Eating leftovers day after day can also get old. And having one or two ingredients left after preparing a dish feels like a waste as it creates extra work in figuring out what to do with those scraps. So, what are some tasty and easy-to-implement ways to use up those holiday leftovers to prevent food waste?

First Off, Wasting Food Is, Well… A Waste!

Food waste is a big issue in the US and other industrialized countries. According to the USDA, food waste is estimated to be 30–40% of the food supply in the United States, increasing by 25% during the holidays. And in China, household waste is 10% of all food purchased, with the largest category being fruits and vegetables.

That being said, there they are, those leftover food scraps staring you right in the face on your plate, or in your fridge. Maybe you took more food than you could eat at once. Or you didn’t end up using an entire fruit or vegetable for a recipe. So what do you do with those food scraps before they go bad? Don’t throw them away! You can save those scraps in a bin or airtight container in your refrigerator. Or check out our article How to Use Food Scraps for all the know-how on making the most of those bits and pieces.

Another tip to avoid food waste is to not leave perishable food out for longer than two hours. If you’re planning on having a buffet-style meal with people coming and going throughout the day, consider placing cold, perishable food over ice or hot food over warming plates to keep everything at the proper temperature.

Or, if your party is more of a sit-down dinner, consider taking perishable food out of the refrigerator just before your guests arrive and putting it away immediately after they leave. If friends or family members still have food on their plate, or you have a significant amount of leftovers, consider providing eco-friendly to-go containers.

Store Leftovers Efficiently

Properly storing food and consuming it within a safe time period is key when it comes to perishable foods. The USDA recommends consuming refrigerated leftovers within four days. And storage containers should be airtight. You’ll want to practice first in, first out for prepared food — use up what you have on hand first before opening something new.

Another option is to freeze vegetables or whole meals. Portioning them into individual serving containers makes it easier to grab and go as needed.

Leftover dry goods and pantry staples can continue to be stored in a cool dark place (like a cabinet or pantry) in airtight containers. Things like whole grains, legumes, and flour do have expiration dates. Therefore, make sure to store them properly, use them before they expire, or consider freezing them to extend shelf life.

Visit our blog posts Healthy Plant-Based Pantry Food Essentials for tips on setting up a plant-based pantry and 10 Easy Pantry Meals to Make Using Minimal Ingredients for ideas on how to use those staples.

Get Creative and Think Outside the Box

When it comes to reusing leftovers, allow your creativity to shine. Think beyond what they were intended for. For example, “dinner food” doesn’t only have to be eaten at dinner. A savory breakfast can be delicious, or you can split meals up into snacks.

For an additional bit of flavor and nutrition, add a plant-based sauce to veggie dishes. Cauliflower Squash Cheese Sauce is a house fave, or try one of these homemade sauces.

Have ingredients left over that you tend to only use during the holiday? Try googling (or Ecosia-ing if you like to plant trees while you search) the name of your leftover ingredients along with the word “recipe” and see what pops up. You just might find yourself a new favorite dish, like Green Bean Casserole or a twist on mashed potatoes!

Ideas for Using Up Holiday Leftovers

Watch the video below for more creative ways to use up leftovers and create new recipes.

Leftovers Recipes

Need fresh ideas on how to use up your holiday leftovers? Even if you don’t have leftover food scraps from the holidays, you can still give new life to batch-cooked items from your weekly meal prep. These highly adaptable and delicious plant-based leftovers recipes will spark new life with whatever you have on hand!

1. Harvest Grain Breakfast Bowl

If you love the idea of leftovers for breakfast, this is the recipe for you! Harvest Grain Breakfast Bowl is a wonderful way to use up leftover veggies you may have been holding on to as well as batch-cooked grains you may have on hand. Those leftover ingredients will come straight to life once you give them a try with this recipe’s creamy orange tahini dressing, crunchy pumpkin seeds, and sweet dried cranberries. The fall flavors add a pop of freshness and zing that makes even the simplest leftover ingredients into a winning recipe.

2. Energizing White Bean and Kale Soup

This soup has it all — lots of colors, tons of flavor, and the ability for customization based on whatever you have on hand. Perhaps you have some leftover collard greens from your family’s latest gathering. Or maybe you have leftover homemade vegetable broth from the food scraps you saved up during the week. Taking full advantage of any unused ingredients is a wonderful way to explore kitchen creativity, prevent food waste, and create a tasty meal, all at the same time. We think you’ll love this nourishing beans-and-greens leftover soup!

3. Green Bean Casserole

Casseroles are one of the easiest ways to use up any leftovers, especially if you have a leftover condiment or two. Just throw all the ingredients in a casserole dish and bake it in the oven. This Green Bean Casserole is seemingly indulgent but loaded with nutrition, and makes using up leftover mushroom gravy and cashew sour cream a breeze. Plus, the crispy (baked) onions on top take this recipe from good to great!

Eat Your Leftovers!

Don’t let leftover conundrums add to any holiday stress. With some proper planning and storage, a bit of curiosity, and a little creativity, you’ll be able to give those leftovers a second and third (tasty) life.

For starters, give some of the ideas in the video a try, or make one of the recipes provided. Let us know what you think. Or, if you have your own favorite way to use leftover dishes and ingredients, please share!

Tell us in the comments:

• What’s your favorite way to use up leftovers?
• What’s currently in your veggie scrap bin, and how will you use those veggies?
• What’s the first tip you’ll try to reduce food waste this holiday season?

Featured Image: iStock.com/KoliadzynskaIryna

Read Next:

• How to Cook: How to Keep Produce Fresh to Avoid Food Waste

The post How to Cook: What to Do with Holiday Leftovers appeared first on Food Revolution Network.

According to economists (who, it seems to me, are a lot better at explaining the past than predicting the future), this massive food inflation is actually caused by a perfect storm of rising demand and lower supply — both intensified by several calamities (like droughts, floods, wars, and knock-on effects of the COVID-19 pandemic) — as well as rising costs for fuel and fertilizer.

For perspective, food prices have typically been rising by about 2% a year for a long time. But from 2021 to 2022, they went up by an average of 11%. And while things seem to have calmed down a bit since then, it’s still easy to get sticker shock any time you visit a cash register.

Even if you’re not paying more outright, you might be paying more in subtle ways. The food industry has recently implemented a tactic known as “shrinkflation,” whereby they offer the same product for the same price — in a smaller quantity, thus avoiding the appearance of higher prices. (“Hey, this is one expensive cornflake!”)

So why exactly have food prices gone up so much? Why do some foods always seem to cost more (or less) than others? And what can you, as a consumer, do about it?

What Influences Food Prices

Did I mention that I’m not an economist? That might be good news here because I’m going to try to simplify the issue of food pricing. There are a few major factors that always influence food pricing. These include how much it costs to produce the food (including the cost of labor for everyone involved in growing and processing it), the cost of transportation and distribution, good old supply and demand, and global trade policies.

Why have food prices gone up so much in the last few years? Three factors stand out, in particular: the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and the intensifying climate crisis.

The COVID-19 Pandemic

Starting in 2020, the pandemic disrupted nearly every link in the food supply chain. The food processing sector was hit particularly hard, with COVID-19 outbreaks racing through the workforce, due to many people working in close, inadequately ventilated quarters. And the increase in worker turnover, in addition to new COVID protocols, further increased food production costs.

The same labor shortages affected the shipping industry, causing delays and increasing competition for limited shipping space. This led to rising transportation costs. It also increased the price of labor: In order to attract workers, companies had to increase wages, a cost they largely passed directly on to consumers.

As many people shifted their food spending from restaurants to grocery stores, suppliers could not keep up with the change in demand, resulting in massive food waste that effectively decreased supply.

And while 2020 is in the rearview mirror, there’s a funny thing about economics. When prices go up, they rarely come down again. So in some ways, we’re still feeling the effects of the price increases that started in 2020. And now, some additional factors have intensified the situation.

The War in Ukraine

Before the war, Russia and Ukraine were among the largest wheat producers in the world, together accounting for 30% of all exports — and a staggering 12% of all agricultural calories traded on earth. Both production and export have dropped dramatically due to the war.

Russia set up blockades of Ukrainian food exports in the Black Sea, stranding food in ports and creating global shortages. Western countries responded with sanctions against Russian grain exports, intensifying those shortages.

In addition to embargoes on food, the West has also implemented partial bans on Russian exports. These have included oil and gas, which have increased the energy costs associated with food production around the world.

Another blockaded product is fertilizer. As Russia is a major exporter of synthetic fertilizers, accounting for almost 30% of all exports globally, fertilizer prices have also been soaring — impacting farmers and, therefore, food prices.

Increasing Climate Chaos and Disasters

As temperatures continue to rise, crops are sustaining damage from excess heat. And as precipitation patterns change, droughts and flooding (sometimes alternating in the same place) also prevent crops from thriving. This can harm crops by eroding soil, depleting soil nutrients, and increasing runoff.

No farmer wants to try to coax crops out of the ground in conditions of extreme and prolonged drought. As more and more of the arable land on Earth suffers under multiyear drought, farmers are increasingly relying on groundwater, which they’re depleting at an alarming rate.

Additionally, rising temperatures increase pest populations and sometimes allow new pests to take up residence in regions that had previously been inhospitable for them. Temperature shifts can also cause a mismatch in pollination cycles, so the “good” bugs can’t do their jobs — leading to low pollination rates or delayed pollination.

One more disastrous effect of a warming planet is the danger to agricultural workers. More and more of them are suffering from the effects of extreme heat as they toil in parched fields. The National Institutes of Health tells us that farmworkers are 35 times more likely to die of heat exposure than workers in other industries. As conditions become less hospitable, it can be harder for farm owners to find the skilled laborers they need to get their fields planted and harvested. And dynamics in US immigration policy have contributed to a shortage of these workers.

As the planet continues to overheat, and as groundwater gets depleted and droughts and floods intensify, food prices are expected to continue to increase in the coming decades.

Why Do Some Foods Always Cost More (or Less)?

Governmental policies cause some foods to be more expensive than they would be otherwise — while others are made artificially cheaper. To see this in action, let’s look at a category of foods whose price is inflated (organic foods) and another whose price is deflated (grains and the products derived from grains).

Organic and Healthy Food Costs

Organic foods are more expensive than their “conventional” counterparts for several reasons. For one, organic food typically costs more to produce because the process is more labor-intensive than large-scale industrial agricultural methods.

Supply and demand play a role here as well. There’s a much smaller supply of organic food than nonorganic, even though demand for organic foods has more than doubled in the past 10 years. While this demand has caught the attention of some farmers who have decided to convert part or all of their operations to organic methods, this process takes time. In the meanwhile, prices continue to rise as demand grows, but supply lags.

There’s also a policy choice that makes organic food more expensive, which is that organic certification is costly, and getting that certification can be time-consuming. Organic farmers must keep extensive records and pay for organic certification, while farms that use synthetic pesticides don’t have to do either.

