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It’s winter, so it’s already dark when you get home, late, hungry. and cold. There’s probably some sandwich stuff in the fridge, and there’s cereal, but again, it’s cold. And you’re hungry. NOW.
You need this soup.
In about 15 minutes, with very minimal effort, you have fresh wondrous HOT satisfying soup.
This Is How Easy Dinner Can Be
Black Bean Soup
1 can of black beans, drained and rinsed
1 can of tomatoes, either chopped or crushed, with seasonings if you like
1 cup of frozen corn
1 small can of tomato juice or V8 (I use low sodium V8) OR about 6 oz of water
1-2 teaspoons chili powder
1/2 teaspoon cumin
pinch of cayenne or dash of hot sauce
Mix in sauce pan, heat. That takes about 10 minutes. Eat.
The basic recipe is so easy that it’s possible to easily dress this up, but the basic recipe is excellent and all the ingredients are shelf-stable, so you can always have them on hand.
Other potential add-ins before cooking: 1/4 teaspoon oregano, a cube or two of frozen cilantro (or fresh, if you have it), leftover cooked rice, leftover cooked sweet potato, leftover shredded or cubed chicken.
Potential toppers for after cooking: crush a handful of tortilla chips on top, add some sliced avocado before serving, add some fresh chopped cilantro, or sprinkle on some shredded cheese, vegan or not.
Oh, oatmeal, you’re not pretty, but you are oh so good.
Breakfast is, as people love to say, the most important meal of the day. It also takes place before I’m fully awake. Basically, I feel way more awesome each day if I eat breakfast. But if breakfast isn’t stupid easy — I’m talking pretty much fireproof — I put it off, start work, and wonder why I’m falling asleep cranky at 10 am.
So oatmeal is a great breakfast. But making it from scratch is more than I’m capable of in the mornings. And instant oatmeal is good in a pinch, but rather lacking overall. The solution is overnight oatmeal.
This is more of a concept than a recipe, but I’ll give you my favorite options and some other ideas.
Basic Overnight Oatmeal
Mix equal parts regular (not instant) oats and non-dairy milk in saucepan or spill-proof, microwave-safe travel container. Then add another 1-2 Tablespoons of non-dairy milk — more if you like thin oatmeal, less if you like it thick. Put in fridge overnight. In morning, heat up. Eat.
It may take you a little testing to figure out how much oatmeal you need for a good breakfast. For me, 1/3 cup oatmeal works pretty well, so long as I add some nuts and fruit. Here are a few of my favorite recipes:
Perfect Oatmeal
1/3 cup steel-cut oats
1/2 cup almond milk
1/4 teaspoon good cinnamon*
1 teaspoon maple sugar or maple syrup
1 Tablespoon almond flour or ground almonds
2 Tablespoons dried cherries (you could chop these, but I leave them whole)
Mix all ingredients in a leak-proof container, throw in bag on the way out the door, and microwave at work. 2-3 minutes on high works for most microwaves. Perfect.
*A note on cinnamon — there are actually a ton of varieties of cinnamon. If you’ve never experimented with them, oatmeal is a PERFECT canvas. My personal favorite for this is China Tung Hing cinnamon.
Pumpkin Spice Oatmeal
1/2 cup oats, not instant
1 1/2 Tablespoons canned pumpkin
2 teaspoons rice protein powder or ground nuts
1 Tablespoon dried cranberries
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 Tablespoon mini allergen-free chocolate chips (optional)
1 teaspoon ground flax (optional)
1 teaspoon unsweetened coconut
1/2 cup + 2 Tablespoons non-dairy milk
To this one, I add a palmful of walnuts right before heating.
Oatmeal Raisin Cookie Oatmeal
Oatmeal Raisin Cookie Oatmeal
1/3 cup steel cut oatmeal
1 Tablespoon dark brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
2 Tablespoons golden raisins
2/3 cup rice milk
This one takes a little longer to cook in the morning, because of the steel-cut oats, but the texture is great.
The possibilities are endless, honestly. Let us know what you come up with.
