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So, in North Dakota (and, I think, Minnesota), a casserole is called “hot dish.” It’s a simple descriptive name, but it can be said so evocatively — and hot dish is exactly what this raw end of winter needs, if you ask me. Last week was, if I can be blunt, a bit of a bitch, and warm comfort food was definitely called for, for sanity’s sake. And all comfort food in my world must include potatoes. This hot dish features a casserole staple — ground beef — mixed with green beans and seasoned tomato sauce, topped with mashed potatoes. It’ll chase the winter chill right out of you.
This is a recipe from my childhood, but apparently it pre-dates my parents’ marriage, too. When I called my mother to ask about a weird direction in the recipe, she admitted she’d been making the recipe since she was in high school and no longer has a written recipe. It’s cheap, quick, and easy, on top of being comfort food, and I needed to alter only a few things to make it allergy-friendly.
Brilliant Ring of Mashed Potato
Hamburger Green Bean Hot Dish
3-4 medium potatoes, peeled and cubed
1/4-1/3 cup non-dairy milk (I use almond — any of them should work)
1 Tablespoon Earth Balance margarine (or other safe-for-you option)
1 small onion, chopped
1/2 lb. ground beef
2-1/2 teaspoons oregano
1 teaspoon dill
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1 can tomato sauce
1/2 lb frozen green beans
one bunch of scallions, chopped, green parts only
salt and pepper, to taste
Boil potatoes in salted water until tender.
Brown onion and beef in a skillet over medium heat. You don’t need to add oil — let the grease from the beef come out, then add the onions, and they will cook in the beef fat. Cook until onions are fully translucent. Drain off grease.
Add salt and pepper. Add oregano, dill, and garlic, and stir well.
Add tomato sauce, green beans, and scallions. Bring mixture to a boil. If you do this over medium, it gives you time to mash the potatoes.
Mash potatoes adding the margarine and milk — you may not need it all, so only add about 1/4 cup to start with, and see if you need the rest. The mashed potatoes should be a little stiff, as they will absorb some of the tomato sauce while cooking, and more when served.
Taste the beef mixture and the potatoes. Add more salt and pepper if you need it.
Pour beef mixture into a greased casserole dish. Top with mashed potatoes. By family tradition, I piled the mashed potatoes in a pretty ring around the edge of the dish, but I’m sure this is not necessary.
1/4 cup of Denise’s All Purpose Gluten Free Flour Mix (I used the Gluten Free Girl’s post on gluten-free holiday baking and modified it a bit – to make 500 grams of the mix, you’ll have a bit extra to use for other recipes, whisk together thoroughly 50 grams of oat flour, 50 grams of teff flour, 75 grams of sorghum flour, 25 grams of potato flour, 125 grams of sweet or glutinous rice flour, 75 grams of potato starch, 50 grams of arrowroot, and 50 grams of tapioca starch) or use a safe for you commercial gluten free all purpose flour.
1/4 cup of brown rice flour
1/4 teaspoon of salt
1/4 teaspoon of ground chia seed
1 teaspoon of Italian Seasoning mix or (or a bit of oregano, basil, marjoram, sage, rosemary, and thyme to add up to 1 teaspoon)
2 teaspoons of olive oil or a safe oil for you
4 Tablespoons of water.
Preheat oven to 375°F.
Put all dry ingredients in a bowl and whisk to combine.
Dry ingredients in bowl
Then add the oil and water and mix with a silicone spatula until the dough holds together in a ball.
Dough after adding wet ingredients and mixing
Flatten the ball to a frisbee-like shape, and then place it on a sheet of parchment paper.
Dough in Frisbee shape on parchment paper
Place another sheet of parchment paper over the dough and roll out the dough between the two sheets to about an eighth of an inch.
Dough being rolled between two sheets of parchment paper
Peel off top layer of parchment, and use a knife to cut lines in the dough (don’t cut through parchment). The picture shows that I used a ravioli cutter to get the squiggly lines, but at the end it started getting clogged and stopped doing the squiggly lines because it all gummed up in the wheel, which was a pain to clean. Which is why I suggest a knife.