Another reason for organic’s higher prices has to do with the concept of “externalities” — that is, costs that arguably should be included in the market price but aren’t.

For example, what are the true costs of topsoil erosion, pesticide exposure for farmworkers and consumers, water and air pollution, or of the routine use of antibiotics in modern factory farms? If these were factored in, we might find that organic food would cost less, not more, than its conventional counterparts.

The fact is that organically grown foods tend to be better for environmental protection and carbon sequestration, deliver higher standards for animal welfare, and contribute to a safer and healthier food supply.

But consumers still have to pay more, and sometimes a lot more, to purchase foods that are grown organically.

Despite this, there are still some compelling advantages to go organic if you can afford to do so. And if you can’t, then you might want to soak your produce in a dab of baking soda to help rid it of pesticide exposure (for our article on what works best, click here).

Government Subsidies

The US government provides agricultural subsidies — monetary payments and other types of support — to farmers or agribusinesses. This ensures that farmers receive a minimum price for their crops while also incentivizing overproduction and inflated production costs. That way, subsidized foods and products made from them appear cheaper than nonsubsidized foods.

Generally, only the largest producers can take advantage of farm subsidies. According to a report from the Environmental Working Group, between 1995 and 2021, the top 10% of all US farm subsidy recipients received almost 80% of all subsidies, while the bottom 80% got less than 10%.

The five major “program” commodities are corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, and rice.

Most soybeans and corn are produced by massive monocrop farms rather than small family enterprises. A lot of this subsidized corn and soy is fed to livestock, which artificially lowers the price of animal-derived foods produced on factory farms. All told, the US federal government spends $38 billion every year subsidizing the meat and dairy industries. Without these subsidies, a pound of hamburger meat could cost $30, rather than the $5 price seen today. But the true cost plays out in its impact on our health, animals, and the environment — and in the form of taxes and expansion of the national debt.

Is it better in Europe? Well, in many ways, it’s not. According to a 2019 report from Greenpeace, nearly one-fifth of the EU’s entire budget goes to subsidizing the livestock industry.

In effect, these subsidies consistently decrease the price of things like factory-farmed meat, high-fructose corn syrup, white bread, and many of the additives in our food supply — creating a marketplace distortion that makes fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and other healthy staples more expensive in comparison.

To my eyes, it’s a bit like we’re all being fined for wearing our seatbelts. If we want to do the safer and more responsible thing, we have to pay extra.

What You Can Do About Rising Food Prices

If you’re feeling the pinch of rising food prices yourself, there are several strategies that can help you stay within your budget without sacrificing your family’s health.

Make a budget and shop from a list to avoid making impulse purchases while at the store. Prioritize nutrient-dense foods over calorie-dense ones. The latter may seem cheaper by the pound or the calorie, but in terms of what foods can do for you (or to you), good nutrition is more economical than impaired functioning or chronic disease. And buy and cook in bulk to save money and time.

Try to shop locally if you can to avoid incentivizing costly supply chains. If you’re in the US and use SNAP benefits, keep in mind that you can use them to shop for fresh produce at many farmers markets.

Also, buy organic when you can. If you are in a position financially where you can afford to spend more, you can “vote with your dollars” (or euros or pounds or rupees) to make the system fairer and more accessible to everyone. But if you can’t afford the organic price premium, then aim for non-GMO produce items and wash them thoroughly to reduce your pesticide exposure as much as possible.

If you have to choose which fruits and veggies to buy organic, check out the Environmental Working Group’s Dirty Dozen and Clean 15. Choose organic members of the Dirty Dozen club, and don’t sweat nonorganic Clean 15 items.

Frozen fruits and vegetables can sometimes be more affordable than fresh ones, and they contain abundant nutrition.

And reducing your consumption of animal products can not only help feed the world’s population because we aren’t cycling our crops through animals (a process that wastes at least 9 out of every 10 calories, depending on the crop and the animal eating it), but it can also lead to reductions in costly greenhouse gas emissions, too. Plus, beans tend to be a lot less costly than beef (to animals, the environment, and your wallet, too).

Food Pricing Is Complex, But Healthy Eating Shouldn’t Be

The recent surge in food prices has highlighted the intricate web of factors influencing the cost of our food. From labor shortages and technology costs to climate change and war, the forces at play are vast and interconnected.

But there are ways to navigate these challenging times. By adopting conscious strategies, we can mitigate the impact of rising food prices on our wallets and well-being. Through awareness and mindful decision-making, we can not only do right for our health, but we can also contribute to a more healthy, sustainable, and equitable food system.

Tell us in the comments:

• What foods that you buy frequently have gone up the most in price recently?
• Have you made any changes or substitutions because of food price inflation?
• Which cost-saving strategies could you try?

Featured Image: iStock.com/Ilija Erceg

Read Next:

• A Guide to Going Plant-Based: What to Eat, Benefits, and How to Succeed
• 7 Healthy Recipes for Eating Plant-Based on a Budget

The post The Price of Food: What’s Making Food So Expensive & What You Can Do About It appeared first on Food Revolution Network.

Vegetable broth is a cornerstone in cooking and is used in a variety of dishes (beyond soup!) from Thai to Italian to Japanese cuisine. It serves as the backbone of countless recipes, and, while vegetable broth can easily be made at home, many people rely on store-bought versions.

But making your own vegetable broth is a more nutritious, less wasteful, and more eco-friendly option than store-bought. The old adage “Waste not, want not” comes into play when making vegetable broth at home.

In this article’s included video, you’ll learn step-by-step how to make your own vegetable broth with an emphasis on utilizing vegetable scraps to minimize waste while maximizing nutrition and flavor.

Why Make Your Own Vegetable Broth

Optimize Nutrition

Because you get to select the ingredients that go into your homemade vegetable broth, it’s oftentimes more nutritious than broth you can purchase from the store. For example, many store-bought vegetable broth brands include a combination of carrot, celery, and allium vegetables (like onions, leeks, and garlic) — also known as mirepoix in French cooking — and maybe mushrooms. Rarely do they include much more vegetable variety than that.

Many components of various vegetables are also completely left out of store-bought vegetable broth. These scraps that are often thrown away are just as nutritious or, in some cases, even more nutritious, than the parts we are accustomed to consuming.

For example, when you think of broccoli you probably think of the florets. But did you know that broccoli leaves are higher in carotenoids, chlorophyll, vitamins E and K, phenolic content, and antioxidant activity compared to the florets? Broccoli leaves are, in their own right, true superfoods, and it would be sad to let them go to waste. Instead, toss them into your soups or stews, and add them to your homemade veggie stock!

Some broth brands may also add cane sugar or dextrose (another name for sugar), natural flavors, preservatives, and loads of sodium unless you choose an unsalted or low-sodium version. By making your own vegetable broth, you have the power to choose what goes into your soup and what stays out of it.

Be Kinder to the Planet

One of my personal favorite things to do when it comes to creating less kitchen waste is to keep a catchall bin in the fridge where all my food scraps live. If a recipe calls for ½ cup of carrots and a half carrot remains, it goes into the food scrap bin (I know, I know — I could easily turn this carrot into a snack by munching on it. But, to be honest, I just don’t love the flavor of raw carrots!). By the end of the week, the bin may be full of carrots, celery pieces, onion skin, and more — basically, enough scraps to make a delicious and nutritious broth.

You can either simmer the vegetables in water then strain them, or place the vegetables in a food processor and blend until smooth (try this method by making our Veggie Scrap Bouillon recipe). The former version will leave you with a nutrient-dense broth, but you’ll still have the sopping-wet vegetable scraps left. If you’d like to take an extra step toward a zero-waste kitchen, consider composting those scraps.

Also, consider all of the manufacturing that goes into making store-bought broth. Not only are you avoiding single-use containers and plastic packaging, but you’re also avoiding a big part of the carbon footprint that comes from sourcing, packaging, and transporting the vegetables and final product across the country to get to your grocery store.

Save Money

Making your own broth is cost-effective, too, especially when using vegetable scraps. Simply put, your produce purchases go much further when you use all veggie components.

Unfortunately, vegetable broth brands that contain carefully curated organic ingredients without preservatives and other unwanted ingredients are often more expensive. But when you make your own broth, there’s no need to spend on expensive organic or specialty broths.

Personalize and Customize

Finally, making your own broth at home allows you to personalize the flavors. Want umami flavors? Add mushrooms. Prefer naturally salty? Include celery. Looking for a broth to support your immune system? Add a variety of veggies, like leeks, mushrooms, and carrots. If you are making an Asian dish, consider adding ginger or lemongrass to the stock.

And whatever vegetable broth you create can be used in a wide range of recipes, from soups and stews to savory grains and beyond.

What You’ll Learn in Our “How to Make Vegetable Broth” Video

In the video below, you’ll learn:

• What kinds of vegetables and scraps can be used to make broth
• How to prepare the vegetables
• Various cooking methods, including stovetop, slow cooker, and pressure cooker
• How to strain and store your broth

I think you’ll find these methods simple and easily adapted to fit any kitchen!

Homemade Veggie Broth Recipes

Get ready to have some nourishing, flavorful fun in the kitchen with these wholesome vegetable broth recipes. Each recipe is simple to make, highly adaptable, and can be ready in under 30 minutes. Tap into your creative side and experiment with the ingredients that speak to you. From soups to stews to casseroles, or rice dishes, there’s no limit to what you can cook up with made-from-scratch vegetable broth!

1. Homemade Vegetable Bouillon

Preparing a nourishing homemade vegetable broth means you save on cost, eliminate packaging, and can even get in some fiber that’s often sorely lacking in store-bought broth. Rather than boiling and then simmering vegetable scraps (which is another way to make homemade broth), in this recipe, you’ll use the entire veggie by adding it to your food processor to make a bouillon. Within minutes you’ll have a deeply flavorful and nutrient-dense bouillon cube that is ready to go when you need to prepare your favorite homemade veggie soup!

2. Savory Mushroom Broth

One of the benefits of making homemade broth is that you get to decide the nutritional value, flavor profile, and ingredients! Savory Mushroom Broth is an intensely flavored umami-rich broth that is brimming with antioxidants, packed with B vitamins, and high in minerals such as selenium, potassium, and copper. What’s more, it makes a delightful base for your favorite soup, stew, casserole, or side dish. And because of all the intense umami flavor this broth imparts, you’ll be finding plenty of ways to use it!

3. Umami Vegan Dashi

Pull out the Instant Pot and get ready to prepare this profoundly flavorful and highly nourishing Umami Vegan Dashi in minutes! Prepping homemade broth in the Instant Pot not only helps get it done quickly, but thanks to the pressure cooking, the flavors become concentrated as if the broth had been simmering away for hours. By taking advantage of the Instant Pot’s magic, we’ve created an ultra-nourishing and mineral-rich broth using green onion, shiitake mushrooms, and seaweed. Together with the miso paste, this dashi makes a delicious and soothing stock that’s great for your health and your taste buds.