I’ve been working on this recipe a while and this is another one of my fire breather recipes. This is really, really spicy chili. If you don’t want really, really spicy chili, I’ll make notes about how to turn it down a notch, and how to turn it down 10 notches (*see asterisk below ingredients), just in case you all don’t have stomachs lined with asbestos. Also, in case your stomach is lined with asbestos, I’ll give you notes about how to take it up to super octane, the way I make it when my husband and I are not sharing with others (**see double asterisks below ingredients, I will also note the Scoville units for each pepper so you can decide what to leave in and what to leave out if you wish). I like the cocoa powder in it because it gives the sauce a richer feel and color. Also, be aware that this recipe makes about 3 quarts of chili. It freezes incredibly well, so we freeze it in single serve containers and then just take one out and bring it to work to nuke for lunch. The pictures show me making a double batch, because it’s a bit more work than I like to do to make it, so I do it once and put the rest in our chest freezer until we want to eat it.
It’s Winter, Warm Yourself Up Chili
1 lb bags of small red beans (or kidney beans or any other bean of your choice. Mix it up!)
1 Tablespoon of Epazote (Mexican herb used in bean dishes to reduce gas, you can skip this if you don’t have any on hand. It doesn’t have much flavor, think dried parsley.)
1 whole dried red chipotle pepper – 15,000 Scoville units (omit or use a quarter teaspoon of ground chipotle instead if worried about spice)
1/2 of a dried Guajillo pepper -6,000 Scoville units (omit if worried about spice)
1/2 of a dried Ancho chili pepper – 3,000 Scoville units (omit or use a quarter teaspoon of ground ancho instead if worried about spice)
1 whole dried Cascabel chili pepper – 11,000 Scoville units (omit if worried about spice)
1 lb package of ground beef
2 medium onions, chopped
2-3 stalks of celery, chopped
2-3 cloves of garlic, minced
1 Tablespoon of canola oil
1 28 ounce can of diced tomatoes
1/2 of a green bell pepper, seeded and chopped – 0 Scoville units (the other half you can just throw in a freezer ziploc bag and put in the freezer to use for next time, I don’t even bother to chop it up first and peppers freeze beautifully whole)
1/2 of a red bell pepper, seeded and chopped – 0 Scoville units
1/4 of a Habanero pepper, seeded and diced into very, very small pieces – 100,000 to 350,000 Scoville units (USE RUBBER GLOVES to chop and seed or you may be very, very sorry. Ask me how I know, and how long it took my hands to stop burning the time I was dumb enough not to wear gloves. Pop the rest in the freezer in a ziploc for next time. Also, omit entirely if you are worried about spice)
3 Tablespoons of chili powder (I used Penzey’s Hot Chili Powder, but you could use regular chili powder and knock it back to 2 Tablespoons)
1 1/2 Tablespoons of cocoa powder
1/2 to 1 teaspoon of salt, or to taste.
*How to turn it down 10 notches – If you can’t eat anything with spice, omit all the peppers except for the red and green bell pepper, and the chili powder, and knock the chili powder back to 2 Tablespoons.
**How to turn it up to super octane – To your dried peppers, add the following: 1 whole dried Dundicut chili pepper -60,000 Scoville units; 1 whole dried Piquin chili pepper – 70,000 Scoville units; and 1 whole dried Sanaam chili pepper – 40,000 Scoville units; use the entire Guajillo and Ancho dried peppers instead of half, and use the whole Habanero. Add Sriracha sauce – 2200 Scoville units, to taste after cooking. Seriously, this is a really, really beyond hot chili, and is not for casual consumption.
Choose one of the two methods below to re-hydrate your beans.
Overnight soaking method: Sort through the beans, looking for rocks (yes, it’s happened), other things that are not beans, and any discolored beans and hulls, and remove them. Wash the beans in a colander, and put them in a stock pot (the one I use is an 8 quart size), with enough water to cover beans by 2 inches. Let soak overnight or at least 6 to 8 hours.
Beans after Overnight Soak Method
Quick soak method: Again, sort and wash the beans as described above. Put the beans in a stock pot (the one I use is an 8 quart size), with enough water to cover beans by 2 inches. Bring to a boil, then boil for 2 minutes. Remove from heat, cover and let stand for an hour.
If you used the overnight soak, drain the beans out in a colander, and rinse them and the stock pot. Put the beans back in the stock pot, with enough water to cover and the epazote, and cook on medium low, mixing occasionally and adding water as needed, until the beans are tender and the skins split. If you used the quick soak method, make sure there’s enough water in the pot, add the epazote and cook on medium low, mixing occasionally and adding water as needed, until the beans are tender and the skins split.
