On Tuesday, I was invited to attend a “Cooking Without Oil” class at Whole Foods Lincoln Park as a part of the Plant Strong Challenge I’m participating in. Weeks 1 and 2 were all about eliminating meat and dairy from my diet and Week 3’s challenge was eliminating oil.
News flash: you don’t have to use oil to cook onions! If a pan is hot enough to make drops of water “dance”, onions can be added and if stirred frequently, the onion’s own “sweat” creates enough lubrication to not stick to the plan. This was mind boggling for me- it has never occurred to me to not heat EVOO in a pan and then throw in onion and garlic.
Next step: steam saute sweet potatoes.
Again, it has never occurred to me to do anything with a sweet potato other than bake it because it’s a raw potato and takes forever to cook, right? Wrong. Once the sliced garlic and onions were soft, diced sweet potatoes were added and with a few splashes of vegetable broth, the sweet potatoes were perfectly steamed and, well, sweet!
I recreated this meal at home the next night just to make sure it would be as delicious with me steering the boat pan. Totally was! At home, I made some wild rice and topped it with the sweet potato saute. Ryan’s reaction? “This tastes so…clean.” What a concept, right? That our food tastes clean? This cooking without oil business is on to something!
(photos via Homemade Mothering, one of the fantastic bloggers taking on this challenge with me!)