Cook Up a Batch of Broth

Vegetable broth’s versatility in flavoring a variety of dishes from around the world makes it a plant-based pantry essential. And making your own vegetable broth can be an empowering activity that allows you to take charge of your health and make a positive impact on the planet. By creating a broth from scratch (or following one of the included recipes), you can nourish your body, prevent food waste, and take part in a sustainable cooking practice.

Now that you’ve learned the basics of how to make vegetable broth, explore new culinary heights by cooking with it and coming up with your own DIY broth recipes.

Tell us in the comments:

• Have you ever made vegetable broth from scratch?

• What did you learn from the video?

• Which veggie broth recipe will you try next?

Featured Image: iStock.com/beats3

Read Next:

• How to Cook: Healthy Plant-Based Pantry Food Essentials
• How to Cook Beans and Lentils from Scratch

The post How to Cook: How to Make Homemade Vegetable Broth appeared first on Food Revolution Network.

If wasted food is not composted, it ends up in a landfill. There it releases the greenhouse gas methane, which is 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide. What’s more, the bacteria formed from the decay of food in landfills can run off into freshwater, where they form toxic algae blooms that threaten humans, fish, and entire ecosystems. 

What’s shocking is that in the United States alone, 30–40% of fresh produce ends up in the trash due to spoilage. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), approximately 17% of this is happening in restaurants and American households. And, not just to call out the US — food waste is a major issue around the world.

Here’s another shocking statistic: The food that is wasted could feed 1.26 billion hungry people worldwide — every year. 

Given that the amount of wasted food can put a dent in your wallet, contribute to climate change, contaminate freshwater, and potentially feed hungry people, it’s important to consider ways of keeping produce fresh and using up food before it becomes inedible.

How to Keep Produce Fresh in the Fridge

As you watch the accompanying video, you’ll get several tips on how to preserve fresh fruits and vegetables in the refrigerator. 

But one of the most effective tips in keeping produce fresh for longer is to separate out ethylene gas-producing fruits and vegetables. Ethylene-producing produce, like apples and peaches, can accelerate ripening and lead to spoilage of nearby produce. So unless you want to ripen something quickly, store these produce items in the crisper drawer of your refrigerator either in a designated produce bag or paper bag to keep them separate. 

A note about your crisper drawer — it’s designed to have just enough humidity and air circulation to prevent things from going limp and losing moisture. Some refrigerators may have drawers that allow you to adjust the humidity or temperature separately. But in general, the rule is vegetables prefer high humidity, and fruit prefer low humidity.

The take-home message? Use your crisper drawer for what it’s made for — produce storage (not for storing your plant-based cheese or leftover soup!). 

While we’re on the topic of moisture, it’s a tricky thing when it comes to storing your produce. Somewhat like Goldilocks and the Three Bears — you want just the right amount of moisture to prevent produce from drying up, but not too much to cause it to get slimy and moldy. 

First and foremost, ensure that your produce is completely dry before storing it in the refrigerator. One way to ensure this is to wash fruits and vegetables just before use rather than as soon as you get them. 

Also, set your refrigerator to the appropriate temperature, usually between 33-40°F (0-4°C), to keep your food from spoiling. While this may be obvious, it’s worth checking the temperature you’re refrigerating at (go ahead, I’ll wait while you check!). 

For more on food storage, visit our article, Food Storage & Preservation: Why It Matters and How to Do It Properly. 

How to Keep Produce Fresh on the Counter

Root veggies (like potatoes, carrots, beets, and turnips) and certain fruits (like bananas, tomatoes, avocados, and melons) do best when stored on the countertop at room temperature. You’ll want to ensure there’s good airflow to prevent moisture buildup, which can lead to mold and spoilage. 

And while some fruits like tomatoes benefit from a little sunlight to ripen, prolonged exposure to direct sunlight can cause them to spoil quickly. Keep countertop produce away from sunlight. Root veggies also do best when stored in a cool, dark area on the counter, or in a cupboard or root cellar. 

Finally, keep those ethylene producers separate from produce that is ethylene sensitive (I’m looking at you, onions and sweet potatoes!), which will prevent accelerated ripening and help extend shelf life.

Further Tips on Avoiding Food Waste

Aside from proper food storage, there are a number of ways you can reduce food waste in the kitchen, including making use of excess produce, produce about to spoil, or food scraps.

Watch the video below for 11 tips on how to store your produce, keep it fresh, and use it up.

Recipes to Use Up Produce

Sometimes figuring out what will last the longest can feel like a full-time job. But if you’re struggling to keep up with the freshness of the fruit and vegetables you bring home from the market, these recipes can easily help you figure out what to eat now and what to eat later. These tasty, minimal-waste recipes are a great way to help you prepare your ingredients ahead of time and encourage creative utilization during peak freshness and nutrition. What’s more, if you are a fan of batch cooking, each of these recipes offers ideas for how to extend the life of your produce!  

1. Slow Cooker Apple Butter

Slow Cooker Apple Butter is a great way to use up any surplus of apples. Depending on how you cut the apples, the only items left behind are the seeds and the stems. Once the apples have been stewing, they transform into a silky smooth butter that makes a wholesome addition to your favorite bowl of oats, a topping for breakfast hotcakes, or as a sweet dipping sauce for a delicious fruit board. What’s more, if you prepare this recipe in large batches, you can prolong the usability of your apples by freezing the apple butter for up to three months. 

2. The Shine Brightly Salad

The main ingredients in this salad are a few common produce items that often go to waste. So this salad was created to allow you to experience the textures and unique qualities that these plant-based foods have to offer, especially when combined. With proper preparation and storage, you can let the full flavor and nutrition of spinach, blueberries, red onion, and toasted sunflower seeds shine. Then, once you’re finished eating the Shine Brightly Salad, don’t be surprised if you’re also shining from the inside out!

3. Creamy Mushroom Soup with Chickpeas and Kale

Creamy Mushroom Soup with Chickpeas and Kale is a super cozy bowl of nourishing plants that provides nourishment in more ways than one. In addition to the soup’s mouthwatering flavors from mushrooms, chickpeas, kale, and cashews, it does double duty in the no-waste department. Whether your produce is on the verge of decline or you want to make it completely zero waste, toss in all the veggies (plus stems — just be sure to chop them finely) and enjoy a savory, nourishing, and comforting meal that’s good for you and the planet!

Don’t Let Produce Go to Waste

To avoid food waste, save money, preserve nutrition and flavor, and support the health of the planet, you may want to adjust the way you store fresh produce. Having a better understanding of which fruits and vegetables should be stored in the refrigerator and which thrive best on the counter — and which to store together or separately — can also minimize spoilage and maximize the nutritional value of fresh produce. 

Using up fresh produce before it goes bad and reusing food scraps can also further decrease contributions to worldwide food waste. By implementing these simple yet effective food storage tips, you can play your part in reducing food waste and creating a more sustainable food system.

Tell us in the comments:

• How do you store your produce?

• Which one of the 11 tips to reduce food waste from the video will you try first?

• What’s your favorite way to use up produce that’s nearing its end?

Featured Image: iStock.com/VioletaStoimenova

Read Next:

• How To Reduce Food Waste
• How to Use Food Scraps to Reduce Kitchen Waste

The post How to Cook: How to Keep Produce Fresh to Avoid Food Waste appeared first on Food Revolution Network.

Deciphering recipe terminology, like “prep ahead” or “divided,” can mean the difference between stress and confusion in the kitchen versus cooking with ease and efficiency.

Without a clear understanding of the nuances of recipe language, it can be intimidating to attempt a recipe, especially if the cuisine is new to you.

Whether you’re curious about plant-based eating or have already gotten your feet wet a bit, understanding the elements of a recipe, including measurements and cooking techniques, will help you successfully create memorable meals.

In this article and video, we’ll explore the art of reading a recipe and crafting culinary masterpieces in your own kitchen.

Why Follow a Recipe?

You may be wondering, what’s the big deal? Do you even need to follow a recipe to make something great? Technically, no. But if you’re inexperienced in the kitchen and have never really attempted to create something new, there are a number of reasons why following a recipe is beneficial.

Achieve Consistency in the Kitchen

A good recipe is tried-and-true, meaning it’s been tested and turns out pretty consistently every time you make it. Following a recipe is a more reliable method for cooking than just winging it and hoping the flavor combinations and measurements you’ve included will work together.

When reading a recipe, you can follow the measurements, instructions, and cooking times to get the end result that the recipe developer intended. This is especially important when faced with unfamiliar ingredients or new culinary techniques. Although your creation may not always look as good as the mouthwatering photo in the cookbook or food blog, it will hopefully taste just as good.

Learn By Doing

“For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.”

Aristotle

Recipes can be valuable learning tools, whether you’re new to the kitchen or an experienced cook. They provide guidance on cooking techniques, ingredient combinations, and flavor profiles.

If you stumble upon an enticing recipe that has new-to-you ingredients or unfamiliar cooking techniques, go for it! Consider expanding your culinary knowledge and strengthening your kitchen confidence by fully embracing and making the recipe.

Because no matter the outcome of a recipe, there’s always room for some takeaway wisdom.

Sometimes, you’ll have recipes that look just like the photo and taste exactly how you expected, and sometimes you’ll have recipes that look like you spun them through a washing machine a few times. Cooking mistakes happen to the best of us (even seasoned recipe developers!). The key is learning from the experience and understanding what you can do differently next time. Or relish in the fact that you tried, and move on to the next dish!

Manage Your Time and Resources

Following a recipe can also help you determine whether a dish is suitable for your lifestyle.

Take a look at the preparation and cooking time in a recipe. If you have two full-time jobs, a family of four, and five foster dogs, a recipe with over an hour of prep or cooking time may not be suited to you. Instead, you may want to opt for recipes that use simple ingredients and require little preparation.

Recipes also often have a list of tools or equipment needed to replicate a dish. Obviously, if a recipe calls for an air fryer, and you don’t own one, you may want to turn the page or scroll to the next recipe. Although sometimes substitutions may work, they may take longer to do the same job.

By assessing the required time and resources to cook something, you’ll set yourself up for success and a stress-free experience in the kitchen.

What’s in a Recipe?

Now that you understand why following a recipe is important, let’s take a closer look at each recipe component.

• Recipe Name: The recipe name will often give you an indication of its origins, flavor, and main ingredients.
• Prep Time: The time it takes to prepare ingredients before cooking.
• Cook Time: The time it takes to cook ingredients.
• Serving Size or Yield: Lets you know how much a recipe makes and for how many people. It can help determine whether you need to halve the ingredient list if you’re cooking for one or double the ingredients if you’re feeding a family of six.
• Ingredients and Measurements: What you need to grab from the grocery store to make a recipe and which measuring utensils you’ll need. (Tip: Before making your ingredient shopping list, check what’s lurking in the fridge that can be used in your dish!)