Beans and Epazote at beginning of cooking process
While the beans are cooking you need to re-hydrate your dried peppers. Take the stems off, remove the seeds, and cut them into small pieces, putting them in a microwave safe container. I used kitchen shears to cut them into pieces. Add about a quarter cup of water to the container and nuke it in the microwave for 1-2 minutes to re-hydrate them a bit. Set them aside.
Dried Peppers before chopping and re-hydratingDried Peppers after re-hydrating
In a frypan, brown and drain your ground beef, drain off the fat and discard it, and set the ground beef aside.
Browned Ground Beef
In another frypan, or the same one if you moved your beef to another container, saute onions, celery and garlic in the canola oil until they are translucent.
Onions, Celery and Garlic after sauteing
Your beans will be ready when they look like this:
Properly Cooked Beans
Once the beans are ready, add the ground beef, and the onion, celery and garlic mixture to the pot, scraping down carefully. Then add your re-hydrated dried peppers, the diced tomatoes (do not drain), the Habanero, red and green bell peppers, the chili powder and the cocoa powder. Mix until thoroughly combined.
Simmer for about an hour and a half, stirring occasionally. When chili is cooked, taste and add salt as necessary.
When Denise and I sat down to discuss things we needed to learn to make, things we could not longer eat “normal” versions of, one of the things that popped to the top of the list was what my college roommate called “bar food” — fried foods that tasted great and had little or no nutritional value. I can still have french fries, which are my favorite of the genre, but Denise missed mozzarella sticks (to the point that I had dreams about them – D).
As anyone who is vegan, allergic to milk, lactose-intolerant knows, cheese is one of the harder flavors to replicate without actual dairy products. Many have tried, but the majority of “non-dairy” cheeses on the market actually contain some dairy, and therefore aren’t suitable for anyone vegan or with allergies. There is nothing on the market that really would work for a fried cheese product.
But we do have the wonder of Joanne Stepaniak’s The Uncheese Cookbook, which has an amazing variety of cheesy flavors (including the basis for the nacho cheese used in the Happy Layers Nacho Dip). We figured that if we made the mozzarella recipe, made sure it was structurally sound enough to batter and fry, and then figured out a breading, we’d be set. Easy, right?
Not exactly. We had no problems with the cheez, though we made three or four recipes before determining which worked best, and tried several different “egg wash” and breading options, too, before determining which worked best. But even our less perfect attempts were edible, and we’ve shared these with regular omnivorous eaters, and while they wouldn’t mistake them for mozzarella sticks, they did enjoy them. This recipe was our first resounding success, and it’s kept us going for a while.
This is NOT an every day recipe! And frankly, given that it’s fried “cheez,” it really shouldn’t be anyway. There is preparation involved, and then deep frying, but they taste good at room temperature and could easily be re-warmed or kept warm in a low oven.
Before we get started, you will need the proper equipment. You decide how much you can fudge this stuff, but remember you’ll be playing with oil.
For making cheez:
2 qt. saucepan
whisk
silicone ice cube trays or molds with a capacity of about 1 Tablespoon each (cubes are approximately 1 inch square)
plastic wrap
freezer space so they can set
For the frying:
pot deep enough to accommodate about 3 inches of oil and the frying thermometer, a thick stainless steel or a enameled dutch oven would be best. You also want a pot that’s tall enough that the edge is 2 or more inches above the oil level. It’s safer and there’s less splatter all around. The pot we used was 5 inches tall and about 8 inches across. We do not recommend using anything with Teflon or nonstick coatings. Of course, if you have an actual deep fryer appliance, use that.
For recapturing the oil for re-use (with proper care, you can use this oil at least 6 times)
Mason jars
coffee filters
funnel
Ingredients, all in one list:
2 cups rice milk
½ cup nutritional yeast flakes
7 Tablespoons oat flour (if you can’t get gluten free certified oat flour, grind gluten free certified rolled oats in a blender, food processor or coffee grinder until you have flour)
¼ cup tahini
¼ cup cornstarch
4 Tablespoons lemon juice
1 Tablespoon onion powder
1 teaspoon kosher salt
2 Tablespoons Ener-G egg replacer powder
1/2 cup warm rice milk
one loaf of white rice bread, turned into bread crumbs, or about 1 1/2 cups of bread crumbs
a large jug of canola oil, for frying
marinara or tomato sauce for dipping (optional)
Miraculous Cheez Nuggets
There are two things you need to do in advance — make the cheez and make the bread crumbs. You could buy bread crumbs, but it may be easier to make your own and control the bread. For gluten-free bread crumbs, we suggest either Ener-G White Rice Bread or Food for Life White Rice Bread. In my opinion (MK), neither one is a fantastic sandwich bread, but the white rice breads do make excellent bread crumbs for frying.
