How to prepare seitan dough in the sea?

I tasted the most delicious seitan in the world this summer at a small Croatian island called Zlarin, and I thought to myself, “The world must know about this. This is a real culinary art!”

Mirjana, the woman who invented this authentic method of making seitan, is over 70 years old but looks at least 15 years younger due to a healthy diet, good mood, and swimming. She used to prepare meals for vegan tourists for years and a seitan was often on the menu. She was making seitan in a small kitchen with a basic seitan homemade recipe until her son Ivan gave her a divine idea, “Mom, why don’t you make seitan in the sea? Instead of using tap water, you can rinse the dough in sea water!!” Wow!

I was very curious about this and was pleased when Mirjana generously shared her sea-seitan recipe with me. I’ve been to many culinary workshops, but making food in the sea with seagulls flying over my head was a unique and new experience. Zlarin is a no-car and no motorcycles island with unspoiled nature so the sea is very clear and the perfect place for such an activity.

The beach instead of the kitchen

We made seitan dough in the kitchen with a basic recipe you can easily find on the internet.

We left the dough in water for two hours and then brought it to the beach! Can you imagine a more romantic place for making seitan?

Rinsing seitan dough in the sea!

Wake-up early in the morning

It is good to wake up earlier before other people come to the beach or go to some beach where no one goes. We made our sea-seitan during one cloudy day when there were no tourists around. Seagulls came to see what was going on; they hoped it was fish but when they saw it was only flour, they stayed watching curiously from a distance. Maybe they became vegan.

It was very windy so we had to hold onto our pots so they wouldn’t fly away. We entered the water to our knees and started rinsing the dough carefully in the sea waves. The sea suddenly became white because of the washed flour. I had to explain to some people that we weren’t polluting the sea; we were just making seitan. Don’t worry! Fish love flour.

We rinsed the dough for 20 minutes with the assistance of the waves. It was exciting and a supernatural experience!

Seitan full of sea minerals

Since you rinse the dough in the sea for almost half an hour, it becomes rich with sea minerals and salt. After we rinsed the dough in the sea, we got back in the kitchen, made balls from the dough and cooked it in water seasoned with soya sauce.

We got 8 seitan balls out of only 2 kilograms of flour! If I bought that in the market, it would cost more than 30 dollars.

When seitan balls were cooked (30 minutes), we put them in the fridge for a few hours to become firm. The texture was amazing, consistent and soft with a unique aroma.

There are countless ways you can prepare sea-seitan, but we couldn’t wait to taste it, so we just prepared it in a simple way.

Mrs. Mirjana made a simple delicious sauce of soya, agar powder and seasoned water in which the seitan was cooked.

This sea-seitan meal was something we would like to eat every day the rest of our lives. We just need to buy a house on the beach on some unspoiled island first 🙂