Dough after rolling and cut up into cracker size pieces
Transfer the parchment with the dough on it to a sheet pan.
Dough and parchment paper on sheet pan
Bake for 15-20 minutes. Leave the crackers on the pan to cool. Once completely cool, transfer to an airtight container to store, or just eat them all. That’s a viable option too. Enjoy!
So I used to use Earth Balance Vegan Buttery Spread before the whole corn thing went down. But it’s got ingredients derived from corn. Supposedly the proteins are processed out of it, but I’ve heard that song and dance before and reacted, so my Earth Balance got stricken from the list things that were okay to eat. Also, most shortenings are also now out the window for me as they they have corn, flax, or palm, which is cross reactive with coconut (allergic), and for which I’ve had little sneaky reactions. Quite a while back I tried to make some vegan margarine using cocoa butter. It was a great idea, but the reality of the product left something to be desired, as it just didn’t taste like margarine. For a while I ignored the issue and just dumped olive oil on stuff, and made wine-herb-olive oil sauces for dipping things like lobster, but I missed margarine/butter.
About a month or so ago, I started thinking about baking again, or more accurately, chocolate chip cookies, and the fact that I didn’t really have a safe margarine or shortening to make them with. I started wondering about lard, since you can make pie crust from it, and started doing some Google-fu. Turns out most commercial lards have citric acid (corn) or other additives that are problematic. Sigh. So I started wondering if you could DIY it somehow, like saving your bacon fat. I found this article on rendering your own lard. I began considering whether I could use the lard to make margarine. Then in the process of making the Roasted Beef Stock and discussing the use of the beef tallow skimmed from the stock to use to caramelize the onions with Mary Kate for her French Onion Soup, we considered whether beef tallow might have a closer to dairy taste and feel. So I went searching for recipes to render beef tallow and found this article.
So then it was a matter of trying to get my hands on some pork leaf lard to render down into lard and some suet to render down into beef tallow. I found a local source, the Miles Smith Farm, where they are able to get pastured pork from another supplier and they have grass fed beef. Once I rendered down my order in separate crock pots, I had a quart and half a pint of lard and a quart, a pint, and a half pint jar of beef tallow.
Beef Tallow and Pork Leaf Lard
I used the original recipe I had tried as a starting point for my attempts. I know what you’re thinking…Denise, you’re going to hell for using a vegan recipe to make margarine out of animal fats. And you’re probably right. If I had a viable vegetable alternative, I’d take it, even though I’m not vegan. But I’m not vegan, and I don’t have a viable vegetable alternative. I used the recipe as a guide, for amounts, but I switched out almost every ingredient. I don’t like soy or hemp milk and I’m allergic to almonds. I didn’t want to use canola oil because of cross contamination with corn and sunflower oil is out because I’m allergic to sunflower. Also, I didn’t want to use the soy lecithin because if you’ve read how that’s made, you won’t want to eat it, and sunflower lecithin is out because I’m allergic to it. The cocoa butter doesn’t taste right, and I can’t use xanthan gum (corn/wheat) and I didn’t want to use guar gum. So I googled substitutions for emulsifiers and came up with the suggestion of psyllium husk as a substitute for soy lecithin. This is what I came up with for a recipe to test:
2 ounces of fat (either all lard, all beef tallow or 1 ounce of each)
one half of ⅛ tsp of turmeric (for color, you could skip it if you want, but I was hoping to fool my brain a bit)
Melt lard and beef tallow together in a double boiler. Put all the other ingredients except the olive oil in a blender or food processor.
Once the lard and beef tallow are melted, add the olive oil and remove the double boiler from the heat. Add the lard, tallow and olive oil mixture to the blender or food processor and blend until completely mixed. You will need to scrape down the sides at least once.
