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September 8, 2023 is our first Cooking In Community session. I am very excited to work with a few neurodivergent home cooks to make a big, relatively easy meal that will produce leftovers.
We’re going to be cooking Nicole James of Heal Me Delicious’ Chicken and Pumpkin Soup. This is a quick rundown of some of the items I will be using during this session and some quick contemplations on substitutions. Ready?
Equipment Considerations:
I will be browning my meat in a cast iron skillet. Wait. Back up. I will be using a chef’s knife and a souped up SlapChop to process my alliums. Because that is the quickest way for me. Then, I will sauté the alliums in the cast iron, stirring with a silicone spatula, and then I will brown my ground meat in the cast iron.
I am not mincing ginger or garlic. My grocer has both pre-minced. I will be saving my energy on that task.
I lost my silicone handle cover, so I will be using a regular kitchen glove to carry the cast iron to my crockpot and add the meat. That crockpot will be lined with reusable crockpot silicone liner! Gonna keep my clean up simple, thank you very much. You could alternatively use a plastic liner.
Food Substitutions:
I have so much avocado oil. I caught a sale on Amazon and stocked up. So though the recipe calls for coconut oil to sauté the alliums and brown the meat, I will be using avocado oil. If I did not have avocado oil, I would use olive oil.
The recipe calls for ground chicken. I have and will be using ground turkey. I imagine beef would also be a suitable swap. If you are not keeping it AIP, those vegan meat crumbles would also be a good swap. If you are making the turkey swap, remember to add a tablespoon of fat to help the turkey along.
It is not pumpkin season here in Indiana. And Meijer’s don’t carry frozen pumpkin chunks. So I’m subbing butternut squash. I have access to both fresh chopped and frozen. I will likely use frozen because I already have some in my freezer. If neither pumpkin nor butternut squash were accessible, I might sub sweet potato or acorn squash perhaps. Sweet potato would change the flavor profile a little, but the recipe can support that change.
If you are keeping it AIP, you want to be careful any store-bought broths are compliant. It is easier to find AIP compliant broths at Whole Foods or to order from Amazon for me. If you want to be certain the broth you are using is compliant, you can input the individual ingredients into this wonderful online tool to get guidance. I will be using this broth. If you are vegan, I love this mushroom broth. Any bold, flavorful vegetable broth would work also.
Finding AIP compliant coconut milk is such a chore. Coconut milk should be coconut and water. But the majority of brands have some type of gum added as a thickener. Gums are not AIP compliant. I am going to link to a few brands I’ve ordered in the past. I generally have to order. The stores in my area, even the Whole Foods, carry coconut milks with gums. The one exception is Thai Kitchen‘s coconut milk. I can get this at Meijer for about $4 a carton.
I’m pretty confident I can get fresh lemongrass. But if something changes, I will have to skip this ingredient altogether. There is a lemongrass paste Meijer carries, but it has additives that are not AIP compliant. So if neither Meijer nor Whole Foods has fresh lemongrass I will have to miss out on the lemongrass. However, if your area doesn’t have fresh, maybe you can find a prepared version. And there is dried lemongrass, but I’ve never used it before. To convert the measurement, divide the fresh measurement by three. Use 1/3rd the fresh measurement for the dried measure.
For the leafy greens, I am going to use lacinato kale. I am going to chop it and add it to the crock at the start of the cooking process. It is too sturdy to do a stir in at the end deal. I would suggest doing this for any sturdy green. She mentions you can use spinach, kale, or chard and leaves room for whatever leafy green you have available. Anything other than spinach I would cook with everything else. The crock only runs for an hour on low. The sturdier greens will survive that short amount of time.
Thank You for Reading
That’s it! That’s the post.
What do you think of the recipe? Can you imagine any other substitutions that could be made if the ingredients are inaccessible in some way? Are you excited to be cooking together? Be sure the join link is on your calendar. And I’ll see you there.
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