Fast, Easy Burgers (No Bun Intended!)
Forget fast-food restaurants–you can make healthy burgers quickly in your own home. If you haven’t planned ahead, grass-fed and/or organic beef, chicken, lamb, or turkey are great to have on hand. Louise loves to buy ground meat or poultry, make it into patties, and put it in her freezer, so she can take a patty or two out at a time to thaw and serve. This is a great way to make sure you always have the option of a burger, even if you couldn’t get to the grocery store!
Can I cook a frozen meat patty? Yes, you can. Put about 1" water or bone broth into your skillet and set your stove burner to low. Add in the frozen patty and allow it to slow cook. Once it is mostly thawed, you can add some healthy fat, like raw butter, or continue to cook the burger in water or bone broth. Bone broth is a wonderful way to add flavor to your burger!
What about the bun? Since most buns are made of flour that is hard on the digestive system, we recommend eating your burger without a bun. Instead, consider pairing it with our Grain-Free, Gluten-Free Rosemary Bread (see recipe later in the chapter) or putting it on top of a salad. Both options make for better digestion and food combining.
How to make a great beef, turkey, chicken, or lamb burger:
1 lb. ground meat makes about 4–6 burgers. Shape your meat into patties.
Put your skillet on low heat and add either bone broth or a healthy cooking fat, like raw butter, ghee, duck fat (wonderful for lamb burgers), or beef tallow, and let it melt onto the skillet.
Add herbs or spices of your choice. Some great options are: ¼ tsp. ground black pepper with ½ tsp. thyme, or ½ tsp. turmeric and ¼ tsp. cardamom or fennel. Allow the herbs and spices to warm in the bone broth or oil to release their medicinal properties.
Add the patties and cook on low or medium low, turning them when they lift easily from the pan with a spatula. As the meat cooks, it will shrink and plump a bit. When you touch it in the center, it will be a little bouncy and firm when it’s done.
We actually like to put a knife or the edge of the spatula into the meat to see how ready it is. When it’s cooked on the outside and still a little pink inside (rare), we take it off the heat and serve. If you like it cooked a bit more, keep checking the inside of the patty until it’s done to your liking. (Keep in mind that meat cooked more rare is easier to digest.) This will take 5–10 minutes on low heat, which is a healthier way to cook meat. Allow more time for the extra steps above if you’re starting with a frozen patty.
Serve with cultured vegetables, a salad, and mustard. (Look for a mustard made with apple cider vinegar instead of white vinegar. Whole Foods 365 brand has an organic German mustard made with apple cider vinegar and horseradish that tastes great with burgers!) If you must have bread with your burger, our Grain-Free, Gluten-Free “Rye” Bread and Rosemary Bread recipes are great options. They combine well with meat from a food-combining perspective, and while they’re not going to hold your burger the way a bun does, they can be eaten with it on the side or with knife and fork.
| Preparation time: about 25 minutes for the stuffing and about 15–20 minutes for cooking the fish | Servings: 8 |
This recipe was modified from a very popular snapper recipe on Allrecipes.com. It’s great for a dinner party or special meal, when you have a little more time to cook.
INGREDIENTS:
8 (4-oz.) fillets red snapper
8 oz. cooked baby shrimp
2 cup fresh maitake mushrooms, or reishi or shiitake mushrooms–if you can’t find any of these preferred medicinal mushrooms, you could use portobello mushrooms
1 cup chopped red onion
1 bunch celery
1 bunch watercress
2 large carrots
4 cloves fresh garlic, minced
2 Tbsp. coconut oil
1 Tbsp. ghee
¼ cup organic white wine or apple cider vinegar
2 Tbsp. fresh parsley
1 Tbsp. fresh cilantro
2 tsp. oregano
1½ tsp. thyme
1 tsp. dill
1 tsp. Herbamare herb sea salt (if you don’t have this around, use regular sea salt)
½ tsp. sea salt
⅛ tsp. ground black pepper
INSTRUCTIONS:
Preheat oven to 350° F.
