Category: Side Dishes

gravy

Gorgeous Gravy – The Best Vegan And Gluten Free Gravy Recipe

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This is hands down the best gravy I’ve ever had. It’s totally vegan, and incredibly delicious.

It has all the flavors that you want in a gravy. The browned mushrooms give it a deep savory richness. The sage and the other spices give it that special Thanksgiving charm, and the oat flour gives the gravy a velvety, creamy, buttery texture with out any dairy.

I promise that you won’t miss the chicken stock or the butter.

It’s great served over mashed potatoes, turkey and stuffing, but delicious enough to be eaten on it’s own. You can double or triple the recipe and serve it with sautéed mushrooms as a creamy mushroom soup, or serve it over pasta for something like a creamy mushroom alfredo sauce.

I would add just a pinch more salt to this myself, but I like things more on the savory side. Some people like things less salty, and leaving that extra little bit of salt out gives your guests a little more wiggle room as far as the savory level of their gravy is concerned.

This recipe works well with lots of different dietary restrictions, but if you know that one of your guests has celiac disease, then be sure to use certified gluten free oats. Oats are naturally gluten free, but normal oats from bulk bins can sometimes be processed on the same equipment as normal flour, and can contain trace amounts of gluten.

You can make this gravy ahead of time, and just reheat it right before serving. One less (delicious) thing to worry about cooking on Thanksgiving is something to be thankful for indeed.

Gorgeous Gravy
Makes 2 cups

Prep time – 5 min
Cook Time – 30 min
Total Time – 1 hr 20 min

Ingredients

1 2/3 cup diced mushrooms (about 5 white or crimini mushrooms)

¾ cup diced onion (about ½ a medium onion)

1 tbsp. diced celery

7 tbsp. olive oil

¼ cup oat flour *

2 cups water

 

½ + 1/8 tsp. sea salt

¼ tsp. black pepper

¼ + 1/8 tsp. dried rubbed sage

¼ tsp. dried thyme

3 tsp. finely chopped fresh parsley.


Instructions

1. Sauté the mushrooms over medium high heat with 4 tbsp of olive oil for about 8 – 10 minutes until the mushrooms have become golden brown around the edges. Pour the mushrooms and olive oil into a bowl and set aside.

2. Allow the pan to cool off the heat for 10 minutes. The onions and celery will cook more evenly if they are allowed to start off cooking from a cool pan.

3. Add the onions and celery into the cooled pan along with another 3 tbsp of olive oil. Cook the onions and celery over medium high heat for 3-4 minutes. Then turn the heat down to medium and cook for another 3 minutes until the vegetables are softened.

4. Add the oat flour into the celery and onions and cook for 3 minutes, stirring the mixture as it cooks.

5. Add the 2 cups of water and the cooked mushrooms to the pan and turn the heat up to medium high. Cook uncovered for about 8 minutes until the mixture has thickened, stirring frequently. Don’t worry if the gravy looks a little lumpy right now, the blender will smooth that all out.

6. Take the pan off the heat, and let the gravy cool for 30 minutes.

Caution when blending hot liquids – remove the little clear plastic cap off the top of the blender lid (the lid’s center insert) and put a folded towel over the top, then blend.

If you don’t allow the blender to vent steam while blending hot liquids, pressure can build up and the blender contents can explode. Taking the center insert off the lid, and using the folded towel should prevent this from happening.

Add the gravy to the blender, and blend until smooth. Add in the the salt, pepper, sage, parsley and thyme and give the gravy a quick blitz to stir in the spices, but still allow some green from the fresh parsley to show through in the final gravy.

You can stash this in the fridge overnight and then reheat the gravy in a saucepan over medium heat right before serving.

Notes – * I grind oats into oat flour using a blender. Don’t grind the oats in a food processor because the flour won’t be fine enough.

Any extra oat flour I don’t use in the recipe goes into an airtight container and I use it for another recipe.

cornbread dressing - stuffing

Southern Style Cornbread Dressing – Gluten and Dairy Free Stuffing Recipe

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There are many types of incredible stuffing, but Southern Style Cornbread Dressing is my absolute favorite. The taste of this brings back so many happy memories of friends and family over the years, and always brings a smile to my face. It’s slightly crispy on the top and moist and creamy in the middle, and it’s definitely a crowd-pleaser.

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You can either bake this in a muffin tin (will make 12 muffin size portions of stuffing) or bake it in a 13 x 9 casserole dish. The baking time will be the same either way. I would use the muffin pan if you’re planning on making the stuffing ahead or want to freeze individual portions to enjoy later.

Southern Style Cornbread Dressing – Gluten Free
Makes 4-6 servings

Adapted from this recipe.