Once it’s completely mixed, pour into a silicone ice cube tray or other silicone mold, and place in the freezer until it sets.
The first version I did used all lard as the 2 ounces of fat. Lard is less solid at room temperature than the beef tallow. When I took a cube out of the freezer and put it on the plate (room temperature plate) to take a photo, it immediately began to melt at the contact point of the plate.
Lard only version
The second version I did used all beef tallow as the 2 ounces of fat. Beef Tallow is more solid at room temperature than the lard, and it less readily melts in your mouth. It sort of coats your mouth with a waxy feel.
Beef Tallow only version
Lastly, just for the heck of it, I decided to mix them both together, and used one ounce of lard and one ounce of beef tallow in the third version. This one ended up being the winner. The beef tallow gave it a little bit more structure and a little bit more creamy dairy flavor, and the leaf lard balanced out the waxiness of the tallow and made the product more melt-able.
Once all versions were completed and had set in the freezer, my husband (who is not dairy free) and I tested them on hot white rice, so that we could see the melting quality and evaluate the taste without too much interference from the food.
Testing Margarine samples on rice
So now I have something that’s pretty close to margarine that I can use on rice, baked potatoes and veggies. I won’t use it a lot because it’s lard and beef tallow, although I’m guessing that real fats are probably healthier than hydrogenated crap. My next set of experiments will be using plain lard in chocolate chip cookies and trying the “margarine” in a small batch as well.
Anyway, I thought I’d post this both as an illustration of what some of us have to do to get safe food, and for those of you who might have my particular combination of food allergies that makes commercial butter, shortening, and margarine impossible.
Anyone else want to share their weirdest food allergy experiments?
So Denise posted a Meat-Eater’s Menu for Romance last week. But we know that not all of our readers are meat eaters — and I tend to vacillate. What if you or your significant other don’t eat meat? No fear! I’ve got a tasty vegan menu for sharing — or indulging in by yourself. This is my version of a refined plate, with subtle and complimentary flavors for a fine dining feel in your safe, allergen-free home: Grilled Coriander-Cumin Portabella Mushrooms, Toasted Garlic Green Beans, and Wine-Baked Red Potatoes.
There is nothing hard about this menu, but the timing is important to get everything to come out at the same time. So I’m going to give you each dish’s ingredients up front, then break down the timing by doing all the instructions for the meal as a whole instead of each dish. Hopefully that won’t be too confusing since I’ve told you up front, and timing’s always the hardest part for me.
Since I’ve not made a dessert either, I’d echo Denise in suggesting a fine bar of chocolate to share, a pint of your favorite safe ice cream, or check out our desserts category for ideas. I’d tell you that this is heart-healthy or some other such cheesy pun-age, but who knows? It’s tasty, and allergen-free, plus animal-free. Enjoy.
Artistic Plating, my best attempt
Be My Vegan Valentine Dinner
Wine-Baked Red Potatoes (adapted from an Edward Espe Brown recipe)
2 pounds small red potatoes — look for about ping-pong ball size or smaller
10 cloves of garlic, peeled
5-10 sprigs of fresh herbs (dill, rosemary, or thyme are recommended — buy whatever you like best and looks freshest)
about half a bottle of red or white wine, your choice (but don’t get something sweet). I had some of each, so I used about 1/4 a bottle of red table wine, and about the same amount of a chardonnay. Pick something you like OR if you don’t drink wine regularly, get a table wine — a blend of wines that should be neither too dry nor sweet.
3/4 cup non-dairy milk or cream — if you make your own, just cut the amount of water in half
Toasted Garlic Green Beans
1/2 pound (be generous with this) green beans
1/4 cup oil (I used olive oil — you will use about half of this for the mushrooms)
2 Tablespoons chopped garlic
salt to taste
Grilled Cumin-Coriander Portabella Mushrooms
4 mushrooms, washed and de-stemmed
2 Tablespoons brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground coriander
pinch of cayenne (optional, but adjust for your desired spice-level)
(you will be adding some oil to this from the green bean recipe)
Cooking times:
The potatoes are going to take about 2 hours — they can go more, if you want, but do not plan for less.
