Everything you need to know about how to make seitan, a delicious vegan meat-alternative perfect for your plant-based cooking!

You can totally purchase pre-made seitan in the grocery store, but did you know that you can also make it from scratch right at home? Fancy tools aren’t required, just a few key ingredients and the will to make some dough.
The whole process to making seitan is pretty simple, requiring only 15 minutes of prep time and then one hour of simmering time. Making it from scratch means that you can cut it for whatever recipe you’re making, and will probably have part of a “loaf” leftover for something else!
So today, we’re covering everything you need to know about how to make seitan, from the ingredients and seasonings to the kneading, simmering, and slicing. Let’s get into it!
Reader rating
“This was a simple and easy recipe! I made no changes followed instructions and it came out perfect!” —Adrienne
Seitan Ingredients
Seitan is made from scratch by forming a dough and then letting it simmer in a broth and vinegar combo. In total, only 10 ingredients are needed.
Seitan Dough
The dough is what will become the finished seitan! Wheat gluten plays the star role here, with the strong gluten strands creating the unique meat-like texture (that’s why they call it “wheat meat”!)
- Vital Wheat Gluten: First up for the dough, we’ll use 1 cup of vital wheat gluten. Seitan is made directly from gluten, so this ingredient is a must.
- Water: 1 cup of water is added to help form the dough.
- Chickpea Flour: To thicken it up, we’ll include ¼ cup of chickpea flour.
- Nutritional Yeast: Add ¼ cup of nutritional yeast, which will bring a savory flavor to help replicate the flavor of meat.
- Spices: Finally, include 1 tsp each of salt, garlic powder, and smoked paprika powder.
Seitan Broth
By boiling the seitan in a flavorful broth, we’ll back in even more flavor.
- Vegetable Broth: As for the broth, we’ll start with 6 cups of vegetable broth. Feel free to use low sodium broth here!
- Apple Cider Vinegar: We will then add 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar, which will add a very subtle bite.
- Liquid Smoke: Finally, include 1 teaspoon of liquid smoke to finish things off!
How to make seitan
The trickiest part of making seitan is probably creating the dough. It’s definitely easiest to use your hands, and know that it will probably remain lumpy even when it’s well kneaded! After mixing everything into a dough, we will let it simmer for an hour. Boom, seitan!
Step 1: Prepare the dough
In a large bowl, stir together all of the dough ingredients until a ball forms.
Transfer to a clean surface and knead for about 5 minutes, or until the dough is elastic and cohesive. It will still be lumpy, and that’s okay! The longer you knead, the tougher/more chewy the finished seitan will be. Form the dough into a log shape. Let it rest for 5 minutes while you prepare the broth.
Step 2: Simmer in broth
Add all of the broth ingredients to a large pot and bring to a simmer. Gently lower the seitan dough log into the broth, ensuring the dough is covered by the broth (if not, transfer to a smaller pot). Partially cover and simmer for 1 hour.
Step 3: Slice or crumble and serve
Remove the seitan from the pot and let it cool enough to touch. Slice into slabs, crumble into nuggets, or use however you need it (it will depend on your recipe and desired use)!
Ways to serve seitan
After letting the seitan simmer and cool, cut it depending on the recipe you’re making. You may be wondering what your options are! It will all come down to the type of meat you’re substituting.
- Slabs: Cut into slabs for seitan burgers or steaks (yes, you can give seitan a steak flavor with the right seasonings!).
- Slices: Slices are great wherever you’d use chicken slices, like on a salad or in tacos or fajitas! They can also be seasoned and cut like pepperoni!
- Cubes: Cubes are also great for salads, but also for Buddha bowls, in “steak” dishes, or as “chicken” nuggets.
- Crumbles: As for crumbles, it’s the perfect option for tacos, chili, stew, or soup!
- Whole: Lastly, whole “loafs” of seitan make great pot roasts.
Dishes perfect for seitan
The following dishes were made with other ingredients, but are perfect for seitan! For each one, I’ll tell you whether you’ll be substituting something, as well as how you should cut the seitan.
- Kimchi Tempeh Tacos: Substitute the tempeh with crumbled seitan.
- Coconut Kidney Bean Curry: Add small cubes of seitan to the curry at step #3.
