Who hasn't used Bisquick? One of my most 'famous' recipes uses it, and I have been wanting, for a long time, to re-create the mix using homemade biscuit mix with healthier, WAPF-Friendly ingredients. And so, at last, I have taken some time and done just that.
As always, it's flexible. As always, you don't have to do it 'my way'. But because my Eastern Shore-Style Sweet Potato Biscuits, (next post), turned out so well using this recipe, I will give it to you exactly my way, and let you know what can be done instead for those of you not on the Weston A. Price train...yet. ;)
This recipe makes a whopping bag full, so have a 1-2 Gallon freezer bag ready. Stored in the freezer, it will keep 8 months (at least!)
The recipe calls for 9 Cups of flour. Here's how I divided it up:
4 C. King Arthur Bread Flour, unbleached
2 & 1/2 C. Bob's Red Mill Whole Wheat Stone Ground Organic Pastry Flour
2 & 1/2 C. Freshly-milled (my mill) organic/chemical-free hard wheat flour
You may use any healthy combo of flours or a single flour, if you like. I do not suggest all Pastry Flour, as it is quite low in gluten and your biscuits could end up looking like flattened cookies. At the same time, I wouldn't suggest only Wheat flour, either, as they will turn out heavier than you will like. If the pastry flour scares you, use a combination of the bread flour and wheat flour instead.
1/4 C. Rumford Baking Powder (or you may use your own home-made baking powder.)
1 TBS. Celtic Sea Salt
1/3 C. Grassfed lard
1/3 C. Grassfed tallow
1/3 C. Butter
1 C. Coconut Oil in solid state
For the last 4 ingredients (fat), you may use any combination that totals 2 Cups. It is also ok to use any ONE of the fats alone.
Regarding coconut oil: It is liquid at room temp unless you keep a chilly room. Also, if it is unrefined, it will have a coconut taste-wonderful for me because I LOVE coconut taste, but I know many who prefer not to taste it at all. A slightly less-healthy, but still healthier than the other 'stuff' out there, is to buy it in a refined state. This way, no coconut taste. (BTW: I recently learned that for those of us having difficulty with fat accumulation, coconut oil is an excellent fat choice!)
I truly believe for this recipe, the hardest part is the accumulation of the ingredients...Here's what to do next:
Combine all the dry ingredients and mix well. You can use a whisk, but I just use my clean hands.
Cut in the fats with a fork, pastry blender, or clean hands until it all looks like coarse crumbs.
Put it all in a freezer bag and freeze or refrigerate until ready to use. At the time of use, you may need to crush some clumps in the mix. This causes no problems.
Use for any recipe calling for Bisquick or other biscuit mix.
Showing posts with label fats. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fats. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Home-made Mayo Oils-Fats and Skinnies of Good Fats
Some time ago, I posted a how-to article for making your own mayo. I have been happy with our results, but I'm always interested in how others go about it. When Sarah Pope, author of The Healthy Home Economist blog, posted a new article on the oils used in Mayo, I read. Sarah is a Chapter Leader for The Weston A. Price Foundation and I have followed her blog often. She is what I admirably consider to be a 'food purist' and better about non-sweets than I or my family, so I have found that I sometimes need to sweeten up her recipes by adding a bit of raw honey or maple syrup. The knowledge I gain from her teaching is very valuable...enough so that I probably should stop right here and just give you the link to the post I read that got me going on this mayo thing.
Well, it's not so much the mayo part I'm in to, it's the fat of the oils used in making home-made mayo that intrigued me...and surprised me because this is important information that has evaded me up until now.
Two years ago, I had no idea there was much difference between canola oil and lard, tallow, olive, or coconut oil, but even with the advancements in my understanding since then, I didn't realize there was a difference between the good fats in regard to weight gain.
Now, this may not be news to you, but to me, it is, so I want to share it pronto.
In a nutshell, although the fats recommended by The Weston A. Price Foundation are all good for us, the fact is, some of them are more likely to make those of us prone to weight gain, well...gain weight.
Which ones? The long-chain fatty acid ones.
Like...(sorry)...Olive Oil.
But coconut oil is a winner as is sesame oil and several others.
For those of you who, like I, may have a thyroid issue, here's another oil that's good for many, but not us...Flax. Apparently, it slipped under my 'radar' regarding goiterogenic foods. I was using it occasionally, but now plan to avoid it.
In the exciting world of good, better and best nutrition, it's easy for some things to go unnoticed or unlearned. At least, for me, that seem to be the case. So, as I come across these little jewels of information, I will try to get them posted...(Haha!...Just for those of you who may be more like me than you care to admit.)
Rather than attempt to reiterate all Sarah's teaching here, I'm going to give you her link. She's well-worth following!
If you get curious and check out her mayo recipe, do understand that most mayo's we've grown up with contain sugar. If you haven't purged yourself and your family from sweetness, or don't plan to, you may want to revise her recipe a tad by adding 1-3 Tbs. of raw honey to the mix.
