Chili Recipe and Vegan Diet Blog

The diet that I have chosen to follow for a week is a vegan diet. I chose to try this diet as I enjoy eating and cooking plant based foods as well as that I think the meat and dairy industries are inhumane as well as harmful to the environment. Some common ingredients I used this week were beans, fruits and vegetables, pasta, vegetable broth, nuts and beyond ground meat. Some snacks that I ate this week were applesauce, crackers, nuts, fruit, pretzels and hummus. A few of the meals I made and ate during the week were vegan bolognese, potato soup, broccoli soup, vegetable stir fry, fruit smoothies, peanut butter sandwiches, and Chili which I will be sharing the recipe for. Overall I enjoyed my diet for the week and didn't have too much trouble keeping up with it. One thing that I definitely missed was eggs as I eat them almost every day. I stayed kind of safe and went with what I knew was vegan instead of having to look at the ingredients of something that I wasn't sure about, but if I was to choose to continue I would have to end up looking through ingredients fairly often. I don't know if this is a coincidence or not but I noticed I ate a lot more fruit this week, like bananas and apples and smoothies. I didn't notice feeling any different during the week from how I was eating but I think that if I did this for longer I might feel better overall. I think that maintaining a vegan diet as a chef is definitely manageable and if anything it requires even more creativity and innovation when cooking. I think some advice I would give someone who wants to try a vegan diet is to try to create as much of your food as possible and avoid eating excess processed foods. I think I would continue this diet or even try to incorporate more plant based meals into my current diet. The common food allergy I have chosen is a nut allergy as nuts are a big part of the vegan diet. For someone who is allergic to nuts they aren't able to have a lot of dairy replacements as they are usually made from nuts but oak milk or coconut milk would be a great option. Since the person cannot have nuts it is important that they eat a lot of beans and seeds as these are great nutritious replacements.

Vegan 3 Bean Chili Recipe (4 servings)

Ingredients

1 onion, small dice

3 cloves of garlic, minced

1 lime, juiced

3.5oz chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, finely chopped

8oz Beyond ground meat

12oz can of corn, drained

19oz can of black beans, drained

16oz can of navy beans, drained

16oz can of kidney beans, drained

28oz can of diced tomatoes

0.5oz chili powder

0.2oz ground cumin

Salt, to taste

Pepper, to taste

Nutritional yeast, to taste (optional)

½ avocado, diced (optional)

¼ bunch cilantro, chiffonade (optional)

Water

Instructions

1. Gather ingredients. Dice onion, mince garlic, juice lime and chop chipotles. In the same colander, drain beans and corn.

2. Cook the Beyond ground meat in a large pot over medium heat. Once brown add onions and sweat. Then add garlic and cook for 2 minutes. Add cumin and chili powder and cook for 2 minutes. Add chipotles and cook for another minute.

3. Add tomatoes, beans and corn. Add ½ to 1 cup of water depending on how much liquid is in the pot already. It should be filled with liquid submerging everything in the pot.

