There are many foods that can be used to thicken gravies, soups, and sauces. I feel like I should be a food scientist instead of a dietitian to know what is best for each situation. Nevertheless during this adventure, I have used instant potatoes, cornmeal and rice flour when I ran out of cornstarch and now that the white flour is running low. Wheat flour could also be used but would give a little more course product. Today I used rice flour to thicken the ham drippings. It made a slightly gritty and full bodied gravy. No one complained because any gravy was better than plain instant potatoes. Eggs are also used to thicken many products. I substituted 1 tsp of flour mixed with 2 tsp water in the Alfredo sauce a few weeks ago. Many recipes just leave the thickening agent out.
Breakfast: Easter Baskets
Snack: Hummus on wheat bread with margarine. Children were hungry at 11:00 but we weren't eating lunch for another 2 hours. They were willing to try the hummus and liked it. I froze three quarts of garbanzo beans cooked in the pressure cooker. We'll pull those out to make more hummus.
Lunch: Ham, mashed potatoes, gravy, corn and sprouts for salad.
Dinner: Pork Fried Rice: 6 cups cooked rice, 1 cup cooked diced pork, 1/2 cup fresh frozen green peas, 2 TBS reconstituted carrots, and 1/2 cup chopped green onion from the garden, 1/2 cup soy sauce to flavor. Yea! another meal done!
Now to prepare for Easter Sunday -
You can also grind up your beans as fine as possible and add in small amount it will thicken slower but it works
ReplyDeleteWhole wheat flour ground to a pastry flour will act a lot more like white flour than "regularly" ground wheat flour.
ReplyDeleteWe have been living off only food storage since January 1st as well. White bean flour is a GREAT thickener! Better than cornstarch or white flour. Even after we are done with this food storage experiment, I will still keep white bean flour in the freezer to use as a thickener.
ReplyDeleteJust grind up white beans in your wheat grinder to get the flour.