Thickening Revisted

I got a chance to use the Konjac flour today and it worked pretty well. I made a stir fry and used about 1/4 tsp of the flour. I mixed it with water first. It turns the water to a gel. Then you scoop that gel into the liquid part of your stir fry, as you're boiling it. In the future I might use 3/8th of a tsp as it seemed like the thickening power of 1/4 tsp wasn't quite as much as I needed. But I think this might end up being my favorite stir fry thickener so far!

Coconut Flour dalliances

I've been toying with coconut flour again. I made my sister a muffin from coconut flour, egg, lemon juice, sweetener and baking powder and she loved it. As usual I didn't measure, I just guessed. So I didn't have a recipe to give her. Now I'm trying to nail down a recipe and I can't duplicate it.

Well, sooner or later I'm bound to get it right and when I do I will post it here.

The Thickening Thicket

I'm back to experimenting with thickeners. My last stir-fry I tried to skip the cornstarch and used some not/Sugar instead, which is a mixture of vegetable gums. It got thick when I mixed it with water but promptly lost it when I poured it into the stir fry juices.

I have some xanthan gum and haven't tried that. But I stumbled upon something I hadn't considered! Glucomanan flour or Konjac flour. It's a type of plant sometimes referred to as a yam. I bought it a couple years ago thinking it was something I could use as flour and I had awful gastrointestinal consequences from that. But turns out, it really isn't something you should use like that, but more like a substance to create a gel or thicken stuff.

Here's an article out using Konjac flour to thicken things:
The low carb thickener - Konjac flour

So back to the stir-fry drawing board!

Stir Fry Crazy

All of a sudden I can't get enough Chinese style stir-fry. Broccoli in particular makes me crazy when it has been stir-fried. I found a recipe for a stir-fry sauce that I absolutely love. It does go out-of-bounds on the Paleo front a bit but the meat and veggies in a stir fry are absolutely positively Paleo.

This reminds me very much of House Special Chicken from Pickup-Stix.

1/4 Cup Wheat Free Tamari Sauce
1/4 Cup of Water
1/4 Cup (equivalent) of a sweetener (or honey)

Mix these 3 ingredients and marinate your meat (I usually use chicken).

Now I feel like veggies and meat used in a stir-fry should be the cooks choice. I generally use broccoli, mushroom, onions and whatever else I have on hand, like Bok Choy.

I like to stir-fry the broccoli and perhaps mushrooms and onions before anything else because they take awhile to get to the desired doneness. Something tender like boy choy should be last. Then I remove those from the wok and stir-fry the chicken (lift it out of the marinade with a slotted spoon, save the marinade). Then I add in the tender veggies and put back the pre-cooked veggies and fry very briefly.

Next you want to take about 2 Tablespoons of Cornstarch (yes, NOT paleo, but only 7 carbs each, and you probably won't use it all) and mix with enough water to get it liquid.

Now pour the marinade into the wok and when it begins to boil add enough of the cornstarch solution to get it thick enough to suit you.

Depending on how much meat/veggies you use, this will make 4 servings or so. So 1-2 Tbl of cornstarch divided over all those servings isn't bad carb-wise.

One could try using gums and I will give that a shot at some point and report back. But for now, the cornstarch seems like a minor transgression.

Still stuck on the egg crepes!

I often make these for breakfast and lately for dessert as a bed time snack. If I have any mostly-paleo lemon curd on hand, I might top them with that!

Bird Fat

I am unafraid of animal fats. Why? Well, for one they don't really cause any lipid issues on a low carb diet. In fact, they raise the amount of good cholesterol. For another, I don't really buy into the whole lipid hypothesis of heart disease, in it's present form. Read Gary Taubes "Good Calories, Bad Calories" if you want a good overview of the source of my skepticism. This topic has become dogmatic though. Many people have invested their careers, reputations and fortunes in promoting the idea that fat is bad or animal proteins are harmful to humans. Arguing with them is like trying to use science to prove God does or does not exist. It just doesn't work. But everyone is free to choose their phat philosophy. And my philosophy is that fatliness is next to godliness.

I absolutely love duck and goose fat and I cook those birds just to rob them of their fat. It is great tasting fat. Veggies cooked in it are just amazing tasting. Also these birds eat a lot of grasses and probably insects, both are great sources of omega-3 fatty acids, so it wouldn't surprise me if duck and goose are higher in those fatty acids. But outside of my suspicion they're very healthful forms of fat, I think they're vastly delicious.

Do yourself a favor, roast a duck or goose and save its fat for cooking!

Here's a recipe that should get you started, I use this method and it works great. I skim the fat from the pan and save it.

Crisp Roast Duck Recipe

Steak Tutorial

I was steak cooking newbie but found some good tips online and finally made a little tutorial about how Nancy Does Steak!

Step 1:
Preheat a cast-iron skillet on high heat for a few minutes. Don't need to add any oil or anything. Turn the oven onto 375.

Step 2:
Prepare the steak. I "butter" my steak with goose fat (see ingredients picture below) and then use coarse kosher salt and cracked pepper, and plenty of both. The reason kosher salt is necessary is that it has big spikey crystals that will stick to the meat better than table or sea salt and that helps the meat form a crust (according to Alton Brown). If you don't have goose fat you could use another fat with a high smoke point like peanut oil. Don't use butter though, it burns easily.
(Look at all that goose fat! I had that whole container totally full from cooking one goose.)

Step 3:
Plop your "buttered" steak into the pan and let it sear on each side for 2-3 minutes. On this steak I went for 3 minutes. Turn on your vent fans, open your windows! You might want to use a splatter screen if you used a lot of fat.

Step 4:
Turn it over to the other side and sear it. About the time you're done searing your oven should be up to temperature (at least mine is).

Step 5:
Lift the pan off the stove-top (use a pot holder, it is HOT!) and put it into the oven.


How long to cook? It seems to depend on the thickness of the meat and the size of the steak. This one was 9 minutes to be pretty rare. You can learn to judge the doneness by poking the steak with a finger. If it feels mushy and soft, it is very rare. The firmer it is, the more done it is. I often like leaving it a little rarer because I eat half of the steak, next day I re-heat the leftovers and put it on a big green salad and I don't want it overcooked from the reheat.

Step 6:
Let the steak rest for 3 minutes and tip the platter so the juices run off. You want that "crust" you made while searing to stay as crunchy as possible. I'd suggest using a bigger plate than I did.

Optional Step 7:
Throw something like spinach or another vegetable in the pan and use the left over heat to cook it. You'll get vegetable mixed with yummy fat, salt and pepper with that lovely steak flavoring.




Step 8:
Enjoy! There's a side of avocado with mayonnaise if you're wondering about that green/white blob.

Everything I know about cooking steak came from these two sources:


Guide to cooking perfect steak
Alton Brown's steak method (video)