Recommended Reading for Improved Eating
posted on
March 6, 2021
Now that we’ve talked about how all the resources we use to uncover how this clean food can benefit your body, we want to show you all the great ways to prepare it!
This short list digs into some of our favorite cookbooks, giving you a plethora of trusted and tasty recipes that can actually get you excited about clean eating (we promise there is WAY more than salad and steamed veggies out there!).
Practical Paleo: A Customized Approach to Health and a Whole-Foods Lifestyle by Diane Sanfilippo, BS, NC
To start us off, Practical Paleo gives readers full 30-day meal plans that are perfect for the busiest seasons of the year (which are soon upon us here at RHR!) because they allow us to pretty much forget about the “what’s for dinner” question.
The author also gives us just enough research to satisfy our knowledge-hunger. Sanfilippo makes the science readable, and the recipes delicious. With the “Getting Started with Paleo” chapter, she breaks down the chemical changes the body experiences when adopting the LCHF lifestyle, making this perfect cookbook to give new clean foodies. Additionally, it doesn’t just push the no-carb agenda. It gives practical and practicable advice for when you may actually need a little starch in your diet and shows you how to incorporate white foods in a healthy and balanced way.
Finally, the book rounds out with great resources related to fats and oils, healthy pantry-stocking, and other not-quite-cooking-related topics. All in all, it’s a staple for any clean eating bookshelf.
Sous Vide at Home: The Modern Technique for Perfectly Cooked Meals by Lisa Q. Fetterman
We’re still pretty new to Sous Vide, but we’re all in on this restaurant technique for cooking food to perfection.
Sous vide cooking is the ultimate for producing succulent, tender protein dishes and essentially involved vacuum sealing your protein with any variety of marinade, rub, or other seasonings, then utilizing a method of water bathing to cook evenly and to perfection. It allows the chef to bring the meat to the exact temperature and leave it there while they focus on more labor-intensive aspects of the meal preparation.
“Sous Vide at Home” includes more than 100 recipes that are perfect for first-time sous vide-ers, and covers everything from traditional proteins to vanilla ice cream. The author perfect illustrates her passion for the cooking method, making the reader more excited with each page. She fully explains all of the tools and equipment needed for cooking sous vide, and provides tips and tricks for the at-home chef. At the heart of the book, the well-organized recipes move from most basic to most advance throughout each section, and include “pro-tips” and “do-ahead strategies” to guide the at-home chef to sous vide perfection.
Beyond Bacon: Paleo Recipes that Respect the Whole Hog by Stacy Toth and Matthew McCarry
Who doesn’t love bacon?! It’s easily our favorite cut from our beloved hogs, but we know that they have a lot more to offer for our paleo, keto, and LCHF friends.
Authors Matthew McCarry and Stacy Toth embrace the whole hog and teach the readers of their pork-inclusive book about the versatility and health benefits of the other white meat. A favorite feature of any book in the RHR library, they also don’t shy away from educating the readers about the science of pork, and how, by using the whole hog, we’re participating in affordable and environmentally sustainable food sourcing.
The appreciation the authors share for pigs is evident in the carefully crafted recipes that never result in the always-feared “dry pork dish.” They educate the reader on every page, and cover smoking, bar-b-que, stews, chops, curing, frying, and even lard-rendering and desserts. And it’s not just us here at RHR that love this book – our go-to resource Chris Kessler also reviewed the book and gave it his stamp of approval!
Clean Eats: Over 200 Delicious Recipes to Reset Your Body’s Natural Balance and Discover What It Means to Be Truly Healthy By Alejandro Junger
Dr. Alejandro Junger follows up his two New York Times bestsellers Clean and Clean Gut with this beautiful and thoughtful cookbook that helps readers achieve the health benefits he has researched for years and that truly follows his mantra, “food is medicine.”
Simple and easy, the recipes in Clean Eats are perfect for anyone seeking to make improvements to their diet. It doesn’t gear specifically toward a particular lifestyle, aiming instead to introduce healthful choices to readers who are just looking for good, clean food to fuel their bodies. Even more, it starts off with a full and accessible introduction that explains the theories and benefits of clean eating in a way that allows even the move novice to the lifestyle to embrace and understand the concepts.
Recipes from the Farm: The RHR Cookbook
Ok – so we aren’t master chefs (and a few of these recipes may edge a little toward comfort food) but we’re excited to share a handful of our favorite, family-approved recipes. From Sunday dinners with Simple Roast Chicken to game day Not Your Average Burgers, we’re excited to show you how we’ve used our product to make delicious, good-for-us food.
It doesn’t always have to be fancy, and you don’t need a laundry list of ingredients to make our meat delicious. Whether you follow our RHR favorites or find your new go-to in one of the cookbooks we recommend above, we hope you do it with a lot of pride and with excited anticipation of the meal you’re about to enjoy.
Eat well, friends!