To make the stuffing: Put all vegetables except for the garlic into a food processor (S-blade), and blend until the vegetables are finely chopped. Set this aside. Now, in a skillet, add the ghee, coconut oil, spices (oregano, dill, thyme, and pepper), and garlic. Let the ghee and coconut oil melt with the spices, and add the fresh garlic. Warm for 3 minutes, then add the vegetables, Herbamare, sea salt, and vinegar. Let this mixture simmer on the lowest heat for 15 minutes. Remove from heat and let it cool; once cooled completely, add the cooked baby shrimp and mix thoroughly.
If you’re making the stuffing ahead of time, put the mixture into the refrigerator until you’re ready to make the fish. You might want to make the stuffing earlier in the day or the night before if you’re having guests.
This allows the flavors to really come out and makes for a quick prep time when guests arrive.
Optional: Marinate the snapper for two hours in 6 Tbsp. olive oil, the juice of 1 lemon, and 3 cloves minced garlic.
To make the fish: In a baking dish, place snapper so that it’s lying flat. Add a layer of stuffing on top. (If you have extra stuffing, you can thin it out with some water and make a wonderful stew or soup.)
Bake for 15–20 minutes or just until the fish flakes easily.
| Preparation time: 15 minutes | Servings: 2 |
INGREDIENTS:
½ lb. fresh wild-caught haddock
1 Tbsp. coconut oil
1 Tbsp. curry powder
½ tsp. thyme
5 coriander seeds
Hemp-seed oil
Herbamare
INSTRUCTIONS:
In a saucepan, add 2 cups water and the haddock. Add in curry, coconut oil, thyme, and coriander seeds. Simmer for 5–7 minutes, until fish is cooked.
Serve over a bed of spring-mix lettuce with ½ cup cultured veggies for each person (our favorite with this meal is a blend of cultured daikon radish with ginger). Drizzle with hemp-seed oil and add Herbamare to taste.
If you’d like, you can use the broth for sea-vegetable soup: Remove the fish and add some digitata, alaria, or soup mix from Maine Seaweed (TheSeaweedMan.com). This family-owned company has the purest and best sea vegetables we’ve found.
Allow the sea veggies to soak in the broth while it’s cooling. When you’re ready to make or eat the soup, let it simmer for 5 minutes and add in vegetables of your choice, or simply enjoy with the sea vegetables and broth. You might also want to add some of the cooked haddock back into the broth at the end.
| Preparation time: approximately 25 minutes | Servings: 4 |
This is a delicious salad that has a delightful interplay of sweet and savory flavors.
INGREDIENTS:
1 lb. wild-caught mahi mahi
1 cup broccoli sprouts (or microgreens)
1 bunch broccoli (or use celery root, chopped into chunks)
1 head romaine lettuce
1 cucumber
1 avocado
1 onion
1" fresh ginger
2 tsp. dried basil
2 tsp. dill spice
Macadamia-nut oil (or flaxseed oil)
⅓ cup kimchee or cultured vegetables
INSTRUCTIONS:
Place mahi mahi in a baking pan with 2" water. Add sliced onion, diced ginger, and fresh cut broccoli; sprinkle dill and basil over the top. Cover and bake at 350° F for approximately 15 minutes.
While the fish is baking, prepare the salad: On each plate, arrange romaine lettuce, broccoli sprouts, thinly sliced cucumber, and sliced avocado. Once the fish is cooked, cut it in quarters. Place one quarter of the fish on each plate, along with the cooked broccoli, ginger, and onions. Use a spatula or slotted spoon to drain out the water.
Add ⅓ cup kimchee or cultured vegetables with purple cabbage or carrots to add color and balance the dish with a sour taste.
Drizzle macadamia-nut oil over the salad. Add Herbamare or sea salt to taste, and enjoy!