- Sweet Potato and Black Bean Chili: Replace the chili “meat” with crumbled seitan. I recommend omitting the walnuts and mushrooms, but keeping the black beans.
- Oyster Mushroom Philly Cheesesteak: Finally, use sliced seitan in place of the oyster mushrooms. Season and flavor as directed. Delicious!
Ingredients
Dough
- 1 cup vital wheat gluten 120 g
- 1 cup water 236 mL
- ¼ cup chickpea flour 30 g
- ¼ cup nutritional yeast 15 g
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp garlic powder
- 1 tsp smoked paprika powder
Broth
- 6 cups vegetable broth 1.4 L
- 2 Tbsp apple cider vinegar 30 mL
- 1 tsp liquid smoke 5 mL
Instructions
- Dough: In a large bowl stir together all dough ingredients until a ball forms. Transfer to a clean surface and knead for about 5 minutes, or until dough is elastic and cohesive (it will still be lumpy, that's okay!) Form into a log shape. Let dough rest for 5 minutes while you prepare the broth.
- Broth: Add all broth ingredients to a large pot and bring to a simmer. Gently lower the seitan dough log into the broth, ensuring the dough is covered by the broth (if not, transfer to a smaller pot). Partially cover and simmer for 1 hour.
- Serve: Remove from pot and let cool enough to touch. Slice into slabs, crumble into nuggets, or use however you need it (depends on your recipe and desired use!)
Gordon says
Does Seitan tolerate being frozen?
Sarah says
Yep, it freezes well! 😀
karen says
This was a FAIL. The dough was very sticky. I lowered it into simmering (not boiling) broth and it completely dissolved. What a waste.
Sarah says
I’m surprised to hear this, Karen! I’ve relentlessly tested this recipe (and it’s pretty similar to other traditional seitan recipes). Did you make sure to use vital wheat gluten (and not flour)? And how long did you knead it together for? If both of these were done correctly, a lot of gluten should have formed, which would be all but impossible to dissolve in water.
brendon rios says
Same here. Not sure what else t wrong. It’s currently simmering, but it’s pretty much dissolved into several small pieces now.
Molly says
Just made mine and it turned out SO GOOD! Even the meat eater in my house liked it 😀 curious, what is the serving size? How much of the seitan loaf and/or how many grams is included in your serving info?
Sarah says
Yay! So happy to hear it, Molly! It serves 4 😀
Deborah says
Is the liquid smoke a needed ingredient or can I skip that?
Sarah Bond says
It adds a TON of flavor, but the texture won’t be impacted by leaving it out (and you could compensate with smoked paprika and spices).
Deborah says
What do you do with the remaining broth, after cooking the Seitan?
Sarah Bond says
You can save it for future batches! It can even be frozen 😀
Kathryn says
Recipe has worked great for me! Would it be reasonable to freeze and reuse the broth?
Sarah Bond says
Absolutely!
Scott says
Hi really easy, but I needed to add a fair bit extra flour to the mix to get it to be able to form a ball which I could kneed
frank says
Just to say, you can prepare seitan, using strong bread flour.
There is more work involved, but it’s possible.
Scott says
I have made this twice now and on both occasions i have hade to add nearly double or triple the flour and besan and add extra nooch to get it to actually form a ball and not be a sticky mess, but once it is achieved it cooks no problems and tastes great, next time i will be only adding a bit of water at a time. Something is up with the ratios for sure
Adrienne says
This was a simple and easy recipe! I made no changes followed instructions and it came out perfect!
Adrienne says
The best recipe I’ve found! Easy and delicious made several “steaks” on the grill ❤️ No changes followed recipe.
Sarah Bond says
So glad to hear it, Adrienne! 😀
Wilma Dailey says
In my cookbook I had a long time ago, you used 8 cups flour with 3cups cold water. After needing it for 5-10 minutes you did a dough shape ball. Covered with cold water set for 4 hours or overnight in refrigerator. The you poured of water, rimce with cold water until water ran clean and it looked like a brain.
You boil for 15 minutes and simmered for 30 minutes.
It was an all day process
Sarah Bond says
Yep, that’s one way of doing it! That method is basically “mining” for gluten, whereas our method uses pure gluten to eliminate that step 🙂