For the Cornbread

Ingredients

¼ level cup + 1/3 level cup of oat flour*

1 level cup + 3 tbsp. of cornmeal **

¾ level tsp. baking soda

1 tbsp. ground flax seed (or add another ½ a beaten egg to the wet ingredients)

4.5 tbsp. avocado oil – or any neutral flavored oil

2 tbsp. apple cider vinegar (or white vinegar)

1 ½ tsp. maple syrup

1 cup of water

1 egg

 

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 425. Grease and flour a 8 x 8 baking dish with oat flour and any neutral flavored oil.

2. Sift the cornmeal, oat flour, baking soda, and ground flax seed in a large mixing bowl.

3. Stir together the wet ingredients until well combined. Add the wet into the dry and stir to combine. Pour into the 8×8 baking dish.

4. Bake at 425 for 30 minutes until golden brown. Set the cornbread aside to cool.

Notes – * I grind oats into oat flour using a blender. Don’t grind the oats in a food processor because the flour won’t be fine enough.

Any extra oat flour (or ground flax seed) I don’t use in the recipe goes into an airtight container and I use it for another recipe.

**If you’re allergic to corn, you could try substituting brown rice flour for the cornmeal at a 1:1 ratio. I didn’t test this recipe specifically with this substitution, so I’m not 100% sure this will work, but last year I made a cornbread dressing with brown rice flour instead of cornmeal and it came out great. You couldn’t tell the difference at all.

 

For the Cornbread Dressing

3 tbsp. olive oil

½ cup diced onion

¾ cup diced celery

1 egg

2 cups of chicken broth (homemade or store bought)

¾ tsp. pepper

¾ tsp. dried rubbed sage

¼ + 1/8 tsp. sea salt

Instructions

1. Sauté the diced onion and celery in the olive oil over medium heat until tender, about 12 minutes.

2. Add the sage and sauté 1 minute longer.

3. Crumble the cornbread into a large mixing bowl. Add the cooked vegetables, salt, pepper, sage and chicken broth to the mixture. Taste for seasoning, and add more salt and pepper if needed.

4. Stir in the beaten egg, then cover and chill the mixture overnight (at least 8 hours).

5. Preheat the oven to 375. Grease and flour your muffin tin or 13 x 9 baking dish with oil and oat flour. Pour the mixture into the pan and bake uncovered for 30-40 minutes until golden brown on top.

If your making this in a muffin pan, let the stuffing cool in the muffin pan for 30 -45 minutes so that the stuffing has some time to firm up and hold it’s shape. Run a butter knife around the edges to loosen them, pop the stuffing muffins out and refrigerate. Reheat them to serve.

If you’re putting a dish straight from the fridge into the oven, put the fridge-cold dish into the cold oven (so that the ceramic dish does shatter from the temperature change between the cold fridge and the hot oven). Then preheat your oven with the dish inside so that it warms up with the oven and bake as usual.

You can reheat any leftover stuffing by covering the dish tightly with foil, and baking at 300 degrees for 45 minutes until warmed through.

roasted sweet potatoes

Roasted Sweet Potatoes

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Roasted sweet potatoes are surprising versatile and super simple to make.

I roasted sweet potatoes a number of ways until I found Gwyneth Paltrow’s recipe for roasted sweet potatoes in her book It’s All Good.

This is a version of her recipe. I added the olive oil to crisp up the skin, and also put the sweet potatoes on a sheet pan (instead of roasting them directly on a baking rack) just for the sake of easy clean up.

I usually roast 4-5 of them at a time on a stainless steel baking sheet or a large glass pyrex dish, and they make a quick snack when I’m hungry but a little too tired to think to hard about what I want to eat. They usually get sweeter when they are refrigerated overnight. For a quick snack, I sprinkle them with a little cinnamon, and maybe a drizzle of little maple syrup if I’m craving something sweet

The cheapest place that I found organic sweet potatoes was at Costco (they don’t always have them) but you can get a 10 lb bag of them for around $11. Trader Joes almost always have them year round, and they are a little more expensive than Costco, but much cheaper than anywhere else.

You can puree them and use them to make my pumpkin tarts, mash them with some cinnamon and maple syrup, or add them to my vegan cheddar bay biscuits (recipe coming soon!).

Ingredients

4-5 sweet potatoes

½ – 1 tsp olive oil

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 425.

2. Give the sweet potatoes a good scrub. Pat them dry with a paper towel and prick them 4-5 times with a fork.

3. Rub the olive oil over the sweet potatoes, place them on a baking sheet or pyrex dish and roast for 1 hr.

4. If the sweet potatoes are thicker than 2 inches in diameter, cook them for an addition 15 -30 minutes until cooked through and you can pierce them with a paring knife with no resistance.

