your salad bar (or stir-fry bar if you have one in your store). Just add your favorite stir-fry sauce and serve on top of brown rice or whole grain of your choosing. Some other ideas for seitan:

• Use ground seitan in place of ground beef, turkey or bison and make tacos or taco salad
• Season strips like you would fajitas and make seitan fajitas
• Subsititute seitan for beef in Stroganoff

Do you have any favorite ways to eat seitan? Share them in the comments section.