Someone kindly recommended it to me as an easy protein substitute I can have with pasta. Meatballs etc don’t fill me up enough. I’ve never made it but I’m gonna get some, any tips?
I haven’t made it in years, but the powder (vital wheat gluten) is basically flour with the starch removed. There’s a lot of recipes out there, but the idea is to make a flavored dough out of it, then simmer it in a broth for at least half an hour. The tricky part is you don’t want it to fully boil, or the texture will be off. You need keep checking on it to keep it at a low simmer.
I should mention that while it does have a lot of protein, it’s the same type of protein as the pasta. It doesn’t really matter for a single meal, but it’s not a complete protein. Long term you need other sources to get all your amino acids. There’s a reason a lot of staple meals have a combination of grains and legumes.
It’s high protein, it just doesn’t have a perfect amino acid profile. Basically if it’s your only source of protein/aminos, you could become nutritionally deficient.
Specifically, it’s sorta low-ish on Lysine and Tryptophan. It’s not that there’s none in seitan, it’s just not quite in the quantities you’d want if you fully used it as your sole protein source.
As long as you eat some other food that’s known to have those two amino acids (which many plants and other protein sources do), you’re good :)