One of the newest companies I found when I went to the Celiac Awareness Tour in Dearborn was Massel. They make stocks, bouillons, and gravies----ALL gluten free! I'm sure you are wondering why you haven't heard of his company before now...I know that's what I was thinking. They are an Australian company and are being distributed through Kehe foods here in the United States.
They were giving out various samples at the Celiac Awareness Tour, but I took a stick of their beef bouillon cubes and one each of their beef, vegetable and chicken stocks. They also make low sodium products.
I've been using the bouillon cubes one at a time in a recipe or two. I used the beef stock to make a bean soup. We ate it all.....sorry, no pictures. It was pretty tasty though!
I used the chicken stock to make homemade chicken noodle soup, using up the rest of my
Quinoa spiral pasta that I bought at Trader Joe's. It was REALLY amazing. One of the small packets of concentrated stock makes 2 full quarts. It really made the difference in my soup, and it made so much there were leftovers for my husband's lunch the next day. Believe me, there were no complaints there! Made with fresh celery, carrots, and lots of red onion, it's the perfect thing to have on a crisp fall night.
Last night I attempted to make Beef Stew for the first time in my life. After making it, it doesn't seem all that hard, but it's one of those comfort foods that your grandma makes, and you assume it must be hard because it tastes so amazing. I "mostly" followed a recipe I found on
Allrecipes. (If you haven't used this site yet, you really should. It makes cooking allergy-free a LOT easier, a you can search for recipes based on ingredient, or more importantly the ingredients you DON"T want)
The
recipe called for only a tablespoon of flour to coat the beef, but I liberally poured some into a leftover disposable lunchmeat container and dredged the beef cubes in some Bob's Red Mill Brown Rice flour. After the beef and onions had a chance to brown, I added the vegetable stock. Immediately I was happy, as it smelled like hot Thanksgiving stuffing. I LOVE stuffing! I added extra water to the pot, although I don't think I added anywhere near 2 full quarts, as I wanted my stew to be thick.
After the meat stewed for about an hour, I added the vegetables, per the recipe. It called for celery, but I had finished that off the night before in the chicken soup, so I added mushrooms instead. That's fine with me, as I think mushrooms always seem to bring out the flavor of beef. So mushrooms, potatoes and carrots all go into the pot....
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| I have GOT to learn to take better pictures.... |
and out comes an AMAZING beef stew. My husband said it taste like Dinty Moore, only WAY Better. I also added a can of peas at the very end, to give it some more color. We each took a container of it with us to church, so we could eat with the kids at Intersection. And again, there was enough left over for my husband's lunch the next day. I hope he enjoyed it!
I hope that I can find Massel products on my local shelves soon. The concentrated stock is really quite amazing, and I would gladly buy it again...maybe to make cornbread stuffing! And an interesting note- all of these products are also VEGAN, which means that they do not actually contain any animal products. They also don't add any products that contain MSG's and do not use GMO ingredients. Cool!Labels: product review