Looking to convert a digital recipe from metric to standard or standard to metric? Try a recipe converter site like Whisk or Cooking Recipe Converter.

• Here’s a common list of cooking measurements:
  • dash – less than ⅛ teaspoon
  • pinch – 1/16 teaspoon
  • scant – when a recipe calls for a measurement, don’t use the full measurement. Instead, use slightly less than the given amount.
  • tsp – teaspoon
  • tbsp – tablespoon
  • c – cup
  • pt – pint
  • qt – quart
  • oz – ounce
  • lb – pound
  • doz – dozen
  • ml – milliliter
  • l – liter
  • g – gram
  • min – minute
  • hr – hour

• Instructions or Directions: Step-by-step details on how to create the recipe. It’s always good to give the instructions one good read before you start the recipe. See our How to Cook: Where to Start in the Kitchen article for more details around that. You’ll also learn what cooking methods are needed, as well as the equipment and cooking utensils you’ll need by reading the instructions.
• Chef Notes: If there are additional notes, make sure to read those as well. There may be ingredient substitutions that work better for you or suggested equipment that can be used in place of what’s listed in the instructions (for example, an immersion blender can oftentimes be used in place of a blender).
• Nutrition Information: Finally, if you follow a particular nutrition plan, you may want to see if nutritional information accompanies the recipe to make sure it’s a good fit for you and your family.

How to Read a Recipe Video: What You’ll Learn

Now, let’s put it all together. Watch the video below to learn:

• Why you should always read recipes all the way through first
• How to plan and prep your ingredients
• Whether to follow measurements provided or adjust
• Why you should pay attention to cooking times and take notes on how a recipe turned out

Recipes to Try Your Hand At

Now that you (hopefully!) have a better understanding of how to read a recipe and what you can expect when following a recipe, it’s time to put it into practice!

1. Cinnamon Oat Bars

Cinnamon Oat Bars are a harmonious blend of wholesome fiber, healthy fats, and plant-based protein. These breakfast bars are designed to help you feel energized and satiated and, most importantly, a pro at following a recipe! Although this recipe may seem a bit involved, the joy you’ll feel once you bite into your first homemade oat bar is priceless!

2. Creamy Mushroom Soup with Chickpeas and Kale

Just 10 easy steps, roughly 10 ingredients, and only 30 minutes stand between you and a scrumptious bowl of Creamy Mushroom Soup with Chickpeas and Kale. Umami-rich mushrooms, pungent onions, and aromatic garlic perfectly flavor the soup base, while mineral-rich kale and protein-rich chickpeas add wonderful texture, flavor, and nutrients. The key to success with this recipe is making sure all the ingredients are prepped and ready to go before you begin! (Mise en place, anyone?)

3. Moroccan Bulgur Bowl with Savory Orange Dressing

Sweet, savory, chewy, crunchy, and delicious — Moroccan Bulgur Bowl with Savory Orange Dressing hits almost every flavor profile while delivering superb plant-based nutrition! Not only will you learn to expertly combine the five tastes, you’ll also learn how to prepare ingredients that may be less familiar to you. Take the leap! We promise this recipe will not disappoint!

Become a Pro at Reading Recipes!

If you’re an aspiring cook, reading a recipe is a fundamental skill for recreating appetizing dishes in your own kitchen. And if you’re a seasoned cook, understanding the language of recipes can assist you in experimenting with new flavors and help to expand your culinary repertoire.

By familiarizing yourself with the various elements of a recipe, interpreting measurements accurately, and grasping cooking techniques and preparation methods, you can confidently approach any recipe with ease. And with practice and experience, you’ll become a skilled recipe reader, able to adapt and customize just about any plant-based recipe to suit your preferences.

Tell us in the comments:

• What recipe element catches your eye first (photo, ingredients, name, type of cuisine)?

• What surprised you in learning why it’s important to follow a recipe?

• Which recipe will you try first?

Featured Image: iStock.com/kupicoo

Read Next:

• How to Cook: Knife Skills, Mise en Place, & Cooking Without Oil

The post How to Cook: How to Read a Recipe appeared first on Food Revolution Network.

Making dietary changes (or any change for that matter!) comes with a bit of a learning curve and adjustment period. Change isn’t always easy, but when it’s for your betterment, it’s typically worth it in the long run. Plus, it often presents an opportunity for learning and growth.

While you may have many burning questions about plant-based eating, the intention of this article is to provide a variety of tips and tricks on how to simply get started cooking. By the time you’re done with this article, you will hopefully feel confident enough to create delicious and nutritious plant-based meals on a regular basis.

Watch the how-to video below to find out the 10 tips (plus one bonus tip!) on how to start cooking and becoming a better plant-based chef. And at the end of this article, you’ll even get three delicious recipes to choose from in order to get your plant-based recipe library going.

Now let’s get started!

Getting Started Cooking and Preparing Plant-Based Meals

First and foremost, if creating plant-based dishes is a goal for you, try to treat it as a fun experience. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed when trying new things. But letting go of expectations can help to ease the pressure. Focus on progress over perfection.

Even the most experienced plant-based recipe creators can have a disaster in the kitchen every so often (some more than others… I’m speaking from experience here!). But there are two big things that help with kitchen mess-ups — having a compost bin handy and treating each mess-up as a learning experience.

Using Recipes as a Guide

Once you’ve adjusted your mindset to allow for mistakes, you’ll also need to figure out what exactly to cook. And where will you get the recipe from?

Consider your favorite type of cuisine and start there. Maybe it’s Asian flavors or Italian seasonings that you love. Look for cookbooks and recipes that incorporate these flavors.

Or perhaps you already have a few recipes that you know and love but are traditionally made with animal products. Can you find a plant-based version of that recipe online or in a cookbook?

For those of you preparing meals for the entire family, think about what meals you enjoy most together (pizza, tacos, and pasta ring as tried-and-true favorites for many!) and try creating plant-based versions of these.

You may encounter foods that are new to you, such as tofu or tempeh, or specific flavor profiles that may take a little time and practice to perfect. This is where investing in a few good plant-based cookbooks or bookmarking a few plant-based recipe sites will be super helpful.

Through tried and tested recipes, you can get guidance on things like how to make tofu crispy or how to blend just the right amount of seasonings to create a restaurant-worthy Indian dish. And as you keep practicing, you’ll start to become a plant-based chef in your own right.

Keeping Your Kitchen Stocked

Once you start creating a few plant-based recipes, you’ll notice that your cabinets and fridge naturally start to fill up with plant-based foods (that’s the goal!).

You may also want to stock your pantry on a regular basis so that you’re equipped with staples like legumes, whole grains, and condiments.

Visit our How to Cook: Healthy Plant-Based Pantry Essentials article to find out how to set up a plant-based pantry.

Try to create some space in your schedule to plan a few meals, shop for ingredients, and prep meals for the week ahead.

It may take a little investment in time and energy at first, but the more you get used to shopping and cooking this way, the more efficient and relaxed you’ll be in the kitchen.

Navigating Your Kitchen

Another essential step to getting started in the kitchen is making sure you have the right tools — and knowing where everything is.

You may want to do an inventory of your existing kitchen tools and appliances to see what you have on hand and what you might need. A good chef’s knife, wood cutting board, and perhaps a food processor or blender are all recommended starting points. If you’d like further guidance on kitchen tools, visit our guide on 27 Useful Kitchen Tools (+3 Bonus Tools) to Make Cooking Easier.

In addition to tools, you’ll also want to make sure you have a dedicated prep station to chop food and organize your mise en place. Keeping this space clean will also help to keep your mind clear for a stress-free cooking experience.

It’s also a good idea to arrange your kitchen in a way that makes sense for preparing food. Doing so will save you time and keep you organized. For example, keep pots and pans near the stove and knives and measuring cups easily accessible to your prep station.

It also doesn’t hurt to have some beautifully photographed plant-based cookbooks on your countertops for a boost of inspiration when you need it!

Tips on How to Start Cooking Plant-Based Meals

Watch the video below to get 10 tips (and one bonus tip!) to help you get started in the kitchen, have fun, and stay inspired when creating plant-based recipes.

Recipes to Help Get You Started

No kitchen intimidation here! You’ll be having fun in the kitchen in no time thanks to these simple, nourishing, and vibrant plant-based recipes. Each one of these recipes helps you to develop a different set of skills in the kitchen. From chopping to sautéing to blending and beyond, you’ll be surprised at what you can create. With a bit of practice and patience, you’ll be a master of the cutting board and a champion of the stove (or whatever heating apparatus you use) sooner than you think!

1. Kale Walnut Basil Pesto

You’ll feel like a master in the kitchen in no time with this deliciously fresh and herby pesto sauce! Kale Walnut Basil Pesto is one of those versatile recipes that looks and tastes like it’s a complicated culinary masterpiece. But in reality, it’s made with seven simple ingredients, is ready in 10 minutes, and can add a bit of pizzazz and nutrition to a variety of meals (check out the Chef’s Notes for ideas!).

2. One-Pot Butter Bean Soup

Focusing on dishes that only require one pot is a great kitchen hack when you are looking to save time and serve a meal that comes together quickly. With only a 15-minute preparation time and less than 30 minutes of cooking time, all you have to do is chop, stir, simmer, and serve! One-pot meals are an easy and delightful way to hone your kitchen skills while serving nourishing and tasty meals that you can be proud of!

3. Simple Kung Pao Tofu and Broccoli

Now that you have a few of the basics down and your pantry is starting to look like a carnival of plant-based foods, perhaps it’s time to take a leap and add a few more ingredients into the mix. Simple Kung Pao Tofu and Broccoli is exactly as the name suggests — simple and restaurant-worthy! Don’t let the list of ingredients seem overwhelming (you’ve been practicing, remember?). The trick to making it a quick meal is having the rice ready to go and pressing the tofu ahead of time. The rest is as easy as (plant-based) pie — or, in this case, stir-fry!

Practice Makes Progress

We get it; cooking can be a challenge. Not only do you have to plan and find the time to prep and cook the meal, but you also have to make it tasty — that’s a big venture! It may feel daunting at times, not to mention time-consuming. Whether plant-based cooking is new to you or you’re a plant-powered aficionado, cooking can be a challenge.

But whenever you’re feeling overwhelmed, take a moment to think about why you want to eat plant-based in the first place. And try adjusting your mindset from one of defeat to one of exploration.

Feel free to visit our How to Cook blog series anytime you need a little encouragement and support. Happy cooking!

Tell us in the comments:

• What is your mindset like when you try something new?

• Which plant-based meal will you create first?

• What’s one favorite family meal that is traditionally made with meat or dairy that you’d like to make with plants?

