Welcome to the heart of The Whole30: our recipes. This section is where you’ll put your kitchen skills and the Kitchen Fundamentals you learned in the last section to the test.
Don’t be nervous.
This section includes nothing but simple, delicious, nutritious meals made from everyday ingredients. You won’t find any specialty food items, hard-to-procure cooking fats or meats, or techniques that call for fancy kitchen tools. We recruited Culinary Institute of America-trained chef Richard Bradford to help us create meals perfect for the beginner chef living in a small town, with access to just one or two regular grocery stores. The recipes in many sections start off simple and get more involved, so you can build confidence in the kitchen as you gain experience with the Whole30.
If you’re an experienced chef with a well-stocked Whole30 pantry, you’re in for a real treat. These recipes may look basic, but they pack a real flavor punch. Chef Richard has hit the trifecta in that effortless way only a professional chef can pull off—these recipes have simple ingredients and easy preparation techniques, but are incredibly tasty and satisfying. We should know—we’ve eaten our way through this book more than once.
Not exactly a tough job.
Before you dive in, let’s go over some helpful hints for cooking your way through our Whole30 recipes.
We know you want to jump right in with both burners, but there is nothing worse than getting halfway through cooking dinner and realizing you’re out of a key ingredient. Before you start chopping, dicing, and preheating, take a minute to read through the entire recipe. Like, the whole thing. You’ll get a big-picture understanding of what ingredients are involved, whether you have to prep anything in advance (like a sauce or marinade), the tools you’ll need, and what the dish should look like when it’s done.
Remember how we said planning and preparing are everything with the Whole30? Cooking is no exception! Mise-en-place is a French term for “putting in place,” and it basically means that before you start cooking, all of your ingredients are prepped and your tools are in order. Let’s walk through your mise-en-place for the Classic Chili. First, read through the entire recipe. We’ll wait.
Now it’s time to prepare the ingredients. First, lay everything but the meat out on a clean section of kitchen counter: the onion, three cloves of garlic, all the spice containers, two peppers, three tomatoes, and your container of beef broth. We’d also pull out a large pot, a small bowl, two medium bowls, a slotted spoon, measuring cups and spoons, a chef’s knife, and a cutting board.
Finely chop the onion first, then mince the garlic and put them into the same small bowl. Next, measure out all of your spices and add them to the bowl with the onion and garlic. (As the instructions say these all go into the pot at the same time, why dirty more than one bowl?)
Next, chop the peppers and tomatoes, and place them into a different medium-sized bowl. Measure out your broth and add it to the peppers and tomatoes. (Again, they all go into the pot at the same time.) Place the bowls with prepared ingredients and the empty bowl by the stove, add your large pot to the stovetop, and remove the ground meat from the fridge. For bonus points, take two minutes to put all your spice containers back, and wash your knife, measuring cups, and cutting board.
Now you may cook.
Start at the top of the instructions and prepare your ground meat. Transfer it into the empty bowl sitting by your stove. Add the onion, garlic, and spice mixture from the small bowl to the pot and cook as instructed. Add the peppers, tomatoes, and broth from the other bowl to the pot, return the ground meat in the third bowl to the pot, and finish cooking.
By the way, the only clean up left to do while the table is being set and the chili served is three bowls and a slotted spoon.
This mise-en-place stuff works all right.
You’ll see our recipe instructions often say, “when the pan is hot . . .” or “once the cooking fat is hot . . .” This is a really important step, so don’t rush the process! Adding cold protein to a cold (or warming) pan means it’ll likely stick to the bottom, creating a cooking and dishwashing mess. Plus, this techinque causes your ingredients to release moisture as they heat up, leaving you with dry meat or fish. If you’re trying to get a good sear on your steak, chicken breast, or fish fillet, that pan or cooking fat needs to be hot to seal in the moisture and lightly brown the surface.
The same goes for sautéing vegetables—a pre-heated pan means faster cooking times, more evenly cooked veggies, and tasty browned bits at the bottom of your stainless steel or cast-iron pan. Yum.