The green beans themselves will take maybe 10 minutes, but the garlic will take about a half an hour before you cook the beans.
The mushrooms will take about 8 minutes if you have a two-sided grill (like a Foreman grill), and about 13 if you’re using a skillet or grill pan.
IF you time it right, this will all be done in 2 hours, with a few periods of activity but a lot of downtime. We’re working in the order of these bullets — potatoes, garlic, green beans, mushrooms.
To begin, preheat the oven to 375F. Wash and scrub your potatoes. If you were unable to find smaller red potatoes, cut the ones you have down to approximately the size of ping-pong balls. You need a baking dish that will hold all of your potatoes in a single layer with a little space around them — I have an 8.5″ by 11″ glass dish that is perfect for this.
Lay your herbs out on the bottom of the baking dish so that you have an evenly dispersed layer. Put your potatoes on top. Throw the whole garlic cloves in scattered around the dish. Then add your wine — it should come about halfway up the potatoes, which is why I haven’t given you an actual measurement — just pour it in until you have enough.
IF your potatoes are cut, add salt and pepper now. If they aren’t, I prefer to add the salt and pepper at the table. Cover the dish with foil, but don’t scrunch it too tight — you want some of the steam to escape, but not most of it. Put the potatoes in the oven and set the timer for an hour. Now go find something to do for an hour. You are not needed here.
One hour later …
Reset your timer for 30 minutes. Leave the potatoes alone. They still don’t need you.
Put a skillet, cast iron if you’ve got it, over medium low heat and let it heat empty. When the skillet is hot, add 1/4 cup of olive oil. Let the oil heat up, and then turn it down to low. Add your 2 Tablespoons of chopped garlic and stir. Stir it every 10 minutes or so over the next half hour — you are aiming for a golden brown garlic here.
Golden brown garlic, almost perfect
While the garlic cooks, rinse your green beans and trim the ends off. Set these aside to drain and dry while the garlic cooks.
Depending on your speediness, you probably have 15 minutes or so to clean up some dishes or go read some internet.
When your timer goes off, check on your garlic first — is it golden brown? If so, tilt your pan and skim out the garlic, leaving the oil behind. Set the toasted garlic aside. If it’s not quite done yet, move on to the potatoes, but keep an eye on the garlic.
Take your potatoes out of the oven, or just open the oven and slide the rack out so you can reach the potatoes. Remove the foil. Add the cashew or almond or soy cream or milk, whatever you’re using. Put or push the potatoes back in the oven, leaving the foil off. Set the timer again, for another 30 minutes.
If you haven’t removed the garlic, it should be done now. You can safely leave the oil on over the heat — you’ll be cooking the beans in about 15 minutes.
Turn on your grill or put your grill pan over medium to medium-high heat.
If you need to wash your mushrooms, do so. Then mix up the spice mix, making sure to incorporate the spices into the brown sugar. Tip your skillet up and scoop out about half of the oil into the spice mix. You don’t need to be exact here, but it should be about 2 Tablespoons if you’d rather measure. Mix the oil into the spices well. Brush the tops of the mushrooms well with this mix, and then liberally baste the interiors of the mushrooms with the oil-spice mix.
Turn the heat in the skillet for the green beans up to medium, and add the green beans. Stir occasionally.
If you’re using the grill pan or skillet for cooking the mushrooms, start now — tops down. You’ll cook them for 6-10 minutes on the first side, and another 5-8 on the other. If you’re using an electric grill, you only need about 7 or 8 minutes total. Plan accordingly.
This should net you three lovely decadent vegetable dishes all done at the same approximate time. Slice the mushrooms, sprinkle the garlic over the green beans, and cut the potatoes in half and salt if they weren’t salted before cooking. Light some candles for ambiance, add some amusing conversation, and enjoy a nice dinner with someone special — or add a good movie and call yourself special. Hey, no judgements.