Featured Image: iStock.com/Wavebreakmedia

Read Next:

• A Guide to Going Plant-Based: What to Eat, Benefits, and How to Succeed
• 5 Common Mistakes Plant-Based Eaters Make and How to Avoid Them

The post How to Cook: Where to Start in the Kitchen appeared first on Food Revolution Network.

Side note: After reciting the rhyme to my husband, he told me I had it all wrong and the rhyme goes like this: “Beans, beans, the magical fruit, the more you eat, the more you toot.” This was new to me! Maybe we need to take a poll on which is the correct rendition, but my argument is that legumes (the umbrella name that includes beans, peas, and lentils) are not fruit!

What I didn’t know, and would learn later in my adult life, was that beans are like a magical food that are a staple in many cultures around the world. In fact, beans are one of the common foods consumed by people who live in the Blue Zones, where longevity and quality of life rank the highest in the world. What’s fascinating is the variety of beans consumed and how they’re prepared in each country. For example, centenarians in Okinawa, Japan, enjoy stir-fries with soybeans or mung bean sprouts; folks in Nicoya, Costa Rica, love a hearty black beans and rice dish; and those in Sardinia, Italy, thrive on lentils, garbanzo beans, and white beans mixed into soups and salads.

Why Beans Get a Bad Reputation

There are certain groups in the health and wellness space that believe some compounds in beans, namely lectins and phytates, are poisonous. They’ve deemed them “antinutrients” because they bind essential minerals, like calcium, iron, and zinc, making these nutrients less available to us, and may also cause gastrointestinal discomfort. It’s true that eating raw beans may wreak havoc on your belly. However, when beans are soaked and cooked properly, a majority, if not all, of lectins and phytates are destroyed, making beans digestible with ease. What’s more, these “antinutrients” (we really need a new term for them) may offer protection against heart disease and cancer. In fact, lectins have been studied in clinical trials as an anticancer treatment.

Why Learn to Cook Beans & Other Legumes from Scratch?

At this point, you may want to open the canned beans sitting in your pantry and Google “chickpea recipes,” so you can make dinner tonight. That’s fantastic! However, I’d be remiss if I didn’t share the beauty of making beans from scratch.

Full disclosure: I was a canned bean girl myself for a very long time — until I tried chickpeas cooked in an Instant Pot. That was when I discovered that cooking beans from scratch is a game changer when it comes to texture and flavor.

Here are seven reasons to consider cooking beans from scratch, whether you’re a current canned bean lover, wannabe bean lover, or seasoned bean fanatic.

1. Eating freshly cooked beans is delightful. Beans cooked in a pressure cooker are a creamy, buttery, melt-in-your-mouth experience that is not to be missed. Don’t have a pressure cooker? No problem! Soaking and cooking beans on the stovetop can give you that same blissful bean-y experience (check out our How to Cook Beans Guide).
2. Cooking beans from scratch may result in more nutrition. Nutrients may be lost during the processing of canning beans. Compared to canned beans, dried beans have been found to have more protein, fiber, iron, potassium, and magnesium — and less sodium.
3. Cooking beans from dried is more economical. According to The Bean Institute, dried beans cost 15 cents a serving, store-brand canned beans cost 34 cents a serving, and national brands cost 48 cents a serving. These cents add up when you’re feeding beans to a family of four daily.
4. Cooking beans from scratch may help with tolerance. When you cook beans on the stovetop or in a pressure cooker, you can control the texture. This means that you, or people around you, won’t have a reason to recite the fun little bean rhyme.
5. Adding onions, garlic, or spices (the sky’s the limit!) during the cooking process creates the most flavorful bean, veggie, and spices combinations!
6. Avoiding cans can decrease your footprint on the planet. Purchasing dried beans in bulk creates less waste and uses fewer manufacturing processes, resulting in a smaller food-related environmental footprint.
7. Eliminating cans also eliminates any chemicals (like BPA) that might be found in the can. Keeping chemicals off your plate is important for health.

What You’ll Learn in the Video on Cooking Beans

In the video below you’ll learn how to cook three types of common beans or legumes:

• Lentils — cook lentils on the stovetop (no soaking required!)
• Chickpeas — soak then pressure cook, resulting in the creamiest chickpeas
• Black beans — learn how to make flavorful refried beans from your home-cooked black beans*

*Please refer to our How to Cook Beans Guide for directions on cooking black beans from scratch.

3 Legume Recipes You Can Cook from Scratch

Creating these three from-scratch legume recipes is simply a delight thanks to their bold flavors and creamy, buttery, melt-in-your-mouth textures. The bountiful benefits of these nourishing plant ingredients and the satisfaction of making your own from-scratch pot of beans are too good to pass up!

1. Spicy Spinach Lentil Soup

When it comes to a legume recipe that showcases lentils in all of their glory, this one is it! Spicy Spinach Lentil Soup offers versatility, lots of flavor, and plenty of wholesome nutrition. There is so much to love about this soup, you’ll find yourself making it again and again.

2. Buttery Instant Pot Rosemary and Garlic Chickpeas

Perfectly tender Buttery Instant Pot Rosemary and Garlic Chickpeas are one of those have-on-hand-at-all-times recipes — they’re that good. With savory garlic and herb-y rosemary added to the mix, you’ve got a delectable pot of nourishing chickpeas that is simply irresistible!

3. Pressure Cooker Monday Red Beans and Rice

A few minutes of prep is all you need to get a wholesome pot of homemade beans (and rice!) on your table with ease. We love a good set-and-forget-it recipe, and you will, too, after preparing these tasty Pressure Cooker Monday Red Beans and Rice. Don’t have a pressure cooker? Check out the Chef’s Notes for instructions on how to easily prepare these on the stovetop!

Get Cooking!

No matter how you enjoy beans — canned, frozen, or cooked from scratch — you’re fostering health for you, your family, and the planet, especially when your luscious legumes replace meat. Beans, peas, and lentils can easily supplant meat in satisfying and delicious veggie burgers, added to yummy tacos, tossed into a salad, used as a chili base, or blended into a veggie dip — and that’s just for starters! Plus, as the centenarians in the Blue Zones demonstrate, they deserve to be a staple in everyone’s diet.

Tell us in the comments:

• Which type of bean will you try to cook from scratch?
• Share your experience with canned beans vs cooked from scratch.
• Tell us how you love to eat beans!

Featured Image: iStock.com/FG Trade

Read Next:

• How to Cook Whole Grains
• How to Cook: Healthy Plant-Based Pantry Food Essentials

The post How to Cook Beans and Lentils from Scratch appeared first on Food Revolution Network.

According to Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens, that’s pretty much the story of the origin of agriculture, specifically the domestication of grains, which for the last few millennia have been the principal source of human calories. These days, our species gets about 50% of all our calories directly from grains such as wheat, corn, and rice — and much more indirectly through livestock that get fed huge quantities of grain.

The Paleo movement blames the domestication of grains and their addition to our diets for much of our current health woes. To be truly healthy, they believe, we must cut way back on all “carbs” and return to our “natural” hunter-gatherer diets of meat and undomesticated plants.

And there’s some truth in there. You might even forgive me for the intentional pun of identifying a “grain” of it. Relying too heavily on grains, to the exclusion of other types of plants (like leafy greens, tubers, vegetables, fruits, legumes, nuts, and seeds) can lead to nutritional imbalances. And some people are sensitive or even allergic to gluten, a protein found in wheat, rye, and barley.

But blaming grains for our modern health woes misses an important point: in the industrialized world, we consume mostly processed grains, not whole ones. And in so doing, we miss out on a bundle of nutrients that are contained in whole grains. Processing — which generally involves fractionating the grains and removing their fiber-filled outer coverings — strips away essential vitamins and minerals. And without fiber, the carbohydrates in grains can cause rapid and intense spikes in blood glucose, leading to inflammation and the development of chronic diseases.

There’s also a lot of research showing that people who consume whole grains are typically healthier than those who don’t. So vilifying grains isn’t the answer to our health crisis. Instead, let’s get to know and appreciate the wide variety of whole grains, beyond the “big three”: wheat, rice, and corn. And we’ll look at how to prepare, store, and cook them, which whole grains are truly gluten-free, and how to use grains in recipes.

Keep reading to discover how to experiment with different grains, so you can add these delicious, filling, and healthy foods to your diet.

What Are Whole Grains?

Scientifically speaking, a grain is the harvested seed of a grass. But before I go too far down that rabbit hole and start throwing around words like “monocotyledonous,” let’s agree that we know a grain when we see one and focus instead on the definition of “whole” in this context.

According to the Whole Grain Council, grains are whole “when consumed in a form including the bran, germ, and endosperm.” In other words, most grains and grain products that don’t have any additional ingredients listed and are in their natural, unprocessed state are whole grains.

You can also find whole grains in some processed and packaged foods. Just be aware that a “made with whole grains” claim doesn’t necessarily mean the entire food is made with whole grains. For example, Pepperidge Farm Cheddar Goldfish are “baked with whole grain” but also include enriched white wheat flour in the ingredients list.

To be certain that you aren’t getting white flour, wheat gluten, or other processed grains, in the US (and 64 other countries!) look for the “100% Whole Grain” stamp to guarantee that all the grain is whole and unrefined.

An Essential List of Whole Grains

As I mentioned, there are a lot more whole grains than just wheat, rice, and corn. There are two main categories, biologically speaking: true grains and pseudo-grains. Here’s a reasonably comprehensive list of each, courtesy of the Whole Grains Council:

• True grains
  • Rice (including brown rice, red rice, and black rice)*
  • Wild rice (not technically rice — it’s one of four species of grass)*
  • Farro
  • Oats*
  • Unhulled Barley (hull-less and lightly pearled barley are not technically whole grains)
  • Teff*
  • Wheat and wheat berries (including bulgur)
  • Corn (avoid labels that say “degerminated” where the germ and bran are removed, and look for the words “whole corn”)*
  • Einkorn
  • Freekeh
  • Kamut
  • Rye and rye berries
  • Sorghum*
  • Spelt
  • Triticale
• Pseudo-grains
  • Quinoa*
  • Amaranth*
  • Millet*
  • Buckwheat*
  • Kañiwa*
  • Fonio*

*Grains marked with an asterisk are naturally gluten-free. Some grains may also have cross-contamination from gluten-containing grains, so if you have celiac disease or need to avoid gluten make sure you buy certified gluten-free if you’re not sure. Some whole grain products that are naturally gluten-free may also be mixed with a gluten-containing grain. Make sure to read the ingredient label carefully if gluten is a concern.

When possible, purchase organic whole grains to avoid glyphosate and other pesticide contamination.

When to Soak or Rinse Grains

OK, now that we’re all acquainted, let’s talk about the best ways to get more whole grains into your life. While you can just cook whole grains straight away, there are some good reasons to presoak them before cooking.

Soaking grains for a few hours, or even overnight, can enhance their nutritional benefits, render them easier to digest, and even remove compounds like arsenic, saponins, or phytates. The latter two can block the absorption of some nutrients, and arsenic is downright toxic.

