Finding tempeh and seitan in the uk?

[foxforcefive]

Are these products actually sold in the UK? Or are they just under different names? I'm confused! So many vegan cookbooks seem to be US-oriented, and I have no idea if I could find these if I looked hard enough, or if they're just not out there.

[Barry]

You should be able to find them relatively easily in London. Health food shops and Asian supermarkets are your best bet, seitan is often called wheat gluten or sold as mock duck/chicken etc.

[harpy]

Whole Foods Market and some independent health food shops sell tempeh under that name. Whole Foods also sell seitan "steaks" and some other similar stuff (in the chiller cabinet with the tofu etc). The tins of "mock duck" they sell in H&B and Chinese shops are made of seitan too. (Also I think some stuff like Redwoods sausages may contain seitan among other ingredients.)

I think there have been some discussions on here about making one's own seitan, either out of high-gluten flour or from various specialist flours. I made it once and decided life was too short but I am bone-idle so you might not mind. The home-made stuff might work better in recipes than the commercial ones which tend to be flavoured with something (a lot of salt in the case of mock duck, at a guess).

ETA Sorry Barry, was writing at the same time as you but at least we agree

[Barry]

We're also in agreement about making seitan, once was enough for me too!

[harpy]

I think you may be able to get partly-prepared flour with the starch already removed so that might be a bit less painful than all that rinsing I had to do when I made it (with Italian 00 flour if I remember correctly - the end result was quite nice, but not nice enough!). Someone is sure to know about the latest techniques.

[Firestorm]

Frozen Impulse Tempeh and Redwood Tempeh rashers can be bought from Goodness Direct,
Natural Grocery also sell three kinds of Tempeh, Redwood, Impulse and Yakso, along with three types of Seitan: Yakso, Topas & Spacebar

If you want fresh tempeh this company will make it and post it to you: http://www.freshtempeh.co.uk/Buy-Tempeh.htm
This company sell starter cultures so you can make it yourself:http://www.tempeh.info/starter/tempeh-starter.php

Planet Organic also sell some tempeh, but only for London.

Macrobiotic shop also sell seitan and tempeh

[Risker]

The easiest way to make your own seitan is using vital wheat gluten. There's sometimes some for sale on ebay at a fairly reasonable price (all seems a bit pricey at the moment), you can get some from this website for £3.79/kg + £3.75 P&P (up to 25kg) which is quite reasonable for the UK. (I've never used the website btw).

And now to fulfil my contractual obligation I must say how absolutely revolting seitan is.

[Blueberries]

Once you have gluten flour, which I've seen for sale on a few websites in the UK, seitan is as easy to make as making bread. There are so many ways to make it, I tend to mix the gluten flour w/ beans or chickpea flour to get a sausage-esque texture rather than the rubbery chewiness of mock duck, which I imagine is what seitan-haters find the vile part!

[Firestorm]

Blueberries, what beans do you use? I just made Italian feast sausages from Vegan Brunch with Butter Beans, but I'm not sure if they were the best beans for the recipe.

[Enchantress]

You could try looking in oriental supermarkets for tempeh. I found some in the freezer in my local one. You may have to sort through assorted exotic animals to find it though .