For either one, lay the slices out on the oven rack and bake for about 2 hours at 200°F. Let cool completely, and then put through the food processor. You won’t use the whole loaf’s worth of crumbs, but why not keep the rest on hand? They keep well in a plastic bag or other sealed container.
Make cheez:
Place the following ingredients in the saucepan:
2 cups rice milk
½ cup nutritional yeast flakes
7 Tablespoons oat flour (if you can’t get gluten free certified oat flour, grind gluten free certified rolled oats in a blender, food processor or coffee grinder until you have flour)
¼ cup tahini
¼ cup cornstarch
4 Tablespoons lemon juice
1 Tablespoon onion powder
1 teaspoon kosher salt
Whisk all ingredients together until well combined.
Cheez Ingredients mixed before heating
Cook over medium-low heat, whisking occasionally until mixture starts to thicken. Turn heat to low, whisk constantly until mixture starts to pull together and away from sides of pan.
Cheez after cooking
Spoon into silicone molds or ice cube trays, approximately 1 tablespoon per cube. Try your best to smooth out the tops.
Cheez in Silicone Ice Cube Trays
Cool in fridge. Then cover with plastic wrap and freeze the cheez over night. The cheez must be frozen to hold up to frying without becoming a really nasty mess. The last batch we made we had intended to fry the the next day but couldn’t, so the cheez was in the freezer for a week or so with no ill effect. To save time, you could keep some cheez made ahead of time in the freezer and then just bread and fry when you want some.
Frying Fun!
Fill the frying pot (described above) with about 3 inches of canola oil, and put your frying thermometer in place. Start heat over medium-low and aim for 360ºF.
Frying Set Up
While waiting for your oil to heat, you will bread your cheez. Make an “egg” mix by mixing the following:
2 Tablespoons Ener-G egg replacer powder
1/2 cup warm rice milk
Place egg mix in a deep enough container or bowl that you can dip the cheez nuggets in it and coat them easily. Place bread crumbs in a low flat container so that you can easily roll the nuggets to coat them in the bread crumbs.
Remove cheez nuggets from silicone molds. One at a time, dip nuggets in egg mix, then in bread crumbs. Place on a tray to until you are ready to fry them.
Coating Cheez in Bread CrumbsCheez Nugget Coated in Bread CrumbsTray of Breaded Cheez Nuggets
Fry them! Drop nuggets (gently!) in the hot oil and then cover the pot with the splatter screen.
Putting Cheez Nuggets into OilCheez Nuggets FryingUsing Splatter Screen
Our pot was about 8 inches in diameter, with 3 inches of oil, and we could fry 5 nuggets at a time. Each batch took approximately 5 minutes with the starting oil temperature at 360-370ºF. We were able to test the interior temperature (remember, these will still be frozen when you drop them in the oil) with the probe thermometer — anything over 70ºF is good (take a nugget out of the oil and test it on a plate. DO NOT TRY TO PROBE A NUGGET WHILE FRYING). You can also just cut one open and feel it.
Blurry Photo of using Probe Thermometer
If you put too many nuggets in the oil at once, you will drop the temperature too far down (don’t go below 330ºF), and you won’t get a golden brown outside with a warm cheezy center. If your oil drops more than 15 degrees, put fewer nuggets in the next time around. You can also adjust your stove temperature to try to keep the oil temperature consistent.
When the nuggets are done, lay them on the cookie sheet that you’ve prepared — cover the cookie sheet with paper towels and lay your cooling rack upside down on the paper towels. The fried nuggets will be kept up off the paper towels, and the towels will draw the oil down. These nuggets are NOT greasy if you’re doing all this right, and they are wonderful.
Taking out Cheeze Nuggets to Put on RackCheez Nuggets on Rack
Serve while still warm, with marinara if you so wish.