So, here’s the thing, I pretty much can’t go out to dinner anymore with the whole corn thing. Makes it hard to go out for a romantic dinner, if all I can do is sip a glass of wine and watch my husband eat his dinner. Fun right? So that might mean finding a non-food related activity or it might mean cooking at home instead. Because some of you might want the nice dinner, and I can’t think of anything fun to do in winter in New Hampshire on Valentine’s Day, cooking at home it is. Shawn is a carnivore, so I’m doing a really nice rib eye roast (two weeks early, just for you guys), but Mary Kate will be supplying a Vegetarian/Vegan option next week. We’ll have you covered. (Also, I would totally make this for myself if I was single, leftovers are awesome!)
The rib eye roast is a bit pricey, but my thought was that it’s still cheaper than going out to dinner, having appetizers, an entree, dessert, and drinks. I’m also going to you some options for side dishes, Garlic Mashed Potatoes, and Oven Roasted Asparagus. I’m not handling dessert, I’m still having complications with respect to having safe fats to use for baking, and you should just get some chocolate if it’s safe for your allergies from the Dancing Lion (yo, anyone getting me presents for Valentine’s, hint, hint, not that my husband reads this blog).
One thing that’s really helpful is a probe meat thermometer. Seriously. Get one now, if you’re sick of your meat and poultry being overcooked. I mean it. Why waste your hard earned money on overcooked food? Isn’t making all our food hard enough? Okay, I’m off the soap box, but seriously, do it. Or at least get one of these so you can check the temp periodically. (No affiliation with Amazon whatsoever, but their site has good pictures and descriptions.)
Garlic Mashed Potatoes
1/3 cup of roasted garlic (Here’s how to do it, takes an hour, do a bunch ahead of time and store it in a jar in your fridge or freeze it so you can use when you want it without the aggravation).
Amount of Garlic I roasted, you don’t need this much, but it’s good to haveRoasted Garlic in a pint jar
5-6 large potatoes, peeled and cut into 2″-3″ inch square chunks
2-3 Tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil (if you have a safe margarine or butter, you can use that, I don’t, unfortunately.)
1/4 cup of non-dairy milk (I’m using homemade cashew milk, but use what works for you.)
Save a couple of the roasted garlic cloves to one side so you can use it as a garnish if you want to get all fancy about it. Place your peeled and chunked potatoes in a large pot.
Peeled and chunked potatoes in a pot
Cover them with enough water that the potatoes are submerged by an inch or so. Bring the potatoes to a boil on high, and then turn down to medium high (about 7-8 on my dial). Continue to cook until the potatoes are fork tender. Drain in a strainer/colander and place the cooked potatoes back in the pot.
Potatoes cooked fork tender and placed back in pot
Mash the potatoes with a potato masher. Add the garlic (with exception of the cloves for the garnish), the olive oil, and the non-dairy milk and mash the new ingredients into the potatoes until all the ingredients are thoroughly mixed. Either place the potatoes in a decorative serving dish with the garlic cloves on top, or place some on the plate with a garlic clove as a garnish.
Garlic Mashed Potatoes in a Serving Dish
Oven Roasted Asparagus
a bundle of asparagus
2 Tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon of Penzey’s Greek Seasoning (or use about an 1/8 of a teaspoon each of salt, garlic, lemon peel, black pepper, Turkish oregano, marjoram, and mix it together.)
Preheat oven to 400° F. Wash and trim the asparagus, and then cut it into 1-2″ inch pieces.
Asparagus cut in pieces
Place them in a bowl. Drizzle the asparagus with the extra virgin olive oil and the seasoning mix. Using a silicone spatula, toss the asparagus in the bowl until it is thoroughly coated with oil and seasoning mix.
Asparagus in bowl being tossed with oil and seasoning
Spread them out on a baking sheet, making sure to scrape down the bowl so that the oil and seasoning end up on the asparagus on the baking sheet. Put the baking sheet in the oven and bake for approximately 30 minutes until asparagus is tender.