4. Bring to a boil and then reduce to a simmer for 30 minutes, stirring every few minutes.

5. After 25 minutes, dice avocado and chop cilantro.

6. Once reduced to desired consistency add salt and pepper to taste.

7. Serve in a bowl, garnish with nutritional yeast, cilantro and diced avocado.

All About Vacuum Sealing Machines! - Innovate BLOG

The innovation I have chosen to research is vacuum sealing machines. Vacuum sealing machines are a very helpful and useful tool when working in a kitchen. Prior to the machines invention, vacuum sealing was done to protect the food of families and soldiers that had gone off to war. German engineer Karl Busch, invented the first industrial sized vacuum sealer in 1963 and now they are a staple seen in most professional kitchens all around the world. Vacuum sealing is the process of removing the oxygen from the food, to make it last much longer. The reason for this is because when oxygen is prevalent, microorganisms and bacteria can grow, causing the food to mold or go bad, but when the oxygen is removed this either doesn’t happen or takes much longer time to happen. The food is placed in specific bags and placed into the machine, when the lid is closed the oxygen will be taken out of the bag and you will be left with a tightly sealed bag of food, with all of the oxygen sucked out. Nowadays, vacuum sealing has manual settings, touch screens, double or triple chambers and come in multiple different sizes. This innovation directly has helped me because we use these nearly every day in the restaurant I am working at and it makes us able to cook large batches of food and seal and freeze it until later use. Without this, we would be making smaller batches more often which takes much more time than making a large batch, putting the food into bags and sealing and freezing them. While vacuum sealing is great for solid foods, it can also be done for sauces, purees or other liquids. Using these machines requires someone to be filling the bags, placing them in the machine and closing the lid, meaning it isn’t automatic, but doesn’t need a lot of work to get the job done. Vacuum sealing machines are a very innovative product and have changed how cooks all around the world safely store their food.

1st photo from:

https://omcan.com/product/turbovac-heavy-duty-vacuum-packaging-machine-with-13-seal-length-and-16-m%C2%B3-vacuum-pump/

2nd photo from: my time at The Chefs House, we were marinating and vacuum sealing pineapple for our Adobo.

Work cited:

Karl Busch (engineer). (2014, April 18). Retrieved November 17, 2021, from https://second.wiki/wiki/karl_busch_ingenieur.

Becky. (2021, March 4). The history of vacuum packing. First Food Machinery. Retrieved November 17, 2021, from https://www.firstfoodmachinery.co.uk/history-vacuum-packing/.

Top Sirloin Blog + Beef & Broccoli Stir Fry

The cut of meat I have chosen is top sirloin. Top sirloin comes from the short loin on the top back muscles of a cow. It is deep red in colour and sometimes has a fat cap attached. Top sirloin is flavourful and is also pretty cheap and accessible which makes it a good option if you don't want to spend too much. It's best cooked on a grill or seared in a pan, and it can get very tough if overcooked, so it cooks very quickly and is best cooked rare to medium (120F-140F) depending on how you like. It doesn't have as much marbling as other cuts but it still has enough to be beefy and flavourful. I chose this cut because I wanted to make a stir fry and top sirloin was a cheap, tender and quick cooking cut which works well for the dish. Prime beef is the highest quality you will find here in Canada and has the most marbling which leads to a great juicy flavourful cut of meat. Cows have many great flavourful cuts of

meat that all require different cooking techniques to maximize tenderness and flavour. To best utilize this cut it should be cooked from 120F-140F and no more, or the meat will shrink more than it has and lose juice and flavour. The top sirloin I bought was $24/kg and was already cut into strips with the fat cap removed. I paid $10.17 for 0.420kg. I don't love buying it pre cut, but with this I do not pay for the fat that is removed. The recipe I have chosen is a Beef & Broccoli Noodle Stir Fry in a sweet, umami soy sauce with a bit of heat. This dish showcases the top sirloin very well, which brings lots of flavour all around. The recipe is as follows:

Ingredients:

140g broccoli

92g raw egg noodles

165g top sirloin, sliced

2 cloves garlic, minced,

5ml oil

20ml soy sauce

5ml sesame oil

1g Garlic powder

1g black pepper

1g chili flakes

10g brown sugar

10g chopped cilantro

2g sesame seeds

Salt to taste

1. Process beef if needed, chop broccoli into even bite sized pieces, mince garlic and chop cilantro.

2. Boil water and add noodles. Cook for 2 minutes and drain.

3. Combine soy sauce, sesame oil, garlic powder, black pepper, chili flakes and brown sugar.

4. Add broccoli to a hot pan over medium heat and cook for 2 minutes. Add garlic and a tablespoon of prepared sauce and cook for another few minutes until fairly tender. Remove broccoli when cooked.

5. To a new pan, add oil and heat until very hot.Season beef with salt and pepper and add to pan and sear 1 minute on each side. Remove when cooked.

6. Add noodles and broccoli to pan and fry noodles. Add sauce, then add beef finally before serving.

7. Plate and garnish with cilantro and sesame seeds