You can freeze any leftovers, but reheat them low and slow — 250ºF for about 30 minutes seems to work. We only tested reheating them once, though, so if you do it, let us know how it goes!
This was one of my favorites when I was a kid, and it’s also really fast if you were supposed to bring something to a potluck/holiday party/family dinner and maybe you didn’t get it together because the holiday season is so crazy and if you have to find time to do one more thing you’re going to go off your head. Not that I’ve been there (repeatedly) or anything.
No Bake Cookies
1/4 cup of evaporated rice milk (there are two ways to make this at home using either rice milk or rice powder to be explained below or, if you can have and/or like soy, you can use soy creamer).
1/2 cup of crunchy peanut butter (see Nut-free sunbutter variation below)
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract (if you’re out of vanilla and desperate, Goslings Black Seal Rum works nicely too).
1 3/4 cups to 2 cups of quick oats (get certified gluten free if you need them gluten free).
This makes about 12 cookies about two inches across.
First, you need to make yourself some evaporated rice milk.
Method 1: You can take unsweetened rice milk (or other unsweetened alternative milk product of your choice) and measure out 1/2 a cup into a very small sauce pan. Place it over medium heat and stir frequently until it has reduced in half. (You could make more than you need and keep in the fridge for other holiday baking).
Method 2 (and the one I used): Put 1 1/2 Tablespoons of rice milk powder in a glass measuring cup. Pour boiling water into the glass measuring cup until it measures 1/4 of a cup of milk powder and water. Whisk powder and water together until well combined.
Thanks to Alisa Fleming’s Go Dairy Free cookbook for both of these options. For most baking you would need to wait for the resulting evaporated rice milk cooled, but not for this recipe.
Melt the Earth Balance in a 4 quart pan. Once it has melted completely, add the sugar, evaporated milk, and the cocoa powder. Stir mixture to incorporate all the ingredients completely, and bring the mixture to a boil for one minute, continuing to stir frequently. Remove the pan from the heat, and add the peanut butter and vanilla. Stir until the peanut butter, except the crunchy bits have dissolved into the mixture. Add the oats and mix thoroughly. Cover cutting board or a cookie sheet with wax paper. Using spoon, portion out the mixture into two inch wide cookies on the cookie sheet and let them harden for at least 10 minutes. I cheat and do it in the fridge, they harden faster. Or just skip the cookie part and eat them out of the pan. I’m not here to judge.
Enjoy 🙂
NUT-FREE Sunbutter Variation!
1/2 cup soy-free Earth Balance
1 cup brown sugar, packed
2 Tablespoons cocoa powder
1/4 cup evaporated rice milk
1/2 cup crunchy Sunbutter or other sunflower seed butter
So the year before I got my allergy diagnoses, I spent time perfecting a brownie recipe. Which was, of course, based on wheat flours, and which did not, of course, translate well to gluten-free. It was my first attempt at my own gluten-free recipe — I replaced the flour in the recipe with a GF baking mix and made the first and only baked good that was not completely devoured by my office mates. It was sad; I was sad.
And yet, I kept trying because brownies are something that is almost universally loved. A very special group of my friends has cannonized my friend Michelle’s *special recipe* brownies, which I’ve added as a decadent alternative at the end of this recipe — “Book Club” Brownies should be reserved for very special occasions, and only for those who are worthy of such decadence.
And now, I bring you this recipe. I am sorry it’s not nut-free, but I have not yet found the right combination for nut AND gluten free.
I’d also like to introduce my new love, George, the best Christmas present ever. To clarify some confusion from my FB post — George is a girl, named in part after the Bugs Bunny Abominable Snowman cartoon and in part for George in the Nancy Drew books. Now that that’s cleared up, meet George!
GEORGE! I made a video, but it was really really boring.
At Last Gluten-Free Brownies
Line a square pan with parchment paper. Make sure you know if you have an 8×8 or 9×9 pan, as it will affect baking times below.
Pre-heat oven to 350F.
1 Tablespoon chia seeds, preferably white
4 Tablespoons water
Grind your chia seeds. I use a coffee grinder for spices, flax, and now chia — grind it good and fine. With a fork or small whisk, mix the ground seeds in a small bowl with 4 tablespoons of water. Set this aside — it will turn into a pretty stiff gel.