The so-called antinutrients like saponins (found in oats, quinoa, and amaranth) and phytates may actually be beneficial to your health in moderation, but there’s no amount of arsenic that you should try to consume. And since much of the world’s rice, one of our most consumed grains, includes an excess of arsenic, soaking and rinsing rice is a helpful step to protect yourself and your loved ones.

Reducing Arsenic in Rice

At the very least, rinse brown rice thoroughly before cooking, making sure the water runs off clear by the final rinse. Even better, soak it for 48 hours before cooking it, pouring off the water and rinsing it every 8–12 hours. Then for maximum brownie points, cook the rice in 6–10 parts water to one part rice, and drain off the extra water after cooking.

Alternatively, you can reduce the arsenic concentrations in rice while maintaining levels of beneficial nutrients by using the “parboiling with absorption” method.

Bring water to a boil, using four cups of fresh water for every cup of raw rice. Add the rice and boil for five minutes. Discard the water, rinse the rice, and add two cups of water for each cup of rice. Then cover the pot and cook on low to medium heat until the water is absorbed and the rice is the desired texture.

How to Get Rid of Saponins

Saponins can affect the taste of quinoa, in particular, so if you want folks to love this healthy pseudo-grain, you’ll want to soak it for at least five minutes before rinsing and cooking. If you want the quinoa to start germinating, for increased nutrition and absorption of those nutrients, soak it overnight, and then pour off the water before you cook it in fresh water.

Rinsing Teff

Teff, a grain popular in Ethiopian cuisine (it’s used to make that stretchy and tangy injera flatbread used as plate, napkin, and finger food), also needs a good rinse. Because the seeds are so small, a lot of packaged teff includes weed seeds, bits of stalk, and some dirt mixed in. But, and I share this from personal experience, make sure to use a strainer with small holes, because otherwise, you’ll pour your teff right down the drain!

Reducing Phytates in Grains

If you’re sensitive to phytic acid, soak high-phytic-acid grains like buckwheat, amaranth, and barley in water that contains a small amount of acidic liquid (like vinegar or lemon juice) to activate the enzyme phytase (which breaks down phytic acid). A couple of tablespoons of acidic liquid added to the soaking water should do the trick.

What to Cook Grains In

Use a pot suitable for the task that’s an appropriate size for the amount of grains you need. You can use a saucepan for smaller servings, or a large stock pot for batch cooking.

Because there’s a lot of water involved, the risk of burning and uneven heating is low, so you don’t need the world’s fanciest thick-bottom or enamel cast iron pot. Do avoid cookware that is coated in Teflon, aluminum, or copper, though, as these can off-gas or leach chemicals into the water. Stainless steel is a solid choice. At Food Revolution Network, we also love the 100% ceramic Xtrema Versa Pot, which comes in sizes ranging from 1.5 to 5.5 quarts, as well as the smaller Xtrema Traditions Saucepan, which starts at 1 quart and goes up to 3.5 quarts. (Note, however, that ceramic pots don’t work on induction stoves.)

You can speed up the cooking process with pressure, using an electric pressure cooker like the Instant Pot, or a stovetop model. Many brands of rice cookers even have sensors that can determine exactly how long and how hot to cook different kinds and quantities of grain, and can keep them warm until you’re ready to eat. Just be aware that most of these, unfortunately, come with Teflon-based nonstick inserts. However, GreenLife’s Rice and Grains Cooker utilizes a healthier ceramic nonstick coating, and the Instant Pot uses stainless steel.

Grain Cooking Times and Water Needs

It’s the water that makes grains chewy and “fluffed up” when cooked.  All grains are slightly different, but a general rule, if you’re using the traditional absorption cooking method, is you need at least twice as much water as grain, a ratio that can sometimes decrease at higher quantities. Many traditional cooks follow a “thumb knuckle” rule (or “rule of thumb knuckle,” I guess you could say), where they add enough water to the height of one thumb knuckle above the grain.

In terms of how long to cook whole grains, some grains cook much quicker than others. It can depend on the type and variety of grain, its size, and whether it was soaked or pre-cooked (and for how long). The quickest-cooking grains include quinoa, rolled oats, millet, bulgur, buckwheat, teff, and amaranth. The longest cooking whole grains, requiring over 30 minutes (fewer in a pressure cooker), are brown rice, wild rice, oat groats, and most wheat varieties.

For step-by-step instructions on how to cook rice, quinoa, and Kamut, check out our article and video on How to Cook Whole Grains, featuring FRN’s Dietitian & Recipe Developer, Nichole Dandrea-Russert, RDN.

You can also download our full guide to whole grain cooking times, soak times, water amounts, and cooking methods, here: Whole Grains Cooking Guide.

The Benefits of Batch Cooking Grains

While you can cook up a small serving of whole grains right before serving, there are some compelling reasons to get into the habit of batch cooking, especially if you live one of those hectic modern lives that includes other responsibilities like work, errands, child care, elder care, or community service.

Batch cooking can help you spend less time in the kitchen overall, since cooking a large pot of grains doesn’t really take much more time than cooking a small one. Having precooked grains at your disposal, ready to heat and eat, makes it much easier to throw something together on the fly.

Batch cooking can also be a money saver. Since grains tend to be affordable and filling sources of nutritional excellence, making them a staple of your diet can lower your overall food bill. And increasing the amount you cook may allow you to sensibly buy grains in bulk, saving even more money in the long run.

When to Batch Cook

The trick to batch cooking is to proactively set aside time in your week. You can pick a day and time when you know you’ll be free, or have to attend a Zoom call but can be muted and off-camera (unless you’re rocking a really cool apron and want all your colleagues to see it).

For most people, weekends are batch cooking prime time. Lots of folks enjoy blocking out a couple of hours on a Sunday to crank up their favorite tunes and plan and batch cook the week’s healthy meals. Most people find that once a week is the ideal cadence for meal prep, setting them up for an easy and delicious week of meals.

Oh, and that Whole Grains Cooking Guide that I mentioned above (and sneakily just linked to again; go get it! — I’ll wait) includes instructions for different types of equipment, some of which, like the Instant Pot and other “set it and forget it” appliances like rice cookers, are ideal for batch cooking. While they do their thing, you can chop and mix and do all the other types of meal prep.

How to Store Grains

Unlike flours made from grains, whole grains tend to last a long time without going rancid or stale, thanks to the phytonutrients that protect and preserve the oils and germ. As long as they’re sealed (to keep out bugs) and dry (to prevent fungal or bacterial growth), you can keep dried grains for months. If you don’t plan to use them within a few months, you can store whole grains in an airtight container in the freezer.

Once you cook whole grains, they’re considered perishable. Cool them to room temperature and then store them in the refrigerator at no more than 40°F (5°C) within 2 hours of preparation. Cooked whole grains last approximately 3–4 days in the fridge.

If you’re batch cooking once a week, of course, 3–4 days won’t get you from Sunday to Sunday. One solution to that conundrum is to freeze some of the cooked grains and defrost them as necessary (making sure to let them fully cool before freezing). Cooked grains stay fresh in the freezer for about 2 months — so make sure you label them with contents and the date you put them in, so you don’t end up having to toss containers of mystery glop down the road.

If you store cooked grains in airtight containers made of glass, stainless steel, or silicone rather than plastic, you avoid leaching plastic chemicals into hot and moist food. If plastic is your only alternative, be sure to cool the cooked grains down to room temperature before placing them in the plastic container.

Whole Grain Recipes

With so many ways to prepare whole grains, we’ve got just about every craveable flavor and texture imaginable to keep them (and the many ways to prepare them) exciting and fresh! You can enjoy wholesome whole grains for breakfast, lunch, and dinner with these tantalizing recipes, which will rekindle the joy of cooking whole grains — or, at the very least, put all those batch-cooked grains to good use!

1. Cinnamon Roll Baked Oatmeal

Oats might be one of the best examples of versatility, nourishment, and ease of preparation when it comes to our whole grain friends. Not only are there a whopping eight grams of fiber per one-cup serving, but they also have plenty of phytonutrients and are equally delicious sweet or savory. Although Cinnamon Roll Baked Oatmeal isn’t a dead ringer for a sticky cinnamon roll, the flavors in this scrumptious cinnamon oatmeal bake fit the bill if you’re craving something warming, sweet, and slightly gooey!

2. Buckwheat Sweet Potato Chili

We aren’t quite sure which is the bigger superstar in this dish, buckwheat or sweet potato. Either way, our Buckwheat Sweet Potato Chili is a comforting bowl of deliciousness that is packed with so much nutrition (and protein thanks to both the buckwheat and black beans), you’ll be thinking up new ways to enjoy this delightful pairing again and again.

3. Super Greens Salad with Bulgur and Lentils

If you love a good hearty salad and want a recipe that doesn’t require too much fuss but is still fulfilling and satisfying, then this Super Greens Salad with Bulgur and Lentils is for you! Chock-full of nutrient-dense greens, protein-packed lentils, and fiber-filled bulgur wheat, this salad gets nice and cozy with a Creamy Ginger Dressing that is absolutely delish!

4. One-Pot Mexicali Quinoa

As you learned in this article, quinoa is technically more of a seed than a grain, but that doesn’t stop it from having a delightfully fluffy texture that is full of fiber and protein, to go along with its nutty flavor! One-Pot Mexicali Quinoa is a fiesta of colors, nutrition, and flavors just waiting to be loved. Honestly, we couldn’t think of a better way to showcase the versatility of this humble pseudo-grain!

5. Berbere-Spiced Sorghum Burgers

Sorghum is an underrated whole grain that is rich in fiber and phytonutrients. With its slightly nutty flavor and hearty, chewy texture, sorghum is a delightful grain that is seriously satisfying in these Berbere-Spiced Sorghum Burgers. Combined with protein-rich chickpeas, aromatic veggies, earthy kale, and FRN’s Berbere Spice Mix, you’ve got a tantalizing veggie burger that showcases the versatility of this delightful whole grain!

Embrace Whole Grains!

Grains can be a filling, economical, delicious, versatile, and healthy part of a plant-based diet. They’re best consumed in their whole state, along with other whole foods like legumes and vegetables, rather than in processed foods. There are many types of whole grains with their own cooking and soaking protocols. So take your pick depending on personal preference and convenience.

Cooking whole grains doesn’t have to be complicated; just make sure to use the chart we’ve shared (here it is again: Whole Grains Cooking Guide). Review our articles on specific whole grains to guide you, such as those on oats, teff, corn, quinoa, and amaranth. And get in the habit of batch cooking to save time, energy, and money in the kitchen.

Tell us in the comments:

• What are your favorite whole grains?
• Is there a whole grain you’ve never tried to cook before?
• Do you do batch cooking on a regular basis? If so, what’s your favorite time of the week, and what whole grains do you cook? (Bonus question: what do you listen to while you cook?)