Also, because I use super-fresh (back-yard) eggs, my mayo never looks white, (the picture in my post is a poor image of the real thing, color-wise.) I thought it would be less yellow, (for my family's sake, not mine), if I made it Sarah's way, rather than my usual way of using only the egg yolks. It was a little less yellow, but not much. So, I say, do it whichever way suits you regarding egg whites and yolks. Also, Sarah's recipe calls for one less egg. I have found I like this better as the end result is not as thick and more like what I grew up with as far as thickness goes.
Here's the link on oils for mayo. And here's the link to my recipe for mayo. (You'll need to scroll down the page a bit to get to the actual recipe.) It uses peanut oil and I'm not sure about the greatness of that yet, except that I did read it was 'quasi-okay' in Nourishing Traditions, and opted for that after finding we weren't real excited about the taste of olive oil in our mayo. I made a new batch of mayo today and opted to use Sunflower and Coconut Oil in equal amounts instead and my husband and I both liked the final result very much. If you read Sarah's post, you'll better understand why I chose these oils.Oh and also, whereas my recipe calls for other sweeteners, I experimented with honey today by adding about 2 Tbs, and as I said, the final outcome was a winner.
For those of you just tripping in here, the big point regarding the oils is to GET AWAY from canola and other oils touted as healthy that really aren't. You can read more about that here.
If you are interested in more sauces and dressings, Sarah gives a great video-blog for several types, including fermented ketchup and thousand island dressing. You may want to try them. When you go to her page, look to the column on the right or use her search feature.
Well, it's not so much the mayo part I'm in to, it's the fat of the oils used in making home-made mayo that intrigued me...and surprised me because this is important information that has evaded me up until now.
Two years ago, I had no idea there was much difference between canola oil and lard, tallow, olive, or coconut oil, but even with the advancements in my understanding since then, I didn't realize there was a difference between the good fats in regard to weight gain.
Now, this may not be news to you, but to me, it is, so I want to share it pronto.
In a nutshell, although the fats recommended by The Weston A. Price Foundation are all good for us, the fact is, some of them are more likely to make those of us prone to weight gain, well...gain weight.
Which ones? The long-chain fatty acid ones.
Like...(sorry)...Olive Oil.
But coconut oil is a winner as is sesame oil and several others.
For those of you who, like I, may have a thyroid issue, here's another oil that's good for many, but not us...Flax. Apparently, it slipped under my 'radar' regarding goiterogenic foods. I was using it occasionally, but now plan to avoid it.
In the exciting world of good, better and best nutrition, it's easy for some things to go unnoticed or unlearned. At least, for me, that seem to be the case. So, as I come across these little jewels of information, I will try to get them posted...(Haha!...Just for those of you who may be more like me than you care to admit.)
Rather than attempt to reiterate all Sarah's teaching here, I'm going to give you her link. She's well-worth following!
If you get curious and check out her mayo recipe, do understand that most mayo's we've grown up with contain sugar. If you haven't purged yourself and your family from sweetness, or don't plan to, you may want to revise her recipe a tad by adding 1-3 Tbs. of raw honey to the mix.
Also, because I use super-fresh (back-yard) eggs, my mayo never looks white, (the picture in my post is a poor image of the real thing, color-wise.) I thought it would be less yellow, (for my family's sake, not mine), if I made it Sarah's way, rather than my usual way of using only the egg yolks. It was a little less yellow, but not much. So, I say, do it whichever way suits you regarding egg whites and yolks. Also, Sarah's recipe calls for one less egg. I have found I like this better as the end result is not as thick and more like what I grew up with as far as thickness goes.
Here's the link on oils for mayo. And here's the link to my recipe for mayo. (You'll need to scroll down the page a bit to get to the actual recipe.) It uses peanut oil and I'm not sure about the greatness of that yet, except that I did read it was 'quasi-okay' in Nourishing Traditions, and opted for that after finding we weren't real excited about the taste of olive oil in our mayo. I made a new batch of mayo today and opted to use Sunflower and Coconut Oil in equal amounts instead and my husband and I both liked the final result very much. If you read Sarah's post, you'll better understand why I chose these oils.Oh and also, whereas my recipe calls for other sweeteners, I experimented with honey today by adding about 2 Tbs, and as I said, the final outcome was a winner.
For those of you just tripping in here, the big point regarding the oils is to GET AWAY from canola and other oils touted as healthy that really aren't. You can read more about that here.
If you are interested in more sauces and dressings, Sarah gives a great video-blog for several types, including fermented ketchup and thousand island dressing. You may want to try them. When you go to her page, look to the column on the right or use her search feature.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Fat Facts, cont. HOW MARGARINES AND SHORTENINGS ARE MADE
I started to tell you EVERYTHING about the food on this trip, but it was getting so long and then my husband began to crunch pretzels IN MY EAR while I was trying to think and I realized that I'm really super-tired and this was getting too long before I even began to write about fat...So, let's get to the facts:
Today: How Margarines and Shortenings are Made:
All information comes from Weston A. Price documentation.
