Concept
Seitan (UKˈseɪtæn, US-tɑːn; セイタン) is a food made from gluten, the main protein of wheat. It is also known as miànjīn (), fu (麩), milgogi (밀고기), wheat meat, gluten meat, vital wheat gluten or simply gluten. It is made by washing wheat flour dough with water until most of the starch granules have been removed, leaving behind the sticky, insoluble gluten as an elastic mass, which is then cooked and eaten. Wheat gluten is an alternative to soybean-based foods, such as tofu, which are sometimes used as a meat alternative. Some types of wheat gluten have a chewy or stringy texture that resembles meat more than other substitutes. Wheat gluten is often used instead of meat in Asian, vegetarian, vegan, Buddhist, and macrobiotic cuisines. Mock duck is a common use for wheat. Wheat gluten first appeared during the 6th century as an ingredient for Chinese noodles. It has historically been popular in the cuisines of China, Japan and other East and Southeast Asian nations. In Asia, it is commonly found on the menus of restaurants catering primarily to Buddhist customers who do not eat meat. Wheat gluten has been documented in China since the 6th century. It was widely consumed by the Chinese as a substitute for meat, especially among adherents of Buddhism. The oldest reference to wheat gluten appears in the Qimin Yaoshu, a Chinese agricultural encyclopedia written by Jia Sixie in 535. The encyclopedia mentions noodles prepared from wheat gluten called bótuō (餺飥). Wheat gluten was known as miànjīn (麵筋) by the Song dynasty (960–1279). Wheat gluten arrived in the West by the 18th century. De Frumento, an Italian treatise on wheat written in Latin by Bartolomeo Beccari in 1728 and published in Bologna in 1745, describes the process of washing wheat flour dough to extract the gluten. John Imison wrote an English-language definition of wheat gluten in his Elements of Science and Art published in 1803. By the 1830s, Western doctors were recommending wheat gluten in diets for diabetics.