Asparagus after roasting
Boneless Rib Eye Roast
3-5 pound boneless rib eye roast
about 1-2 teaspoons of Penzey’s English Prime Rib Rub (or use an 1/8 of a teaspoon each of salt, ground celery seed, sugar, ground black pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, and arrowroot and mix it together).
Based on this recipe, you need to cook the roast for about 15-18 minutes per pound after the initial 15 minutes as described below, and will need to rest for 15-20 minutes after you remove it from the oven. Calculate how long that will be based on your roast size to figure out when you need to begin cooking to have the roast be ready to serve at the time you wish to eat. An hour before you intend to begin cooking in order to have the roast cooked and rested by the time you wish to eat, take the roast out of the refrigerator and place it on the counter to bring it to room temperature.
Preheat your oven to 450° F. Take a baking pan, and place a rack in it.
Cooling Rack on a baking sheet
Season your roast with your spice mix by rubbing it all over the roast. Place the meat on the rack, with the fat side up.
Roast with spice rub and placed on rack
Place the roast in the oven for 15 minutes, then turn the oven temperature down to 325° F. Place your probe thermometer through the center of the roast, making sure it is going through the very center.
Roast after 15 minutes and placement of probe thermometer
Continue to roast for 15-18 minutes per pound or until the thermometer reaches 125°F for an internal temperature. This is fairly rare, but as the roast rests the internal temperature will continue to rise for another 5 to 10 degrees. If you like more of a medium rare, wait until the internal temperature reaches 135° F. Take the roast out of the oven.
Completed Roast after cooking
Tent it with aluminum foil and let it rest for 15-20 minutes. Do not cut the roast before it has had a chance to rest. I mean it. Seriously. Otherwise, you’ll lose all the moisture. Once the roast has rested properly, cut the strings on the roast and remove them, and then cut the roast into slices.
Cutting Roast into slices
Plate up your roast and sides and eat up while asking your husband, partner or date to say something outlandishly romantic. Mine doesn’t do it, but it’s fun to watch the facial contortions, as I make unreasonable demands. Remind me to tell you about the time I nagged him to write me a poem for almost a year and a half. Oh and the sculpture, too.
I first learned to make this soup from a 1970s slow-cooker cookbook, in my first year of graduate school when my roommate and I worked our way through all the soups in the book. They were cheap, they could be made ahead to be hot when you got home, and the Pacific Northwest almost demands you eat soup. That recipe relied on a lot of commercially-prepared tricks — bouillon, some sort of gravy seasoning, strange things that I don’t keep in my house and which probably aren’t actually safe. So this recipe relies on you taking the time to build the flavors a little more naturally and gradually.
If you have a safe stock, you can use it, but if you make your own, the flavors will be richer and you have the added bonus of tallow, a by-product of the stock that makes for a flavorful cooking fat. This recipe, as written, should be safe for the majority of allergen sufferers. You will need a safe-for-you bread and cheese substitute, if you want to add those elements at the end.
This is a soup you can make to impress people. Don’t get me wrong — there is nothing about French onion soup that requires great skill, just some time and patience. It’s one of those recipes that people think is harder than it is, and therefore are generally impressed when you make it. Plus, it’s kind of decadent. So play with this a bit and then keep it in your arsenal for the future. If you have no one you wish to impress, maybe just indulge yourself.
Oh, and bonus, in the realm of entertaining OR indulging, it can definitely be made ahead of time, probably up to a week, or it freezes remarkably well. I tend to find French onion soup a lovely treat, but once in a while is enough — I’m not going to eat this all week for lunch. And this makes much more than a few servings, so freezing it to eat later or use in other recipes is great.
Plan on about two hours — one to prep and cook the onions, another to let the soup simmer.