We’ve tested all of these recipes in the real world more than once, making sure our cooking times were accurate. Sometimes, we included a range, because things like root vegetables, steaks, or roasts may take longer or shorter to cook based on their size and thickness. However, there are other factors that may impact cooking times, so don’t be surprised if you need to add a little more or a little less time to our general recommendations.
First, ovens sometimes run “hot” or “cold.” For example, the Hartwigs’ oven runs a little cold, so they have to turn the temperature to 365°F for recipes calling for 350°F heat. (You’d naturally figure this out after a few weeks of baking or roasting, or you can use a thermometer to verify the actual temperature versus the temperature on the display.) If your oven runs slightly hot or cold, you may need to adjust your temperature or cooking times to accommodate.
In addition, where you live may impact how long it takes you to steam broccoli.
Seriously.
Altitude has quite an impact on certain cooking methods. As elevation rises, foods you boil, steam, or simmer (like vegetables, roasts, and stews) require a longer cooking time. Our times were based on cooking at sea level, which means mountain men and women may need to adjust. Our Braised Beef Brisket may take an hour longer to cook in Salt Lake City than it does in Miami, and residents of Denver may need to add an extra two to three minutes to our Perfect Boiled Egg recipe. Luckily, oven temperatures are not affected by altitude, so 350°F is always 350°F.
Unless your oven runs hot or cold, of course.
What we’re trying to say here is that practice in your own kitchen makes perfect. Follow the recipes to the letter if you’re unfamiliar with cooking, and adjust them if your environment calls for longer or shorter cooking times. Or, modify our instructions on the fly if you know it takes longer than seven minutes for your broccoli to steam. Make notes in the margins of your favorite recipes, taking note of adjusted cooking times or temperatures, and don’t stress if your first few steaks come out more well-done than you’d like.
As with the Whole30, this whole “cooking real food” stuff gets easier with time and experience. On that note . . .
Most recipes in this book say they serve two people, sometimes with leftovers.
Immediately, you should see the trouble with this.
Which two people?
Our recipes include “average” portion sizes for meat, seafood, eggs, and vegetables per our meal template, but the members of your household may require less food or more food per meal—in fact, you may know this already based on the cooking you did pre-Whole30. If you look at our Perfect Grilled Steak and think, “Five ounces, are you kidding me?” just buy bigger cuts of steak and adjust your cooking times if necessary. (Bigger steaks may not take longer, but thicker steaks will.)
You can also adjust this on the fly if you find you’re consistently hungry between meals. Buy more protein, the most satiating of all the macronutrients, and make slightly bigger meals until you find the sweet spot. (In fact, even if you’re not super hungry, you may want to cook extra meat just so you’ll have leftovers!)
You can also adjust for satiety by adding more fat to your meals. Use a little more cooking fat or add some fat, depending on the recipe. Sprinkle more nuts or seeds, add a half an avocado on the side, or toss some olives into your salad. The combination of extra protein and extra fat is especially good at tiding you over from meal to meal. Feel free to add more veggies, too, although they’re not very calorie dense and won’t help much with satiety.
Unless you’re loading your sweet potato with extra ghee, which would totally work.
Now, let’s talk about some quick tips for cooking your way through the book.
✪You’ll notice some of our recipes call for a specific kind of fat, but many just say, “cooking fat.” Here’s the deal: When the kind of fat you use is important for the flavor or texture of the dish, we’ll give you specific options. In our Cauliflower Mash, we call for clarified butter or ghee because adding extra-virgin olive oil to your mash just wouldn’t work.
If you’re using fat for cooking, however, just use whatever you have on hand, or whatever you think will taste best for the dish. The list of healthy cooking fats is extensive, so feel free to use coconut oil, clarified butter, ghee, extra-virgin olive oil, palm oil, tallow, lard, bacon fat, or duck fat if we just call for a general “cooking fat” in the recipe.
✪In Essentials for Your Whole30 Kitchen, we recommended some kitchen tools and gadgets that will make cooking real food that much faster, easier, and more fun. One of the most valuable gadgets for the budding chef is a meat thermometer. There are all kinds of tricks for evaluating whether your meat and poultry are done cooking, like pressing on the flesh or using a kitchen timer. But tactile cues take time to learn, and your kitchen timer is probably the least accurate way to measure doneness, as cooking times will vary based on a variety of factors.
