Thanksgiving Recipes

With Thanksgiving right around the corner, I realize many of you are looking for great Thanksgiving ideas. Many of the traditional recipes can be altered to become allergy-friendly, or Sophie-Safe as we say at my house. Please find my tips on recipe modification, ideas on turkey stuffing, and new pie crust recipe helpful as you prepare for the biggest food holiday of them all! Look for new ideas coming up on my blog as well (choose the Emily's Blog link to the left.)

Quick Tips on Modification

1. Cook in oil instead of butter.
When a recipe directs that you saute something in butter, a good flavor can generally also be achieved by substituting a cooking oil that you like, such as olive oil.

2. Use gluten-free bread crumbs, potato chips, or crushed dry cereal instead of regular bread crumbs.
Often the same crunchy topping effect can be achieved by using something else that is crunchy--use your imagination and try to think about what goes with the taste of the dish.

3. Substitute rice milk or chicken stock for milk.
Rice milk works well in a 1 to1 ratio as a milk substitute in almost any recipe. In savory recipes, like mashed potatoes, you might also try chicken or vegetable stock as a substitute.

4. Make a sample batch.
When you are making something with modifications, it might not work perfectly on the first try. It is best to give yourself time to do it 2 or 3 times before you have to present the casserole at Aunt Fannie's giant Thanksgiving dinner.

Turkey Stuffing

One of the most common questions I get at this time of year is about how to make allergy-friendly stuffing. There are several options that I can see quickly.

One is to make my cornbread recipe (scroll down), and then make it into a cornbread stuffing. You can simply plug it into any cornbread stuffing recipe you find online or in a cookbook.

A second option is to look at rice-based stuffings, such as a wild rice mushroom recipe, and adjust it if necessary to work with allergies.

The third option is to use gluten-free bread cubes, available at most health food stores and some traditional grocery stores as well, and substitute them into a regular old stuffing recipe.

Corn Bread

1 ¼ cup    corn meal
1 ¼ cup    oat flour
½ cup       sugar
2 tsp.         baking powder
½ tsp.        baking soda
½ tsp.        salt
1 ¼ cup    rice milk
3 tbsp.       oil
1 tbsp.       apple cider vinegar

 Mix all of the dry ingredients. Add rice milk, oil, and vinegar and mix well. Pour into a greased 8x8 pan. Bake at 400°F for 25 minutes. Serves 9.

Please check back for updated information, and if you need more Thanksgiving recipe ideas, feel free to email me at emily@sophiesafecooking.com

A couple of years ago, my family and I made a turducken for Thanksgiving. It's both extremely delicious and extremely time-intensive, but I have somehow allowed myself to be talked into doing it again! We used the recipes on this great website:

http://www.thesalmons.org/lynn/turducken.html
We, of course, modified everything so that it would work for Sophie, but the stuffing recipes on the Salmon's page are the ones we modified.

Pie Crusts

After dinner, everyone looks for pies to come out. Pie crust has long been an issue for me. I tried several different ideas, with varying levels of success, only to find that Sophie refused to eat any of them (which defeats the purpose, don't you think?!). A few weeks ago, I made another attempt, a new variation of a recipe I made up several months ago. The result was impressive (at least in my mind!) and everyone ate it. It's still in testing stages, but I hope you'll decide to try it out--and let me know how it goes!

Pie Crust
¼ C shortening or margarine
½ C sugar
2 C oat flour
¼ C rice milk

Use a pastry blender to blend the shortening and sugar until it looks like crumbs. Add oat flour and mix well. Finally add rice milk and mix until the dough sticks together in a ball. The consistency of the dough should be similar to sugar cookie dough.

Place the ball of dough on a surface dusted with oat flour. Roll it into a circle approximately 12 inches in diameter. Gently lift the crust into the pie pan. Trim edges. If you need to precook your pie crust, bake it for 12 to 15 minutes in a 350 oven.

When I most recently made this recipe, I filled it with cherries mixed with sugar and cornstarch (6 cups cherries, 1 ½ cups sugar, ¼ cup cornstarch). Since the filling was rather wet, but the pie needed to cook with the filling in it, I only pre-cooked the crust for about 7 minutes. Immediately after removing the crust from the oven, I filled it with the cherry mixture and popped it back in for about an hour, until the filling was bubbly in the center. It turned out pretty well.

The other little tip that might be helpful is that when you roll your dough out, it is easiest if you roll it onto a flexible, movable surface, such as a Silpat or some plastic wrap. That way, when you've got it the size you want, you can more easily move the dough into the pie plate. Another option is to roll it on a hard surface (dusted with oat flour, of course) and when you're all done, place a piece of plastic wrap over the dough. Then pick up the edge of the dough (and plastic wrap) and roll it onto your rolling pin so that the plastic wrap is toward the rolling pin. You will find that you can simply unroll your dough onto the pie plate.

Enjoy!

©2011 Sophie Safe, LLC - Sophie Safe FoodGuide