1/4 cup soy-free Earth Balance
2 Tablespoons coconut oil
Melt the oils together in a small pan. Because I wander off measuring other things, I always do this in my ad-hoc double boiler (small skillet on top of a saucepan). It’s safer for me, but feel free to do it in a pan directly on the heat or even in a microwave if you own one.
1.5 cups almond flour or almond meal (doesn’t seem to make a difference for this recipe)
1/2 cup gluten-free oat flour
1/4 cup coconut flour
2 Tablespoons quinoa flour
2 Tablespoons tapioca starch
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup brown sugar, packed
Mix all your dry ingredients together well — yes, including the brown sugar. Now, to this, add your chia gel, the melted oils, and the following:
1/3 cup almond milk
3 teaspoons vanilla extract
Dry ingredients with melted oils and chia gel
Mix well, adding a little more almond milk if necessary. Dough should be stiff, but not dry — more like a cookie dough than a cake batter. It should stick to the beaters, but not make it hard for them to run.
Add your mix in ingredients. The chocolate chips are not, in my opinion, optional. The nuts absolutely are.
1/2 cup allergen-free chocolate chips
1/2 cup walnuts (optional)
Dump your batter into the lined brownie pan. It should not spread out on its own — so use your spatula to smash it down and spread it out, getting it into the corners. When it’s smooth, place a piece of parchment over the top and smooth it down onto the batter.
parchment paper topper
Bake at 350F. 8×8 pan — 35-40 minutes (my oven takes 37. It just does.) 9×9 pan — 25-35 minutes (again, 32.)
Now, and this is really really reallyimportant: DO NOT TRY TO EAT THESE BROWNIES HOT. They don’t have any structural integrity at all when they are warm. Peel the top sheet of parchment off. Cool them in the pan for 10-15 minutes, then use the parchment to lift out the brownies as a whole and set them on a cooling rack. Cool them completely. Then do your thing.
Bookclub Brownies variation
This is really guilding the lily, but it’s a tradition, so here you go.
In a double boiler (real, if you’ve got it, or fake it again), melt 2/3 cup of allergen-free chocolate chips with 3 Tablespoons of non-dairy milk. That’s it.
You could also make a frosting or even use a prepared frosting (many of Duncan Hines’ prepared frostings are allergen-free, though I don’t know about cross-contamination issues). But I find that to be more work than really necessary to get the good flavor here. Your mileage may vary.
While brownies are still warm and in the pan, pour this chocolate ganache over them and smooth it out. It won’t look like quite enough first, especially if you’re using a 9×9 pan, but it is. Taking two toothpicks, or better yet, wooden bbq skewers, poke holes all over the brownies, through the ganache. Follow through with the COMPLETE COOLING directive. Enjoy your extra fudgy magic brownies.
If you’d like to guild the guilding and make minty holiday brownies, top with crushed peppermint candies.
At Last Brownies, with “Book Club” variation
1 Tablespoon chia seeds, preferably white
4 Tablespoons water
1.5 cups almond flour or almond meal (doesn’t seem to make a difference for this recipe)
If I’m completely honest, that mayo or sour cream based French onion dip (one package of dip mix plus a carton of sour cream, I think?) wasn’t something I made all that often or bought all that often in my pre-allergen days. But I liked it at parties, and maybe that was enough for me back then? I don’t know.
But last year, I wanted onion dip. With potato chips — salty, greasy, oniony madness. I tried a few things, and when I still ate soy, tofu-based sour cream with a packet of stuff wasn’t too bad. Some of the mixes are free of some allergens, but reading the ingredients so carefully is a real turn off, honestly. So. Onion dip. Now that soy is out and I really don’t want to use a packaged mix, it was time to come up with a good substitute based as much as possible on real foods.
Earth Balance, refugeof the dairy-free for decent, actually dairy-free margarine, has come out with a vegan AND soy-free mayonnaise! You can read our review of this miracle HERE. I am going to assume that this recipe will more-or-less work with regular mayo, or any of the vegan versions that contain soy. It’s been tested only with Earth Balance mindful mayo because neither of us eat those others.
As wonderful as the mayo substitute is, a dip based on mayo alone, to be eaten with thick, ridged greasy and salty potato chips seemed overkill, so the base of this is actually pureed canned cannellini beans, with mayo-sub added for creaminess. The onion flavor comes from scallions and caramelized onions. This is onion dip to revel in. Even if it doesn’t photograph like anything other than a dip.
