Cooking With Coconut
You can eat it, you can cook with it, and you can soften your skin with it! As an ointment it's antibacterial, soothes pain, moisturizes, and is even a good make-up remover! As a food, it raises your metabolism by 25% to help you loose weight, gives you more energy, protects your cells from free radicals, contains lauric acid (a main component in human breast milk) which makes it antibacterial and anti-viral and enhances the immune system. It also tastes good (just like coconut), and extra virgin coconut oil can be purchased easily from most health food stores. After thoroughly researching coconut oil, I decided to incorporate it into my diet to help battle a thyroid-related health condition (my doctors are stunned by my new test results) but I ran into a problem when it came to consuming the oil. Coconut oil tastes great on anything sweet and anything that could benefit from a slight coconut flavoring or aftertaste (delicious on raisin bread, french toast, cookies, brownies, etc.) but if you want to cook something like chicken or vegetables, you'll be pleased to know that I stumbled on a way to neutralize the coconut flavor. Just add a little lemon or lime and you can use it to cook anything. The following are some really easy recipes I use very often and you are welcome to use too.
Sauteed Asparagus
Melt a spoonful of extra virgin coconut oil in a frying pan and add asparagus tips. Dust the asparagus with garlic. Add some lemon or lime, pepper and sea salt. Cook on high heat and stir so the spices cook and the asparagus browns. Once browned, it's ready to serve! For softer asparagus, continue to cook on low heat after browning.
1)Wrap potatoes in foil and bake until soft.
2) Place them in a pot and mash with a fork
3)Add a few tablespoons of extra virgin coconut oil and stir.
4) Stir in1/2 cup of rice milk
5) Add water as needed to moisten the mixture
6) Continue to stir as needed until the potatoes are fluffy
7) You can also add some paprika, salt, and pepper.
Lubricate the pan with extra virgin coconut oil, brown the chicken on medium to high heat and add some lemon or lime juice along with vegetables and sea salt. Brown the onions in a separate pan before adding and add fresh sliced mushrooms.
More Recipes
In the following are some coconut oil recipes I compiled from other websites. (Links to their parent sites are credited at the bottom of the page.)
Ingredients:
2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1/4 cup unsweetened, finely shredded coconut
1/4 cup ground flax seeds
1 egg, beaten
2 tablespoons virgin coconut oil
4 cups mixed greens
Directions:Rinse the chicken and pat dry; cut into strips, and set aside. Mix shredded coconut and ground flax seeds together on a dinner plate. In a small bowl, beat the egg, and dip the chicken strips in the beaten egg, then roll each chicken strip in the coconut-flax mixture. Melt coconut oil in a frying pan. Place chicken strips in hot oil; they should sizzle when placed in the pan. Sauté over medium heat until crispy on the outside. Turn after about 2 minutes and brown the other side of each chicken strip for another 2 minutes, or until completely opaque in the center. When done, remove chicken strips from pan and cool on paper towels.
Serve over a bed of mixed greens with Lemon Vinaigrette or your favorite dressing.Serves 2
Nutritional Breakdown Per Serving: 340 Calories; (23% from Fat); 9g Fat, 58g Protein; 6g Carbohydrate; 4g Dietary Fiber; 237mg Cholesterol; 181mg Sodium.
This is a quick breakfast you can drink on the go!
Ingredients:1 cup Coconut Milk or 1 13.5-ounce can coconut milk or 1 cup Almond Milk
1-2 tablespoons protein powder (goat protein, whey, or rice protein)
1 tablespoon virgin coconut oil
1 tablespoon ground flax seeds
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
1/4 teaspoon stevia powder
8-10 ice cubes
Directions:Place all ingredients but ice in a blender and process at high speed until well combined. Add ice after the coconut oil is blended so that it won’t clump. You may use more or less ice, depending on how cold you like a smoothie.
Serves 2
*13.5 fl. oz. coconut milk yields 7 gm carbs or 3.5 grams per serving. Packaged almond milk yields about 8 gm/carbs per cup.
Nutritional Breakdown Per Serving: 310 Calories (85.8% from Fat); 32g Fat 4g Protein; 8g Carbohydrate; 4g Dietary Fiber; 0mg Cholesterol; 27mg Sodium.
# One 14 oz. Can of coconut milk
# 8 oz. Of heavy whipping cream
# 2 oz. Live Coconut Oil
# 1 Tablespoon of vanilla
# 1/4 teaspoon of Stevia
Mix all ingredients together and freeze in an ice cream freezer. (Or you can just put it in the freezer and stir occasionally to keep it from getting too hard.)
Credits
livecoconutoil.com
; nutiva.com ;
the Coconut
Diet book by Cherie Colbom
For more information about the health benefits from Extra Virgin
Coconut Oil, search with the key words "Extra Virgin Coconut Oil"
in the google search!