The cheapest vegetable oils come from canola, corn, cottonseed, soybeans and safflower seeds. These oils cost less for manufacturers to make, so they want us to want them. One great way is to push them as 'healthy'. But remember, just because the product has 'vegetable' in the label does not mean it's good for us...although there is an immediate subconscious trigger that tells us otherwise. The oils used to make margaines and shortenings are extracted at high temperatures which destroy any good they may have started with and cause rancidity.
Because this extraction doesn't completely squeeze all the oil from one of these bases, it is then further extracted using a carcinogenic solvent called 'hexane'. (This gives a whole 'nother meaning to "Good to the last drop!"-Ugh!)
Then the rancid oils are steam cleaned for the first time, destroying the vitamins and antioxidants that just might have survived and making the vegetable part of vegetable totally non-vegetable. Oh yeah...and the pesticides/solvents that are in these non-organic grains? They are still there.
Then, for good measure, ground nickel is mixed in. I'm sure there's a reason, but I don't know what it is...I think it has something to do with thickening.
The oils are then placed in a reactor. There, hydrogen gas infuses them via another process using high temps and pressure. This process actually molecularly rearranges the oil and now it's not an oil but a lumpy grey semi-solid that stinks to high heaven.
So, it's washed. In a soap-like emulsifier. This also removes the lumps.
But it still stinks so they steam clean it again.
Now that the chemically caused odor is removed, it's time to bleach it because although the lumps and the stink are gone, it's still grey.
OK...now at least it looks a little better, yes?
Time to add the artificial flavors and the synthetic vitamins. (Vitamins D, A, K, and E are toxic in synthetic form.)
And don't forget the yellow food coloring to make margarine look like...butter?? And get this, they MUST add 'natural'* yellow coloring because 'synthetic' is disallowed. Laugh. Out. Loud.
Nothing left to do now but the packaging...Be sure to promote it to the world as a health food! And for extra good measure, demonize the real deal- butter.
I was delighted, by the way, to find REAL BUTTER today for use on our Las Vegas HEALTH seminar pastries that were the ONLY food offered at breakfast. We are here for a HEALTH seminar. God help us. I nearly grabbed 2 packets of butter to eat without anything else. :0/
*By the way, DID YOU KNOW that the word 'natural' is only very slightly regulated? Even MSG can be in 'natural flavorings' legally! The only requirement is that it NOT be more than 50% of the 'natural' flavoring. Don't let labels fool ya! Most manufacturers are totally aware of the loop holes and use them to the nth degree.
Today: How Margarines and Shortenings are Made:
All information comes from Weston A. Price documentation.
The cheapest vegetable oils come from canola, corn, cottonseed, soybeans and safflower seeds. These oils cost less for manufacturers to make, so they want us to want them. One great way is to push them as 'healthy'. But remember, just because the product has 'vegetable' in the label does not mean it's good for us...although there is an immediate subconscious trigger that tells us otherwise. The oils used to make margaines and shortenings are extracted at high temperatures which destroy any good they may have started with and cause rancidity.
Because this extraction doesn't completely squeeze all the oil from one of these bases, it is then further extracted using a carcinogenic solvent called 'hexane'. (This gives a whole 'nother meaning to "Good to the last drop!"-Ugh!)
Then the rancid oils are steam cleaned for the first time, destroying the vitamins and antioxidants that just might have survived and making the vegetable part of vegetable totally non-vegetable. Oh yeah...and the pesticides/solvents that are in these non-organic grains? They are still there.
Then, for good measure, ground nickel is mixed in. I'm sure there's a reason, but I don't know what it is...I think it has something to do with thickening.
The oils are then placed in a reactor. There, hydrogen gas infuses them via another process using high temps and pressure. This process actually molecularly rearranges the oil and now it's not an oil but a lumpy grey semi-solid that stinks to high heaven.
So, it's washed. In a soap-like emulsifier. This also removes the lumps.
But it still stinks so they steam clean it again.
Now that the chemically caused odor is removed, it's time to bleach it because although the lumps and the stink are gone, it's still grey.
OK...now at least it looks a little better, yes?
Time to add the artificial flavors and the synthetic vitamins. (Vitamins D, A, K, and E are toxic in synthetic form.)
And don't forget the yellow food coloring to make margarine look like...butter?? And get this, they MUST add 'natural'* yellow coloring because 'synthetic' is disallowed. Laugh. Out. Loud.
Nothing left to do now but the packaging...Be sure to promote it to the world as a health food! And for extra good measure, demonize the real deal- butter.
I was delighted, by the way, to find REAL BUTTER today for use on our Las Vegas HEALTH seminar pastries that were the ONLY food offered at breakfast. We are here for a HEALTH seminar. God help us. I nearly grabbed 2 packets of butter to eat without anything else. :0/
*By the way, DID YOU KNOW that the word 'natural' is only very slightly regulated? Even MSG can be in 'natural flavorings' legally! The only requirement is that it NOT be more than 50% of the 'natural' flavoring. Don't let labels fool ya! Most manufacturers are totally aware of the loop holes and use them to the nth degree.
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