To clean up the caramelized/ blackened sweet potato goo, soak the pan or baking sheet overnight. Pour off the water and make paste from a little baking soda and dish soap. Use a scrubby sponge and baking soda paste to scrub off any of the remaining sweet potato goo.

 

 

pumpkin tarts

Pumpkin Tarts – Gluten Free, Dairy Free, Vegan

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No Thanksgiving would complete without pumpkin pie!

When I was a kid, it was my job every year to make the classic pumpkin pie recipe from our well-loved Betty Crocker Cookbook. I made that same recipe all the way through high school and college, and missed it terribly when I found out that I couldn’t eat it anymore.

This is a quicker version, and is gluten, dairy and egg free. It’s rich, and perfectly spiced. You can top it with some cashew whipped cream for that classic pumpkin pie look and taste.

Also, another plus to this recipe is that you can secretly pretend that you’re at Hogwarts when you eat them.

You can make the filling ahead of time, and keep it in the fridge until you want to serve it.

The only to keep in mind is that you have to make the cashew whipped cream before you make this recipe because the few tablespoons of cashew cream give the pumpkin filling a lot of richness.

I’ll put the measurements for 12 tarts in case you’d like to double the recipe.

 

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Pumpkin Tarts
Makes 6 tarts

Ingredients

½ cup + 1 tbsp. + 1 tsp. pumpkin puree, or roasted sweet potato puree

3 tbsp. + 1 ½ tsp. maple syrup

2 tbsp. avocado oil or any neutral flavored oil

 

¾ level tsp cinnamon

¼ + 1/8 level tsp ground ginger

tiny pinch of cloves

pinch of salt

¼ tsp vanilla extract

1 tbsp. water

3 tbsp. cashew whipped cream


Instructions

1. Stir all the ingredients together. Top each tart shell with 2 tbsp. of the pumpkin pie filling, and a dollop of the cashew whipped cream. Serve.

For 12 tarts

Ingredients

1 cup + 2 tbsp. + 2 tsp. pumpkin puree, or roasted sweet potato puree

7 maple syrup

4 tbsp. avocado oil or any neutral flavored oil

 

1 ½ level tsp cinnamon

¾ level tsp ground ginger

pinch of cloves

2 pinches of salt

 

½ tsp vanilla extract

2 tbsp. water

6 tbsp. cashew whipped cream

muffin pan

The Best Way To Flour a Pan or Baking Dish, or an Ode to the Snap Mesh Tea Strainer

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I don’t use non-stick cookware or non-stick sprays, and learning to bake without those things can seem like a challenge.

But I’m here to tell you that it’s actually pretty easy! I use a stainless steel muffin pan and baking sheet, glass bakeware, or use a silpat. This is how I grease and flour my bakeware so that I can get my baked goods in an out of the pans easily.

I used to find that I would waste at least a few tablespoons of extra oat flour when I needed to grease and flour a baking dish. Recently, I figured out that my snap mesh tea strainer was the perfect thing to dust oat flour over any baking dish.

Having a handle attached to what is essentially a very tiny flour sifter makes adding fairy light coatings of oat flour over baking dishes a breeze. You just flick your wrist a few times and like magic, your muffin pan is perfectly floured and you are ready to fill it with lovely muffin or cupcake batter.

And pretty soon the whole kitchen smells like heaven, there are freshly baked muffins and instantly it’s a fantastic day!

You can find snap mesh tea strainers online for about $5. I think that I got mine about 5 years ago from Whole Foods and it’s still going strong. They are pretty easy to care for, just make sure to hand wash and don’t let wet tea stay in them overnight to avoid rusting. I always snap them onto the lip of a jar or mug so that the two metal halves of the tea strainer get a chance to properly dry out.aa

Directions

1. To grease and oil a baking dish, I dip a corner of a folded paper towel into either some olive oil or a neutral flavored oil like avocado oil, and then rub the oiled bit of the paper towel over the surface of the baking dish.

2. Add some oat flour to one of the half spheres and close the tea strainer. Shake strainer to dust the oat flour over the surface of the oiled baking dish. If no more oat flour is coming out, then the little bits of oat flour left in the strainer are probably too large to make it through the fine mesh. Open the strainer, and pour out these larger bits of oat flour, and add more new oat flour to the tea strainer and resume dusting.

I also use this to whisk matcha tea. I don’t have a traditional bamboo matcha tea whisk, but I just put some powdered matcha tea into this tea strainer and then whisk it into some hot water and it works great. I don’t whisk until the tea is frothy, just until the tea is smooth and all of the matcha powder has worked its way through the fine mesh of the tea strainer.

This would make a great stocking stuffer for anyone who loves to bake. You’ll probably have to spend a minute explaining how amazing it is at dusting oat flour, or cocoa powder (if you’re making brownies) over bakeware, but once they try it, they’ll probably wonder how they ever greased and floured anything without it.