Favorite Paleo Recipes
05-28-2016, 04:51 PM
Most of what I eat would fall into paleo, but I don't really have a choice. I live way out there, and if I want to go to a restaurant I have to jump on a plane. There's a little store that sells the basics, but it is mostly junk food and the prices are insane. You can't afford to buy your food at the village stores!! You have to get it yourself.
I have a croc pot, a little pot for boiling water, and a cast iron Dutch oven. That's it for cooking. I have to make every single meal, otherwise I don't eat. It gets really tiring after a while, and when I go to town I go crazy and run up $60 lunch tabs eating out, sometimes 2 or 3 times a day. Or I'll go to a grocery store and just walk around for hours, looking at all the food and buying way too much. When you are deprived of a resource, it's crazy how you react to it when it's in abundance. It's a sensory overload.
The food changes with the seasons. Summer it's salmon (king and silvers) and bear, fall it's moose and duck, winter it's rabbit, spring is duck, goose, beaver, and caribou. Depending where you live, there will be different seasons / food available. I get tired of the same food over and over. Isn't there something in paleo about changing your diet with the seasons vs eating the same food over and over?? And if you were to ask me what tastes the best, it changes. I love the king salmon. I also love moose. Rabbit has the strongest taste (in a good way). And beaver is actually really good...so my favorite food changes all the time. I've had farm raised rabbit before and I didn't like it as much, and it tastes nothing like the wild rabbits I eat now. I attribute that to the type of food the wild rabbits eat in the winter- bark on willows and shrubs. Beaver in the spring tastes better than beaver in late fall. And black bear tastes best when there are lots of berries around. I've never had brown bear, and I hear it tastes like rotten meat (which is exactly what it eats). You lose that natural seasonal variance and taste variance when you eat farm raised food.
I like do two things- grind the meat and store it in small, easy to prepare meal-sized packages. I have a process where I've always got something thawing out in the fridge, and I can make a meal in 5 minutes. Nothing worse than wanting to have a quick meal and having to deal with a huge chunk of frozen meat. It's a bitch grinding all your meat, and it's and extra step in the whole process, but believe me it's worth it. Ground meat is easiest for me to thaw and cook, and I like mixing in the animal's fat (especially the thin lining from the stomach) so it tastes really good. The last moose I got I ground about a quarter of the meat with some fat...I should have ground the whole thing, it was so good! A quality grinder is heavy (maybe 50lbs or more) and will run you around $500+. I also have a light weight grinder off amazon, and I'm just waiting for that motor to burn out. It might be good for grinding a chicken once a year, but it can't take anything more than that.
I also use a pressure cooker for jars. You put the salmon or moose in the jars and cook it, and it's a great tasting, instant meal no matter where you are or where you go. I don't like to let the jars go over 1 year, but that stuff can last for years if done right. A pressure cooker for jars will run you about $300.
I don't use many spices. I use the fat. I like to taste the animal.
Depending on where you live and what is available, I would try and find bulk meat that you can get at wholesale prices. Are there farms nearby?? Goats, cows, sheep, pigs, chickens...see what you can get your hands on. Do you ever eat the organs and head meat? I like moose tongue, cheek, and nose. You could probably find beef tongue at a store, and if lucky you might be able to find pork jowl. If you can try and find heart, kidney, and liver. Moose kidney is my favorite of all the organs. Another thing to try is bone marrow. Here we cut the moose bones in 3 inch chunks, and you boil those in a soup or broth and it tastes amazing. You will have to look around, but you might be able to find soup bones at a store. If not, find a farmer and have them cut you some.
Time breakdown-
Getting food (days, up to two weeks)
Preparing, cutting, and storing food (days, up to a week)
Cooking and eating food (as fast as 5 minutes if ground, up to all day if using croc pot)
Last night I ate swan neck and swan gizzard cooked in the Dutch oven, and tonight I'm eating ground caribou. It's quick, just heat and eat!