1/4 cup reserved tallow (fat skimmed from the top of the chilled stock) or butter or margarine or oil of your choice
3 sweet onions, quartered and sliced thin, about 3-4 cups
1 teaspoon salt
1 Tablespoon balsamic vinegar (check for caramel coloring, which can be allergenic)
freshly ground pepper, to taste
white bread, toasted, optional (I used this recipe, made without rosemary on top)
4 slices Daiya provolone-style cheese, or other safe-for-you cheese sub, optional (see link for ingredients — does contain coconut, and likely corn derivatives)
If your stock is in the fridge, take it out. Let it come to room temperature while the rest of your prep and cooking happens.
Place your stock pot over medium heat, adding tallow when the pot is hot.
When your fat is melted, add the onions. You can do this in two ways — throw them all in, which will take longer, with more stirring, to evenly brown, or do your onions in several batches. I prefer the latter, as you get more even caramelization, but the dump it all in method works fine. Either way, add the salt as the onions turn translucent (they seem to absorb it best at this time). If you’re doing the onions in batches, split your fat and salt accordingly. This will take about 45 minutes or so, and you should stir every 5-10 minutes, depending on how your onions are sticking. You will need to stir more as the onions start to brown, but don’t stir constantly. You have to let the flavor happen.
onions, caramelized.
Once all the onions are browned and caramelized, which will take some time, be patient, add the vinegar, pepper, and stock. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low and let it simmer for at least an hour.
Serve very hot. If you’re using them, ladle soup over the toasted bread, and topped with faux cheese, allowing the faux cheese to melt. It’s not pretty, but it tastes great.
Those of us with soy, wheat and dairy allergies have a tough time finding bouillon and/or stock out there that’s safe. When you add a corn allergy to the wheat and dairy (I’m okay on soy), let me tell you, it’s all over. You’re going to be making it yourself if you want to eat it, period. So Mary Kate and I thought posting some basics for people who’ve never had to do their own soup stocks before might be helpful. There’s a lot of recipes out there that take beef bones, throw them in a pot with onions, carrots, and celery, and boil the crap out of it and call it beef stock. I mean, yeah, it is beef stock, but it doesn’t really taste as good as it could. And I think that’s because there’s no caramelized little burned bits, which you would have if you were starting from roast drippings. I like my beef stock to taste like something, and you do need some actually bits of beef to do that, and a bit more than is on the beef bones you get at the grocery store. So I use marrow bones and beef oxtail so there’s plenty of meaty bits for drippings, and I roast the marrow bones, oxtail, onions, carrots and celery first so I can use nice pan drippings in my stock.
Roasted Beef Stock
About 4 pints or 2 quarts
2-3 pounds of sliced marrow bones
2 pounds of beef oxtails
2 red onions (red will give the stock a nice deep color), chopped
2 large carrots, trimmed and chopped
4 stalks of celery, trimmed and chopped
a dash of salt
a dash of black pepper
2 bay leaves
Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease pan with oil or use a spray mister. Place marrow bones, oxtails, red onions, carrots, and celery in roasting pan.
Marrow Bones, Oxtail, and Veggies in Roasting Pan before cooking
Sprinkle with a little salt and pepper. Place roasting pan in oven and roast for an hour and half. You can roast it longer if you don’t have any caramelized bits yet.
Marrow Bones, Oxtail, and Veggies in Roasting Pan after cooking
Once you’re done roasting, transfer the contents of the roasting pan to a stock pot, making sure you deglaze the roasting pan with a bit of water to get all the good burned and caramelized dripping into the stock pot. Add 16 cups or water or 4 quart jars worth, and the bay leaves.
Cooked bones, meat and veggies in stock pot after adding water
Bring to a boil and then reduce the heat to medium-low (3-4 on my dial) and simmer for about an hour with the lid on. Then bring it down to low (1-2 on my dial) and let it simmer on low for another hour, again with the lid on. You can simmer as long as you like, but you may need to add more water to get the correct yield.
