(dramatic music)
Hello everybody! What's going on?
It's your girl, Merle.
And today we are hopping
on a TikTok trend that has swept the nation!
Okay. I don't know if it's swept the nation.
But it's pretty popular
and I've had a bazillion people send it to me to try.
So thank you for sending it to me.
Now, we're going to try it.
What we're making today is chicken out of flour.
What we're really making is seitan.
So the original TikTok was posted by @futurelettuce.
They made it look really delicious,
they made it look really easy.
The only hiccup is that there are no measurements which is
♪ kind of tricky ♪
for me because I've never made seitan this way.
Seitan goes back centuries.
I mean, Buddhist monks have been eating seitan
for hundreds and hundreds of years
as a vegetarian substitute for actual meat.
With all that said, what do you say-tan we get started?
That is unforgivable. I am so sorry.
So I've got 400 grams of flour here
and I've got one cup of water.
So I'm going to go ahead and add in my flour.
Now I'm just going to add in my water.
Full disclosure, I do not like working with dough.
I do not really like make bread or anything in my free time.
It's sticky and it's a mess.
So I'm not looking forward to this.
In case you were wondering.
I'm just going to mix this together
until it starts to form our dough.
I've got it to kind of come together,
now I'm going to go in there
and I'm going to knead it with my hands.
We're going to knead it until it is smooth like a balloon.
So I've read online that I'm supposed to do this
for like five to 10 minutes.
And I think I'm going to turn it right out onto the surface.
Oh, and disclaimer, I washed my hands.
I know people freak out when you don't use gloves,
before or you type away in the comments about my hands
and what a monster I am. (keys clicking)
I know how the internet works. I know all about it.
Oh, okay. You know what, it is coming together.
It's getting smoother because the gluten is forming.
All right, this is looking nice and smooth.
And we did the little poking test.
If you poke your finger into your dough and it bounces back,
that means that your gluten is formed
and you should be good to move on to the next step.
If you put your finger in there
and it just stays in there like a dent,
you need to keep kneading, baby, knead away.
Channel someone strong.
Ours is all set and ready to go.
And so now what we're going to do
is we're going to put our little dough baby
in a bowl and let it rest for an hour.
So the next step is for us to wash the dough with water.
This washing process, what it's really doing
is it's allowing us to separate the gluten
and the protein from the starch.
Starch is water soluble,
so it's going to release out into the water
so we're left with just a mass of gluten.
It feels nice.
I can already feel it loosening
the more that I'm kneading it
and massaging it. (woman sighing)
Don't panic if your dough baby gluten protein monster
starts to break down or come apart
because that's totally normal
and when we are finished with this
it's all going to form back together, just trust me.
Don't you worry your sweet little heart.
I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to strain it
and I'm going to keep the water, the starchy water,
because we can use the starchy water for other recipes,
for instance, cold skin noodles.
And now we're going to repeat this process
like three to four times
until the water is clear, but not transparent.
After all of that, we've got our gluten ball.
This is looking really good, I've got to say.
I'm going to go ahead and season it.
I'm adding a little bit of salt, some pepper, some paprika,
garlic powder, and onion powder.
Then I'm just going to sort of fold it in on itself
and get it to combine.
I'm really using my hands to combine this.
I was at first kind of kneading it,
but I think in order to get it to mix all the way in there,
you really got to get in with your fingers
and let it combine throughout.
This is a very tactile recipe.
It's an adventure, but it's an adventure I'm enjoying.
Okay, and when it's finished,
it's looking a little bit like this.
Now we're going to let our dough rest again,
for one more hour.
Okay. We've done plenty of waiting.
Now it's time to do the next step in our recipe
which is to twist this and tie this into a knot.
Then we twist, twist, twist, twist.
And then I'm going to knot it and do some crazy shapes.
There we go.
So I'm going to go ahead and fry it on my pan on the stove.
I'm going to get it nice and evenly fried on both sides.
And then after it's fried,
we're going to add in some vegetable broth.
I'm going to put in a little bit of soy sauce.
They didn't do this in the TikTok
but I'm going to do it because I feel like it'll taste good.
And we're going to let this simmer on low for 45 minutes.
(upbeat music)
We've got the chicken. We've got the chicken.
The chicken is ready to eat.
It smells chicken-y in here,
it looks a little chicken-y on my plate,
but who's to say that it's going to taste chicken-y?
Woo hoo, cool!
Okay, the shredding is a big win.
I'm very proud of this because it felt daunting
but it looks like it's come out
just the way it did in the TikTok.
And it's cool cause it even looks like it has
like a skin to it.
Like, which was always my favorite part.
Look at, it looks like a chicken skin, kind of.
The peeling is really impressive.
I'm very impressed with how it's shredded.
but I can't stop thinking about how much I wanna try it.
(drumroll)
It doesn't really taste like chicken.
It tastes similar to chicken,
but it doesn't taste just like chicken.
It's got a different texture.
But that said, you could add
whatever flavoring you want into this,
like if I wanted to add some like Buffalo sauce
and put this in a wrap, oh my god.
I love the chew it has to it.
I never knew it was like this easy-ish to make on your own.
Flavor, again, not exactly like chicken, but really juicy
and a great meaty texture to it.
So if you're curious and you've got some flour and water,
I highly recommend you try this.
Oh gosh, I'm about to eat this whole thing.
I'm about to just take this gluten bomb to the stomach.
Thank you so much for watching.
Let me know what you'd like me to nake meh, nake mext?
(beep)
Thank you so much for watching and let me know
what you would like me to make next in the comments below.
(laughing)
Does it look like an escalator? (laughing)
(upbeat music)