Hassle-Free Fabulous Whole Chicken for Busy People
| Preparation time: 20 minutes to prepare, 2–4 hours to cook | Servings: 6–8 |
Chicken, especially organic and pasture fed, is a wonderful, nourishing meal. While marketing will try to tell you that the white breast meat is the best, our ancestors knew that the dark meat is full of important fatty acids and nutrients, so go for all the meat and know your body will love you!
You can cook chicken so that it’s fast, easy, and guaranteed to be moist–no more overcooked chicken done in the oven with a fear of burning. If you are pressed for time or want a sure thing in terms of tender chicken, this is the recipe for you!
If you buy chicken directly from the farmer–one you know has good practices, allows their chickens to run free and eat their native pasture diet, and does not feed them soy or any genetically modified (GMO) feed–you can get more affordable chickens and support your local farmer.
INGREDIENTS:
1 whole fryer chicken (between 4–5 lbs.), preferably organic pasture fed
½ cup organic extra-virgin olive oil (virgin unrefined coconut oil works well, too!)
4 cloves garlic, peeled and left whole
2 Tbsp. dried rosemary
2 Tbsp. dried thyme
2 Tbsp. dried basil
1 Tbsp. apple cider vinegar
½ tsp. sea salt
½ tsp. fresh ground black pepper
Optional: ½ cup sliced onions or 1 cup finely sliced leeks
Take the chicken and remove the bag of giblets and the neck from the interior cavity. Set these aside in the refrigerator because they are super nutrient rich and have important uses in other recipes! The neck can be used to make bone broth (see Louise’s Favorite Bone Broth recipe earlier in the chapter), and the organs can be used to make delicious organ meat pâté (there are many great recipes online, especially if you do a search for “GAPS diet organ meat pâté recipe”).
Rinse the chicken with filtered water and put it in your Crock-Pot. Add 1 cup of water to the bottom–you don’t need more than that. Some Crock-Pot recipes say to brown the chicken first and not to use water. We’ve found that we can skip browning and add a little water to the bottom of the Crock-Pot for the best results. If you have the time to brown the chicken first and you love that, go for it! We find that it’s not necessary for a flavorful, moist chicken.
In a small bowl, mix the olive oil, rosemary, thyme, basil, sea salt, and pepper. Take your hand and lift the skin at the edge of the chicken breast. See if you can gently push your fingers under the skin to make an opening between the meat and the skin. (It’s usually pretty easy to do this with no or minimal breakage of the skin.) Now take some of the herb-and-oil mixture in your hand and rub it on the meat under the skin. We like to put it under the skin because it spreads the flavors right into the meat, but if you don’t want to do this, you can rub the mixture on top of the skin. You should have some of the oil-and-herb mixture left over, and it can go on top of the skin or into the water in the Crock-Pot.
Add the apple cider vinegar to the water at the bottom of the Crock-Pot; set the timer to anything from 4 to 8 hours. The Crock-Pot will adjust the heat accordingly so that it’s done. Our favorite is 4 hours–we put the chicken in around 8 A.M. and it’s ready for lunch. If you’re working, you could do 8 hours and cook it overnight so that you wake up to chicken you can grab for lunch that day. Or get it all together in the pot the night before, store the interior crock in your refrigerator, then take it out and set your Crock-Pot for 8 hours so that your chicken is ready for dinner when you get home! Your Crock-Pot will just go to “warm” once the cooking is done, so if you’re not home within 8 hours, it will stay on warm until you return.
If you don’t have a Crock-Pot, you can make this in your oven: Add the chicken to a glass or Pyrex baking container/large casserole dish with a good-sized lip. Put the water in the bottom of the baking dish. Preheat the oven to 350° F and bake until your meat thermometer reads 165° F (this should take about 1–2 hours). You could do this the night before and have the chicken for lunch and dinner the next day. Just grab a leg or two in the morning and go–it can make a great lunch or snack. Grab some spring mix, some avocado, and a little olive oil and apple cider vinegar, put it in a small container for transport, and you’re good to go.