Feature Image: iStock.com/Stefan Tomic

Read Next:

• Are Grains Good For You?
• A Plant-Based Meal Prep Guide in 6 Easy Steps

The post Cooking with Whole Grains: How to Soak, Cook, & Store Grains appeared first on Food Revolution Network.

Fun fact about plants — they can create the most delectable, rich, and satisfying flavors and textures to keep your belly happy and heart soothed when temperatures plummet.  Plant-based foods like beans, lentils, potatoes, quinoa, brown rice, and root vegetables are fiber-rich and loaded with vitamins, minerals, and other essential nutrients that help you feel fuller for longer and satisfy your hunger. They also fill you up while providing long-lasting energy without the food coma that many of us know so well from the traditional winter meals a lot of us grew up with. Plus, it’s always nice to have a variety of warm, healthy recipes to add to your dinner repertoire for chilly winter nights. If you’re unsure where to start, the following recipes can guide you.

Keep reading as we look at how to prepare and cook hearty meals during winter, whether it’s a holiday feast for a family gathering or an intimate meal for two, along with tips for making dinnertime extra cozy. We’ll also provide seven delicious and healthy dinner recipes to keep you warm, content, and well-fed during those long, cold nights.

Winter Dinner Foods

Creating winter dinner recipes can be a fun and exciting activity for the whole family since you can use seasonal fruits, veggies, and other ingredients that you might not use during warmer seasons. When creating such recipes, you’re choosing foods that are not only satiating, filling, and warming (for both body and soul), but also filled with fiber, vitamins, minerals, and nutrients necessary for good health.

Examples of heartwarming, health-promoting foods include:

• Root vegetables like potatoes, carrots, onions, beets, and turnips
• Winter squash such as acorn, butternut, spaghetti, and kabocha
• Beans, including garbanzo, pinto, navy, cannellini, and black
• Whole grains such as brown rice, buckwheat, barley, millet, and bulgur
• Lentils, including brown, red, green, and French

Whenever possible, choose local or seasonal foods to create your winter dinner recipes. Many grocery stores have organic and seasonal produce sections, and visiting your local farmers market — winter markets are a thing! — is a great way to find fresh, wholesome food — especially storage crops and cold-weather greens — during what is typically a fallow season. Supporting your local farming community during the quiet months also helps to reduce your food-related carbon footprint.

Since local or seasonal foods tend to be fresher than store-bought produce, they often provide more immune-supporting nutrition, including vitamin C and provitamin A. Local and seasonal foods are also often tastier! Seasonal produce is also rich in two nutritional superstars — fiber and antioxidants. Fiber supports gut health, while antioxidants strengthen the immune system. When cooking any produce, be aware that some nutrients are enhanced while others are lost during the cooking process.

Tips for Creating Healthy Winter Dinner Recipes

A huge bonus when it comes to winter meals like soups, stews, bakes, and chilies is that you can batch-cook them in large quantities (and they often get even tastier the next day!). So whether you’re feeding the entire family, plan to enjoy them as leftovers during the week, or want to freeze portions to enjoy later in the season, these winter recipes are made for multiple meals and meal prepping.

Time-saving tip: Chop your veggies in advance so they’re ready to go when it’s time to cook. Another tip is to add everything to a slow cooker early in the morning to have an aroma-filled home and dinner ready for you and your family after a long day. This not only saves you time and energy, but it also allows for more quality mealtime with family rather than enduring stress over what to prepare and getting it on the table before the hangries have set in.

Choosing recipes that call for some of the same ingredients can save you time and money. When planning two or three recipes ahead of time, batch-cook ingredients like lentils, brown rice, quinoa, beans, and root vegetables in advance, then divide them between meals throughout the week.

A final tip for making dinnertime super cozy on a chilly winter day is to create warm and uplifting spaces in your home. Dim the lights, light (eco-friendly) candles, play soothing music, and enjoy a generous helping (or two) of your favorite winter meal. Bonus if you have a furry friend by your side! You might even consider placing some flowers or other seasonal decor on your dinner table or kitchen counter for an extra dose of comforting coziness.

Healthy Dinner Recipes to Keep You Warm and Cozy on Cold Winter Nights

If you’re curious about what to make on a chilly night, we’ve got seven delicious plant-based recipes to warm you from the inside out. Our healthy, winter dinner recipes are all about fresh seasonal ingredients that turn into nourishing and tasty comfort dishes! Whipping up a delicious dinner doesn’t have to be difficult, either. In fact, a few of these recipes only require one pot and a bit of prep time before you’ve got a cozy and delicious meal to dish up for you and your loved ones on a cold winter’s night.

1. One-Pot Butter Bean Soup

One-pot meals are an easy and delightful go-to during cold winter months. Butter beans create a layer of rich creaminess that makes this veggie-centric soup (think carrots, onions, and Swiss chard) all the more nourishing. Make it for the week or freeze it in individual containers so you have soup for the cold winter months to come.

2. Moroccan Spiced Sweet Potato and Spinach Stew

Make a winter meal feel extra cozy by taking advantage of warming spices, rich and starchy root vegetables, and healing leafy greens in our Moroccan-inspired and oh-so-satisfying stew. A delicious balance of sweet and savory flavors, it’s made with onions, carrots, sweet potato, chickpeas, and spinach, flavored with toasted spices, and finished with fresh herbs. With its variety of flavor and texture combinations, this just might become a go-to dish when you’re wanting some nourishing warmth.

3. Slow Cooker White Bean Chili

Just about everyone could use a delicious, plant-based chili recipe in their back pocket, and this one might be yours. Loaded with creamy white beans, millet, root veggies, and spices, it’s a healthy and comforting spin on a traditional tomato-based chili. Pile on creamy avocado and a dash of hot sauce (for a bit of heat and totally optional) to enjoy on a cold winter’s night.

4. Lentil and Quinoa Stuffed Peppers

A colorful bundle of essential nutrients in one hearty package, Lentil and Quinoa Stuffed Peppers are a delicious and fun source of healthy comfort. The star ingredients bring plenty of fiber, protein, and phytonutrients to this easy-to-make main dish. And broccoli, tomatoes, and peppers serve up a generous amount of vitamin C to help keep your immune system in tip-top shape.

5. Tuscan Beans and Kale

A deeply satisfying stew, Tuscan Beans and Kale is filled with nutrient-rich beans and greens simmered in a robust tomato and root vegetable sauce. This is a great dish to customize to your individual needs or your family’s preferences. For example, swap the butter beans with chickpeas or substitute spinach for kale. With so many delicious ways to make it your own, this recipe is surely one to keep on hand for the winter season.

6. Vegetable Cassoulet

Squash, root vegetables, potatoes, and white beans are seasonal and nourishing ingredients that provide plenty of plant power to warm you from the inside out. Our Vegetable Cassoulet takes some time to cook, but the prep time is minimal and the aroma that fills your home will make it worth the wait — we bet you’ll be counting down the seconds before you can dish it up for a bite!

7. Spinach and Mushroom Enchiladas

Healthy comfort food on a cold and frosty night has got to be the ultimate win, and our Spinach and Mushroom Enchiladas check both of those boxes! Their enticing aroma, delicious flavor, and satisfying texture can lift your spirits and keep you feeling warm and cozy. Once these bubbly beauties come out of the oven, top them with creamy avocado and an extra drizzle of savory sauce for an unforgettable, satiating, plant-based meal any night of the week!

Enjoy Hearty Comforting Meals Year-Round

You don’t need meat or dairy to create delicious, healthy winter dinner recipes that the whole family will love. Instead, turn to recipes packed full of veggies, legumes, and whole grains to make your suppers super nutritious and healthy. Doing so will not only take the chill off your bones but also satisfy your craving for a hearty meal that delivers warmth and comfort for mind, body, and spirit. By following these tips and recipes, you’ll have a variety of winter dinner meals that are hearty, nourishing, comforting, and will keep you warm and healthy during the coldest months of the year!

Tell us in the comments:

• What’s your go-to winter dinner recipe?
• Which healthy winter dinner recipe are you going to try first?
• What healthy plant-based food swaps for meat and dairy do you make?

Read Next:

• Vegan Casseroles That Are Healthy, Delicious, and Dollar-Stretching
• Healthy Winter Vegetables & the Best Ways to Enjoy Them

The post 7 Healthy Winter Dinner Recipes to Keep You Warm & Nourished appeared first on Food Revolution Network.

For many peasants, the answer was simple: take the cheapest food they could find (usually dried beans of some kind, root vegetables, or old bread), flavor it with herbs and whatever meat they could scrounge up, toss in a hunk of cheese if they had it, and throw it all into a clay or earthenware pan known as a “casserole.” Then, they would bring it to the town baker, who would pop it in the oven until it was cooked to taste.

The modern casserole dish fills many of the same needs. It can be easy to make, very forgiving of variance in recipe and ingredients, a great use of leftovers, inexpensive, and very hearty and filling. And even though casseroles have been looked down upon by chefs and foodies for the past 70 years, they’ve never gone out of fashion because they are so economical and satisfying.

Of course, we might not want to make casserole recipes with ground meat, covered in cheese, or topped with crushed potato chips or Ritz crackers. Luckily, there are many ways to make vegan casseroles and fortify them with healthy, plant-rich, and nutrient-dense foods.

What Is a Casserole?

Casseroles are so common, I never stopped to think about an actual definition until I started working on this article. But here’s what I’ve come up with: casseroles are one-dish, oven-baked meals.

That simple definition means that lots of our most popular heritage dishes are casseroles (and comfort food): lasagna, potato and noodle kugel, stuffed peppers, mac n’ cheese, zucchini gratin, and on and on. Clearly, there’s something very primal and satisfying about tossing a bunch of ingredients into a deep-sided pan and letting the magic happen slowly in a hot oven.

The origin of the word “casserole” is one of the most contentious issues in the field of gastronomic etymology. I will spare you the painstakingly researched and defended opinions of the linguistic experts who have weighed in on the topic, except to say that they appear to be burning a lot of calories asserting and embellishing their claims. So I hope they eat as many casseroles as they argue over.

For our purposes, let’s just go with the assumption that “casserole” is French for “saucepan.” And the name of the pan transferred to the name of the food cooked in it. (Apparently, it can also refer to a lousy singer, as in Quelle casserole! — what a lousy singer!) “Casserole” is also related to the French word cassoulet, which refers to a traditional dish consisting of meat and white beans that is cooked and served in a cassole — a wide-mouthed ceramic baking dish.

A Brief History of the Modern Casserole

Casserole historians — yes, that’s an actual profession, although admittedly not a huge job market — point out that while casserole dishes have been prepared and eaten since humans figured out the whole fireproof and waterproof cookware thing, the modern history of the casserole began with a technological breakthrough in the early 20th century.