Kiss Me if You Dare Onion Dip
First, get on caramelizing your onions. You want a softball-sized onion or two smaller ones, and if you can get a sweet onion (Maui, Vidalia, Walla Walla), it will be even better. Cut it in quarters and slice it thinly.
Heat about a tablespoon of olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. I always use my cast iron, which is 12 inches, and I need to do two rounds of this. You want a good sloppy coat of oil over the bottom of the pan, heated until shimmering, and add only enough onions for a single layer. Add a good sprinkle of salt, 1/2 teaspoon or so for my pan size.
If you’ve never caramelized onions, it takes some time to do it right. I could tell you all about it, but I’m going to kick you over to Slate, as Tom Socca’s already covered it.
Set the onions aside to cool. I do not drain the oil off, as this dip is supposed to be rich.
Into your food processor (or blender, if you have a high powered one), add:
1 can of cannellini beans, rinsed and drained
1 scant cup of Earth Balance Mindful Mayo, original
3-4 cloves of roasted garlic
1-2 Tablespoons of lemon juice, fresh-squeezed if you can
Spin it through the food processor until all smooth and well combined. IF you are using a blender, I’d suggest doing the beans first, and then adding the mayo as a second step.
Add the onions and pulse until they are chopped up and well mixed in to your dip.
Dump dip into a serving bowl, and mix in about 1/4 cup of chopped scallions, green and light green parts only, reserving some for garnish if you wish. Refrigerate for a few hours before serving with lots of salty potato chips. Ruffles are my choice.
a bit of onion dip left after the party
Kiss Me if You Dare Onion Dip
1 softball-sized sweet onion, quartered and sliced thin
2 Tablespoons (+) olive oil (not extra-virgin) or canola oil
about 1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 can of cannellini beans, rinsed and drained
1 cup Earth Balance Mindful Mayo, original
3-4 cloves of roasted garlic
1-2 Tablespoons of freshly-squeezed lemon juice
1 bunch of scallions, sliced thin, green and light green parts only
Caramelize onions, then mix everything else in a food processor or high-speed blender, adding onions last, and garnishing with some of the green scallions if you remember.
I found this recipe, which I’ve now modified to fit my tastes, on the back of a silken tofu package. I had bought a couple of packages of silken tofu to try as an egg replacement in brownies. Silken tofu might work for others in brownies but not for me, and since I had to now find something else to do with the extra silken tofu, I noticed the recipe on the back of the package and decided to try it. I think I’ve now got it just about where I want it. I know it won’t work for those of you who can’t do soy, but Mary Kate’s going to post an onion dip that’s fabulous and maybe you can throw some spinach in it.
Spinach Dip
1 – 12 ounce package of Mori-Nu Silken Lite Firm Tofu
1 package/envelope of French onion soup mix (check labels for possible dairy, I have better luck with a store brand for dairy free or make your own mix, here’s a recipe)
1 – 10 ounce package of fresh spinach, steamed, cooled and squeezed dry
2-3 medium green onions, about a 1/4 cup when chopped (use green part too)
1 – 8 ounce can water chestnuts, coarsely chopped
4 cloves of garlic minced or just process in food processor
Several splashes of Tabasco sauce to taste
Salt and pepper to taste
Steam spinach in a covered container in the microwave with two tablespoons of water for approximately 5 minutes. Drain and when spinach is cool enough to touch, squeeze spinach dry, and place in fridge until cool.
Drain tofu, and place in a food processor or blender with soup mix. Blend until smooth. Add mayo and garlic and blend, scraping down sides until all ingredients are well blended. Add cooled spinach to blender or food processor and blend with short pulses until spinach is mixed in, but is still a bit chunky. Then add the spring onions and the water chestnuts and do two short pulses just to mix it up, you don’t want the spring onions and water chestnuts obliterated, just mixed in. (You could just put the spinach and tofu mixture, the spring onions and water chestnuts in a bowl and mix up with a spoon, if you want it chunkier).
Remove mixture from food processor or blender and put it into a bowl. Add Tabasco, salt and pepper to taste. Refrigerate for at least an hour, but overnight is best to let the spices blend.