A meat thermometer, on the other hand, tells you exactly when to pull your meat or seafood off the heat at just the right time—as long as you use it properly. First, insert the thermometer at the thickest part of the meat, away from any bones. If you’re cooking a whole turkey or chicken, place the thermometer in the inner thigh area (near the breast), but don’t push it against the bone. If it’s a thin cut of meat (like a burger), you can even insert the thermometer sideways!
However, thermometers aren’t great for all protein sources, like ribs or flaky fish, so you’ll also want to practice your visual skills for evaluating meat and seafood doneness.
Translation: cut into the meat and take a peek.
We know, your food won’t look quite as pretty if there’s a big slice up the middle, but in the beginning, this is another fantastic way to evaluate whether your meat is actually ready. You’ll be able to gauge the perfect pinkness of a medium-rare burger, the glistening flake of a ready salmon fillet, and just the right shade of whiteness in the center of a chicken breast. Just remember that your meat, seafood, and eggs will continue to cook for a few minutes after you pull them off the heat, so grab that burger off the grill while it’s just this side of “too red”; by the time you let it rest, it’ll be perfect.
✪There are places in the book where we use ingredients like mustard, chicken broth, or hot sauce. Though we don’t specify this in the recipe itself, here is your friendly reminder to make sure all packaged foods used in your meals still fit the Whole30 guidelines. Read your labels! Make sure your hot sauce doesn’t include added sugar, your mustard doesn’t use wine or sulfites, and your chicken broth doesn’t include cornstarch or rice bran.
We give you some tips for finding Whole30-compliant condiments in the “Can I Have?” section starting here, but finding compliant broth may be more challenging. Luckily, it’s super easy to make yourself—just follow our instructions.
✪There will be nights when you get home from work or school tired and cranky, and the idea of making dinner will seem overwhelming. You will want to call for pizza. You will want to eat popcorn and wine for dinner. You will be tempted to give up.
You are not going out like that.
After flipping through this book, come up with three emergency meals you could prep in under 15 minutes, using ingredients you always have on hand. Something like Perfect Scrambled Eggs, hot sauce, avocado, and whatever leftover veggies you have on hand. Or maybe the No-Fuss Salmon Cakes—you’ll always have canned salmon and sweet potato in your pantry, and if you’re out of green onion, it’s not a big deal. Maybe it’s the Protein Salad always waiting in your fridge, with a side of Roasted Sweet Potato. Or maybe it’s a frozen shrimp and frozen vegetable stir-fry drizzled with our Asian Vinaigrette.
Now, write these meals down and stick the list on your refrigerator. Doesn’t that feel better already? The brain loves a plan. You feel stress when you’re faced with a situation that feels threatening and unfamiliar, with no plan to move through it. Writing down your emergency meals and knowing you’ll always have Good Food on hand is your plan. And now your brain can relax, and you don’t have to worry about bailing halfway through your Whole30 because you had a really bad day.
You’re welcome.
✪No, really. Cooking is fun! The kitchen is where you feel accomplished, get creative, be proud of the fact that you took these ingredients and made this meal and then got to eat it. Use our recipes as a jumping-off point, but if you notice that you like a lot more spice than we usually call for, feel like extra veggies make things more interesting, or want to road test your own creation based on what you’ve learned in our Kitchen Fundamentals section, go for it!
You might mess some meals up. (We sure have. Rarely was anything inedible, though.) Your meals may turn out ugly, but taste delicious—still winning in our book. Your kitchen may look like a bomb went off after making something relatively simple. Don’t stress, because it gets easier.
Remember, any new skill requires practice and dedication. You’ve got the dedication part down, because for the next 30 days, you’ve committed to eating real food three times a day. Now, just practice! Use the tips throughout this book (especially the clean-up section) to help you streamline the process, stick to the Kitchen Fundamentals section to build confidence, and recruit the help of family or friends to help make the chopping and washing go by faster.
Okay, we’ve talked enough here.
Time to eat!