The story goes that way back in 1913, Bessie Littleton wanted to bake a cake, but couldn’t because she had dropped and broken her clay casserole pan. Luckily, Bessie’s husband worked as a scientist at Corning Glass Works. She had the bright idea to ask him to bring home the sawed-off bottom of a battery jar, which turned out to produce a wonderful cake. And that was the origin of the Pyrex company, which still makes casserole pans and lids that many of us use to this day.

While Pyrex was a huge leap forward for casseroles (heat-absorbing, imparting no flavor to the food, easy to clean, and able to go from oven to freezer and every temperature in between), you might argue that the food innovations that popularized the American casserole were less wonderful. In 1940, Jay’s Potato Chips published the first casserole recipe printed on food packaging, a tuna casserole topped with (of course) crushed Jay’s Potato Chips.

The biggest casserole recipe marketer was (and still is) Campbell’s Soup. In 1955, they unleashed the green bean casserole recipe on cans of cream of mushroom soup. While millions enjoyed this and similar recipes inspired by industrial foods, the culinary elites looked on with horror at the debasing of the American palate by what they saw as “instant leftovers.” The aesthetic of convenience over quality meant that casseroles were suffering the same fate that was to befall much of Western cuisine since the second half of the 20th century: poor-quality ingredients hidden by the addition of huge amounts of salt, fat, and refined sugar. What had been healthy “peasant food” was turned into disease-producing, industrial cuisine for the masses.

The good news is, we can reclaim the casserole as a utilitarian, delicious, and nutritious meal. We can ditch the hyper-processed ingredients in favor of fresh ones. And we can even upgrade the quality of the original dishes by making them plant-based and nutrient-rich.

Casserole Dishes

To make a casserole, you need a casserole dish. There are several common sizes and shapes, which is useful because cookbook authors and bloggers can indicate a particular size for each recipe. You want your casserole to be the “right” depth, which means using an appropriate casserole dish for the volume you’re preparing.

Typical casserole dish sizes are 9”x13” rectangles (Pyrex calls them “oblongs” because of their rounded edges), and 8”x8” and 9”x9” squares. Fancier casserole dishes can be fully oblong, or even round.

In addition to the glass dishes invented by Pyrex (and also sold by Anchor Hocking), you can get casserole dishes made of ceramic, stoneware, and enameled cast iron. All have different advantages and disadvantages, like weight, evenness of cooking, ease of cleaning, and aesthetics. To find out more about the differences in cookware materials, be sure to check out our article on safe and healthy cookware.

If you’re just beginning to explore the world of casseroles, I recommend starting out with something simple and inexpensive, like this classic, glass Pyrex two-piece set. When you’re ready for fancier and higher quality casserole dishes, treat yourself to this one: Xtrema Rectangular Baking Dish.

Why Try Vegan Casseroles?

As we’ve seen, casseroles have been well-loved culinary creations for centuries. And we can bring that same enthusiasm to the creation of vegan casserole recipes as well. Here are just a few reasons why you should give casserole creation a try.

1. Casseroles save time.

Just like our medieval counterparts, we make casseroles today because they save us time. And not just cooking time, either. Depending on the size and ingredients, a family-sized casserole can cook for 45–60 minutes in the oven, or even longer, but you can save on prep time, too, since throwing in all the ingredients at once saves multiple steps.

2. Casseroles save money.

Casseroles are and have always been great ways to stretch a food dollar. The base ingredient — beans or a starch — can be very inexpensive. And when combined with flavorings and binders, these staple ingredients can go a long way to satisfying a crowd. Vegan casseroles are also a great way to use up leftovers, avoiding food waste.

3. Casseroles are full of flavor.

Casseroles often taste much better than you would predict based solely on their ingredient list. That’s because all that time in the oven turns them into a literal melting pot, where all the flavors can develop, mature, and interact to produce a dish that’s greater than the sum of its parts. And since they’re also often served warm, they also make for flavorful comfort food.

4. You can have breakfast, lunch, or dinner casseroles.

Casseroles are versatile. In addition to the rich and heavy casserole mains, you can serve a casserole as an appetizer or a side dish. You can also render various breakfast casseroles and even desserts in casserole form, which can turn a long process of short-order cooking into a one-and-done affair that everyone can enjoy at once, hot out of the oven.

5. Casseroles are creative.

Since casseroles are the ultimate destination for leftovers, they’re also stomping grounds for creativity. You can invent new plant-based casserole recipes simply by seeing what’s left in your fridge, which may not have been eaten on its own. For more ideas on reducing kitchen waste, check out our article on how to use food scraps.

6. You can make casseroles for large groups (or have leftovers).

Another great thing about casseroles is how crowd-friendly they are. A single 9”x13” oblong casserole pan holds over three quarts of food, which can feed a lot of people. Even if you aren’t charged with cooking for a group, if you make a large casserole, you’ll have delicious and easy-to-transport leftovers for the next few days. Nothing like rolling up to work with a spinach artichoke pasta bake that you can microwave for three minutes and enjoy while your coworkers are eating their sad bagged lunches.

7. Casseroles are simple to make.

Most casseroles are easy to make, only utilizing a few simple ingredients. Of course, you can get as fancy as you want when cooking a casserole, but that’s an option, not a requirement. As with any food of peasant origin, casseroles were created to make our lives easier, not more complicated — so go casserole crazy!

The Anatomy of a Vegan Casserole

An easy approach to constructing a vegan casserole is to think of three main components: a base, an extender, and a binder. The base of a casserole recipe is traditionally a meat or grain, like tempeh in an enchilada and wide noodles in lasagna. The extender serves to add volume and thicken the dish; potatoes and breadcrumbs are typical examples. Finally, there’s a binder, generally a sauce or a liquid, that holds the whole thing together.

To this trinity, I’d like to add a fourth staple component: vegetables! Whether you toss in chunks of summer squash in a summer casserole with a tomato-sauce binder, or add broccoli or cauliflower florets to a winter casserole with potatoes and a cashew-cream binder, there’s always a way to get more veggies into your casserole for health and flavor.

7 Healthy Vegan Casserole Recipes

This recipe roundup may just be one of our tastiest collections of oven-baked recipes yet. As you’ve learned, casseroles are one of the easiest and most versatile ways to serve up delicious, satisfying meals with complex flavors, a variety of ingredients, and minimal effort. Whether you’re in the mood for a casserole at breakfast, lunch, or dinner, we’ve got you covered. What’s more, any of these recipes can be made ahead of time for a meal that simply requires heating before serving. Prepare them at the start of your week, and bake them whenever you’re ready to enjoy a warm, filling, and nourishing meal.

1. Vegetable Breakfast Casserole

A veggie casserole for breakfast just makes sense — what better way to start the day than with health-giving vegetables? This Vegetable Breakfast Casserole uses filling and savory hash browns as the base, followed by vine-ripe tomatoes, red bell peppers, aromatic onions, umami mushrooms, crunchy asparagus, and protein-rich tofu. Boost the flavor with fresh rosemary and thyme (or your favorite herbs) to tie it all together, and bake until golden and crisp. Finish it with creamy avocado, chives, and a dash of hot sauce before diving into a deliciously savory breakfast that supplies a hearty morning dose of plant-powered nutrition!

2. Cinnamon Apple French Toast

The heavenly and sweet aroma of freshly baked apples will permeate your kitchen in the most delightful way! Crisp apples transform into an ooey gooey naturally sweet Cinnamon Apple French Toast delight that is brimming with comforting aromas, satisfying textures, and enchanting flavors. Serve this scrumptious breakfast casserole with your favorite morning latte for a sweet and satisfying meal that is equal parts nourishing and comforting.

3. Green Bean Casserole

Can we get a round of applause for the undisputed icon of plant-forward casseroles? Our version of Green Bean Casserole is seemingly indulgent, but loaded with nutrition thanks to the Mushroom Gravy, Cashew Sour Cream, and baked (not fried!) crispy onions. Oh, and let’s not forget about the green beans! So whether you’re preparing this dish for a festive celebration or looking for a cozy and comforting meal during the week, this creamy casserole will not disappoint!

4. Comforting Mushroom Casserole

Comforting Mushroom Casserole — three little words that pack a big plant-based punch! This wonderful bake delivers satisfying cheesy vegan goodness, creamy textures, and plenty of nutrition. Cauliflower Squash Cheese Sauce and Vegan Walnut Parmesan give this yummy casserole two remarkably cheesy flavors that will really hit the spot. The umami flavors of the mushrooms, garlic, and dairy-free cheese sauce are elevated as the casserole bakes, and the end result is a seemingly indulgent meal that will leave your heart singing!

5. Baked Chili and Potato Casserole

You can’t go wrong when plant-based chili, sautéed broccoli, and creamy potatoes are baked to bubbly golden perfection. This veggie casserole hits all the right comforting and robust flavor notes and is packed with plant protein and fiber from the black beans and plenty of phytonutrients from the veggies. Spoon a generous layer of silky cashew cheese sauce over top, and you’ll have yourself a comforting, nutrient-rich, and explosively tasty casserole ready for the week!

6. Cheesy Squash Casserole

There’s no hiding it, veggie casseroles are arguably the best one-dish meal with their ease of preparation, exquisite flavors, and nourishing plant-based ingredients. Here, squash, cherry tomatoes, cashew cheese, and fresh herbs create a nourishing delight that is easy to throw together. The best part is, when this delectable casserole spends some time getting warm and bubbly in the oven, it transforms into a melting pot of flavor and heavenly, dairy-free cheesy goodness. If simple and tasty casseroles are your idea of a dream meal, this one is sure to rank top of your list!

7. Shepherd’s Pie

If it doesn’t include casserole in the name, can it count as a casserole? You bet! If you’re following the formula, base + extender + binder, then Shepherd’s Pie fits the bill! The hearty lentil walnut base hits the spot along with the robust and savory flavors from the tomato sauce and earthy herbs and spices. Crowned with a creamy mashed potato and butternut squash topping, this Shepherd’s Pie is super satisfying, healthfully indulgent, and a plant-nutrient superstar!

Are You Ready to Embrace the Humble Casserole and Give it New Life?

Casseroles are among the most egalitarian of dishes, providing inexpensive nourishment in a form that can feed dozens. And once you understand the basic building blocks of a casserole, you can construct your own healthy, plant-based version from whatever you’ve got in the kitchen and pantry. Here’s to your next hearty, one-dish bake!

Tell us in the comments:

• Do you like casseroles?
• What’s your favorite casserole from childhood? Have you ever tried making a healthy version of it?
• What vegan casserole recipe will you try next? Where will you be serving it?

Featured Image: iStock.com/vkuslandia

Read Next:

• Plant-Based Sheet Pan Meals for Quick & Easy Dinners
• Plant-Based Freezer Meals

The post Vegan Casseroles That Are Healthy, Delicious, and Dollar-Stretching appeared first on Food Revolution Network.