Buddhist Monks Invented Mock Meat in the Sixth Century and Called It Mianjin

The idea that plant-based meat substitutes are a recent invention of Silicon Valley is wrong by about fifteen hundred years.

The earliest known reference to wheat gluten is in the Qimin Yaoshu, a Chinese agricultural encyclopaedia compiled by Jia Sixie around 535. Buddhist monastery kitchens in China developed it and called it mianjin, and it spread as a staple of vegetarian temple cooking across East and Southeast Asia. The word seitan is a twentieth-century coinage, attributed to the Japanese macrobiotic advocate George Ohsawa.

The monks were not making a compromise. They were bound by precepts against taking life, they had wheat, and they worked out that wheat contains a protein network you can isolate and cook.

What it is, physically

Wheat flour dough is a mixture of starch granules and gluten proteins. Knead it and the gluten forms an elastic web. Wash that dough under running water and the starch rinses away, leaving the web behind as a springy grey mass.

That is seitan. It is essentially pure wheat protein, which is why it has a fibrous, chewy texture that no bean or soy product replicates, and also why it is entirely unsuitable for anyone with coeliac disease or wheat allergy. There is no gluten-free seitan. The name is a contradiction.

The fast method

Washing flour is the traditional approach and takes over an hour. Vital wheat gluten flour, which is the isolated protein sold as a powder, gets you there in ten minutes.

For about 500g cooked, serving four.

• 200g vital wheat gluten
• 2 tbsp nutritional yeast
• 1 tsp onion powder, 1 tsp garlic powder, 1 tsp smoked paprika
• 180ml cold vegetable stock
• 2 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tbsp tahini or any nut butter

For the poaching broth: 1.5 litres vegetable stock, 60ml soy sauce, a few slices of ginger, 2 star anise, a cinnamon stick.

The method, and the two rules

Mix the dry ingredients. Whisk the wet ingredients separately, then combine and knead for no more than three minutes. It will be stiff and rubbery almost immediately.