Adapting Recipes

One difficulty people come up against when they want to switch to a WFPB SOS-free way of eating is letting go of some of their favourite recipes. We get kind of attached to our favourite foods but they often have processed ingredients including salt, oil and sugar. So, is there any way we can "have our cake and eat it too?" Can we adapt our recipes to give us a similar dish made with whole plant foods and no sugar, oil or salt?

Over the years we’ve been finding ways to replace ingredients in some of our old favourites with WFPB SOS-free compliant ingredients. This is a way we've found to continue to enjoy the dishes we’ve loved for so long.

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It’s never possible to recreate a recipe exactly when you use different ingredients, but we have found ways to make them really similar and that we love just as much.

Here’s what we’ve found are good substitutes for the common ingredients that WFPB SOS-Free eliminates.

Sweeteners

We use dried fruit, dates or raisins usually, or sweet fruit like apples or bananas to sweeten our recipes now. These replace the processed sweeteners like sugar, maple syrup, molasses, etc. And if the solidity of the dried fruit doesn’t work well with the recipe we're changing, we use date paste.

To make date paste, add 1 cup pitted dates with 3/4 cup water to a blender and blend on high until smooth. Dates and date paste have a mild caramel flavour and raisins are a bit tangier so be aware that the taste of delicate recipes may change a bit.

How much to use:

Whole dates or raisins for sugar or maple syrup: Use 1 cup of dates or raisins for 1 cup of sugar and 3/4 cup dates or raisins for 1 cup of maple syrup. When replacing maple syrup add 1-2 tablespoons of water.

Date Paste or raisin paste is another option when the solidity of the whole fruit won’t work with the texture you want.

Date Paste/Raisin Paste for sugar or maple syrup: Use 1 1⁄2 cups of date or raisin paste for every 1 cup of sugar and 1 cup of date or raisin paste for every cup of maple syrup.

Date and raisin paste are less sweet than granulated sugar so the recipe may turn out a little less sweet, but as you eliminate sugar from your diet, your taste buds change and usually this decrease in sweetness is not a problem.

Also, date and raisin paste is wetter than sugar so we often reduce the liquid slightly, by 1–2 tablespoons.

Fat and Oil

Fat and oil are basically the same thing, only what we call fat is solid at room temperature and oil is liquid. Regardless of their state, they have the same amount of calories.

Fat and oil influence the texture, moisture and flavour of a recipe, keeping baked goods from crumbling, making them moist and rich tasting. To gain the texture and moisture that fat gives to baked goods, we replace it with apples, applesauce, bananas or cooked sweet potatoes 1 cup to 1 cup.

And for richness and moisture we use plant milks or avocado. we make plant milk by blending nuts or seeds in a blender on high until smooth. A ratio of 1 cup nuts to 1 cup water results in a heavy cream like consistency. 1 cup nuts to 3 cups water is more like milk. And there’s every thickness in between for the particular recipe you’re substituting for.

Eggs

To hold baked goods together like eggs do, we use flax or chia “eggs”. A flax or chia egg is 1 tablespoon of ground flax or chia to 3 tablespoons water. A chia egg creates a little firmer product in something like a pudding and flax a little softer.

Flour

We avoid using flour now because of the high amount of processing. Flour is a long ways from being a whole food and affects our bodies, and therefore our health, very differently.

In place of flour we use rolled oats, which are processed but only minimally. If we want a finer texture from the recipe than the coarse rolled oat will give, we’ll add the oats to a food processor to refine them more, but they're still more whole than flour.

In some recipes we replace the flour with cooked black beans, chickpeas or lentils. Keep in mind, because the cooked beans or lentils are moist, you need to adjust the liquid accordingly, usually 1-2 tablespoons.

Salt

Removing salt from recipes probably affects the taste more than any other change. The interesting thing is, when we eliminated salt in all of our food, our taste buds changed to where we tasted more flavours than before. We both agree that we like our food salt-free now better than we did with the added salt.

There are many salt free herb and spice mixtures on the market that can bring the flavour up so a dish doesn't taste flat without the salt. The main way we compensate for the lack of salt though is adding heat in the form of chili powder or flakes. Or we add some heat producing vegetables to the dish like ginger or jalapeño. We also add sweet instead of heat at times, like raisins.

These substitutions can affect cooking or baking time, so watch your dish as it cooks the first time so it doesn't overcook or undercook.

So, there you have it. Although the adapted recipes are never exactly like the originals, we find them equally satisfying and in some cases more so. Particularly in regards to how we feel after eating them!

If you've given up some of your old favourites to eat healthier meals, get creative, have some fun. Try adapting your old recipes with some of these other ingredients.

The recipe this week is for Squash Fries with a Creamy Fry Sauce. We use a butternut squash to make fries, which is wonderful. The moist, sweet flavour of the squash is delightful. And we think you'll like this new Creamy Fry Sauce to dip them in.

To your Amazing Health,
Connie and Bill