Seitan is a great substitute for chicken in many recipes. For those of you who did not know, it is just wheat gluten that has been separated. If you buy it already made from the grocery or co-op, it can be really expensive and you end up with not very much. This is terrible if you have a husband and kids who love to eat. So I make my own, and it is really very, very easy. There are a lot of good recipes for seitan out there, but I find most of them, while yummy, are time-consuming. So after playing around with the stuff, I came up with a system that really works for the "perpetually busy". Throw about 2 cups or so of wheat gluten in a bowl (I buy mine in bulk from the co-op...along with hummus, falafel, you name it...). Add a liberal amount of garlic and onion powder and nutritional yeast flakes. Maybe a couple tablespoons of each. Some salt is good too, so throw in some of that. Mix it up while it is dry. Then add water. This is the tricky part. Keep adding a bout 1/4 cup of water at a time and then kneading the mixture. When you do not see any powder and you have something that looks like bread dough but springier, you are done. Be careful because the uncooked dough is super-sticky and it is better to just pick it off of your hands and throw it in the compost or trash. Seriuosly, it will stick to everything. I shape mine into a loaf and then slice it into "cutlets". I boil these in a large pot of water with vegetable bouillon for 45 minutes. They do get much larger, use a big pot that is 1/2 filled with water. Drain them and you can store them in the fridge for about a week or even freeze them and they are good in many, many recipes that once called for chicken.
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