In 2018, I joined The Seitan Appreciation Society , the greatest Facebook group on earth. Seitan pronounced say-TAN, not satan is an often misunderstood meat substitute, not to be confused with the devil. It also shouldnt be confused with other meat substitutes like tofu and tempeh, in that seitan isnt made from soy, but rather wheat.

Since joining the group, Ive spent most Sundays whipping up scrumptious fake meat based on the groups latest insights and ideas. Ive upped my vegan cooking game tenfold, thanks to the group, but my obsession has always felt a bit niche and weird. When I tell my friends about The Society, I know Im giving them One time? At band camp? vibes.

So, imagine how my heart leaped to discover that Gen Z has been happily making seitan on TikTok, inspired by user futurelettuces two ingredient vegan chicken. The trends been covered everywhere , and YouTube is ablaze with attempts . The moment I watched futurelettuces video, I knew he, too, was a Society member. He quickly confirmed this over email and agreed with me that some of the most innovative plant-based cooking going on today is happening in the group. Thanks to futurelettuce, seitan has entered the zeitgeist. Its time to spread the word.

But what the heck is seitan?

In much of the English-speaking world, seitan refers to a meat substitute made from gluten, the protein component of wheat . It can be made two ways: with vital wheat gluten, a powdered form of already-isolated protein; or by kneading a ball of dough underwater to wash the starch away. The latter takes longer, but its thrilling to watch the stretchy, protein-blob emerge, then cook it into fibrous meat.

(And if youre wondering why vegans would want to eat something meat-like, futurelettuce puts it simply: Veganism isnt about not eating meat. Its about not eating animals.)

Seitan is nothing new, as many responders to futurelettuce were quick to point out; nor is it a weird white vegan thing . Of her Singaporean Chinese heritage, Society member Jaki Teo wrote on Instagram: Mock meat is so common in our dietary culture that nobody gives a single f. Vegans eat it, non-vegans eat it, and we even offer it to dead people at their graves.

Yancy Nurse, a commenter on BuzzFeeds futurelettuce post , also reminisced about her Barbadian grandmother washing flour. I never knew where she learned it from, Nurse told HuffPost. But when she made it, everyone showed up. Even meat eaters loved it!

Futurelettuce told BuzzFeed: People have [asked] How did you figure this out? Which I feel bad about because these methods date back to China thousands of years ago.

Indeed, gluten-based faux sausage and eel recipes appear in Chinese texts as early as 1301 . In America, the 1930s gluten experiments of the Seventh-day Adventists birthed, among other curiosities, canned veggie hotdogs . A jerky-like product dubbed seitan was brought to America from Japan in the late 1960s by macrobiotics founder George Ohsawa, and the word evolved to refer to all gluten products in English. Western seitan recipes have become increasingly complex , but until I joined The Society I had no idea I could come close to the deliciousness Id tasted at Buddhist vegetarian restaurants in my own kitchen.