Cooked bones, meat and veggies in stock pot after simmering for hours
Now you want to strain out the bones, meat and vegetables from the stock. I used another stock pot and a strainer I got from a restaurant supply store, but a regular colander will do. Also, I picked out the really heavy bones first to make my life easier.
Straining out veggies and meat after simmering
Now you can season to taste adding a bit more salt and black pepper if needed.
Roasted Beef Stock after straining
If you want to remove some of the fat, you can skim it off, or you can put your stock pot in the fridge overnight and you can peel off the fat layer.
Roasted Beef Stock after being refrigerated overnightRemoving excess fat from Roasted Beef StockRoasted Beef Stock after removing excess fatExcess fat in a bowl, just for gross out purposes
Once you’re done removing the fat, you can warm up the stock and use it, package it up and freeze it, or can it with a pressure canner, as described here. I’m canning mine because I want to use it for a recipe we’re going to post two weeks from now and I’m not ready to make the actual recipe itself right now. I don’t want it to go bad, and we lose power a lot.
My All American 915 pressure canner getting ready to process stock
This is a really basic stock, because you want to be able to use it in all kinds of applications. Stay tuned for how we’re going to use it for the next two weeks!
During the holidays, I fully explored that cookie obsession that was in evidence in all of our Friday posts. Overall? They weren’t too bad, though the results were a little mixed. Turns out that parchment paper is an amazing invention that no gluten-free baker should be without, and keeping the dough cold is important. Also, I’m pretty bad at rolling out dough. Luckily, I had help.
But because gluten-free baked goods don’t last as long as other baked goods (they dry out and/or mold rather quickly), I ate. And ate, and ate, and ate. Mmmmm, cookies. ALL the cookies. Thing is that sugar, when consumed in great quantities for a week or so, makes me crave vegetables, and this time around, particularly spinach. Mostly, I eat a little spinach salad here and there, or I saute it with garlic, and I’m frankly bored with both. I was planning to make tacos, but since I had the spinach, taco salad seemed the thing to do. The hot topping balances out the cold salad part, giving a great balance between wanting the raw spinach and needing hot food for dinner when it’s cold out.
This recipe is perfect for a quick weeknight meal, as it comes together in a matter of maybe 10 minutes. Honestly, it takes as long to assemble the salad as it does to cook the topping, and the salad can incorporate whatever you have around. I’ve written it up as I’ve made it and like it, but you know we’re all about tinkering around here.
Vegan Black Bean Pumpkin Taco Salad
Vegan Black Bean Pumpkin Taco Salad
Makes 2 large, meal-sized salads
For the cooked taco topping:
1 Tablespoon oil (I’ve been using safflower)
1/2 cup chopped onion (this is where having extra chopped onion in the freezer is really a time-saver)
1 Tablespoon of taco, Mexican, or southwest-style seasoning mix (I used Arizona Dreaming)
1/2 can (8 oz.) canned pumpkin (I am pretty sure that mashed butternut squash or sweet potatoes would also work well here — let me know if you try it)
1 can (15 oz) black beans, drained and rinsed well
Heat a saucepan over medium heat. When hot, add the onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until translucent. Add the seasoning, and stir well into the oil and onions. Add the pumpkin, stirring well, and then the black beans. Lower the heat to medium-low, and cook, stirring occasionally, for 5-10 minutes, or until everything is heated through.
Then, make your salad.
2 large handfuls of baby spinach, roughly chopped (or salad greens of your choice)
1/4 cup of shredded vegan cheddar (optional)
1/2 of a Hass avocado, sliced (optional)
sprouts, if you’ve got them and like them (I do, but optional)
any other fun salad toppings you might dream up
1/4 cup of red salsa (recipes from us here and here, if you want to make your own)
Lay out your spinach, lettuce, or greens on two plates or in large bowls. Top each with half the taco mixture, in several dollops to spread it out over the salad. Add the cheese (if using) and other vegetables or toppings, and pour the salsa on top as a dressing. If you’re using the avocado, I suggest a sprinkle of salt on just that.