Serving suggestions: Serve with steamed carrots and broccoli. If you want, you can throw the broccoli right into the Crock-Pot with the chicken so you don’t even have to cook it separately–it’s all ready at once. How’s that for convenience? Throw in some carrots, too, if you want some good color.
Simple Crock-Pot Lamb Shanks (with Bonus Lamb Bone Broth!)
This meal is so easy and makes incredibly tender lamb. You can make it overnight or in the morning so that it’s warm and ready by lunch or dinner. As a bonus, you’ll have delicious lamb bone broth to sip later or use in other recipes.
INGREDIENTS:
4 lamb shanks
4 cups filtered water
1 Tbsp. dried rosemary
1 Tbsp. dried thyme
1 Tbsp. dried basil
2 tsp. sea salt
1 tsp. fresh ground black pepper
1 tsp. ground allspice
INSTRUCTIONS:
Add all ingredients in a Crock-Pot. (If you don’t have a Crock-Pot, you can make this dish in a braising pan or Dutch oven, on the lowest heat setting on your stovetop.)
Decide when you want your lamb shanks ready to eat: If it’s morning and you want them done by lunch, set your Crock-Pot to high, medium high, or the 4-hour setting. (Check the directions on your Crock-Pot for timing–if you have one with the 4-6-8-10-hour settings, the 4-hour setting provides
fall-off-the-bone lamb shanks by lunch.) If it’s nighttime and you want to have your lamb ready to take to work by the morning–or if it’s morning and you want it ready for dinner–use the lowest setting, or the 8- or 10-hour setting, depending on when you need it to be ready.
That’s it!
Serve with steamed or sautéed vegetables for a delicious, easy meal. And remember to save the broth to sip or use for recipes!
Short Ribs One-Pot Crock-Pot Meal
| Preparation time: 20 minutes to prepare ingredients and 8–10 hours to cook in your Crock-Pot | Servings: 6 |
If you want to make a special dinner or are having a dinner party when you’re short on time, this is the perfect one-pot meal that will delight your family or dinner guests! Most short ribs served in restaurants have a lot of sauce and can even be heavy tasting. These short ribs are different–clean tasting, simple, fall-off-the-bone tender, and delicious!
INGREDIENTS:
4 lbs. short ribs
5 cups brussels sprouts
4 large carrots, sliced in rounds
1 bunch celery (about 8 stalks)
2 leeks (about 2 cups chopped)
4 Tbsp. coconut oil
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 bay leaves
1 Tbsp. thyme
1 Tbsp. rosemary
1 tsp. basil
2 tsp. pepper
2 tsp. sea salt
2 tsp. fennel, ground
1 tsp. paprika
2 cups bone broth–or filtered water, if you don’t have bone broth
2 cups red wine
INSTRUCTIONS:
Optional first step: Put the coconut oil in a skillet on the lowest heat setting and allow to melt. Add all herbs and spices and heat for 2 minutes to release their flavors and medicinal qualities. You don’t need to brown the short ribs, but if you want to do this for extra flavor, you can add them in and brown them on the top and bottom, then add them into the Crock-Pot. Add about a cup of the bone broth or water to the skillet and heat for 2 minutes, then put the liquid and spices into the Crock-Pot. This will boost the flavor of the meal.
Slice the carrots, celery, and leeks (to make this fast and easy, use the slicing attachment on your food processor, if you have one). Either slice the brussels sprouts or leave them whole.
Place all ingredients in the Crock-Pot. (If you don’t have a Crock-Pot, you can make this dish in a braising pan or Dutch oven, on the lowest heat setting on your stovetop.)
Set your Crock-Pot to the lowest temperature or the 8-hour setting. You can slow cook this up to 10 hours for delicious, tender short ribs.