Being on a diet means cutting back on the food that does not serve your body any purpose at all; it is not about abstaining from the holidays where, presumably, the only things that are served are not good for the health.
With a little bit of effort and creativity, you can prepare a feast that is Paleo diet-friendly.
By simply substituting ingredients, you can give your favorite and treasured family recipes a twist and turn them into healthy fares.
How Your Recipes Can Conform To Paleo diet
Substitution
Substitution of ingredients is perhaps one the most popular ways of Paleofying your recipe.
The first thing that you need to substitute is granulated sugar which is usually white, dark brown, or light brown. You may replace this with refined sugar but if you refuse to settle for anything less than healthy, you substitute white sugar with Sucanat or evaporated cane juice. This will have a tinge of molasses flavor and bigger granules, but this is one of the best options around.
When a recipe calls for dark brown sugar, change it to Muscovado Sugar. This is very similar to dark brown sugar both in taste and in color. The same sugar is also use to replace light brown sugar, or you can change it by using sucanat mixed with a bit of molasses or honey. The proportions are one cup of sucanat to 1 ½ tablespoons of molassess or honey. Other healthy options are date sugar and maple sugar.
Apart from substitution, you can also create Paleo diet recipes by reducing the sugar content of your holiday favorites. Oftentimes, you can reduce the sugar content to as much as a quarter of the original quantity required in the recipe. When doing this, it is important to take note if the sugar is used as a dry or wet component. This will help you make the right adjustments – for example, if sugar is used as a dry ingredient, you have more room for reduction; if sugar is used as a wet ingredient, you need to make other ingredients to compensate for the changes that you made.
Use Sweeteners Other Than Sugar
If you followed Paleo for a significant amount of time, most probably your taste buds are adjusted to the flavors of Paleo diet recipes (meaning your sweet tooth has toned down a bit). A good option would be to substitute sugar or honey with sweet fruits.
You can use fresh or stewed pureed fruit. Fruits that are ideal as a sweetener are applesauce, pearsauce, mashed banana, and reconstituted dates. Dried fruits such as raisins, papaya, pineapple, strawberries, figs, dates, apricots, cherries, and cranberries bring sweetness as well as interesting texture to any recipe. For recipes that actually need raisins, you can substitute these with other dried fruits. Chocolates are also a good substitute for sugar. Any chocolate other than 100% cocoa or cocoa power will contain sugar content. A good option for sweetener is semisweet chocolate.
Perfecting these Paleo diet recipes may take some time, but as more holidays come and go, you will get the proportions right. Better yet, you need not wait for the holidays to tweak your family recipes. You can do it now so that your cooking will be perfect this coming holiday. Happy cooking!
