I love tacos, but tacos don’t love me back.
Taco seasonings traditionally use nightshades like chilis and paprika to get that rich color and lovely, spicy flavor, but nightshades make me sick.
So I came up with my own, nightshade-free tacos.
Category: Cooking
Tomato-Free Tomato Sauce
“Tomato-free tomato sauce” sounds a lot like an oxymoron. It’s a bit like saying “chocolate-free chocolate chip cookies” — doesn’t make sense, right?
In this case, the idea of a “tomato” sauce refers to a puree of vegetables, made with Italian spices, that’s slightly sweet and slightly acidic.
The flavor is intended to mimic a typical Italian-style tomato sauce without using nightshades.
The Only Two Cookbooks You’ll Ever Need
I only have two cookbooks that I reference regularly (not counting the family recipe book). The first is Salt Fat Acid Heat by Samin Nosrat and the second is An Everlasting Meal by Tamar Adler. (Interestingly, both the authors worked at Chez Panisse before writing their books.)
Neither is an ordinary cookbook; instead, they’re both more like how-to guides for the kitchen. Between the two, they’ve got everything you need for a good meal.
Salt Fat Acid Heat
Salt Fat Acid Heat talks about the science of food and how adding each of the titular elements in different ways makes different meals.
You don’t just learn that you should salt your meat early before you cook it, you learn how it makes a difference in the food and why it’s important.
Knowing the “how” and “why” when cooking lets you improvise and teaches you what you need to know in order to consistently make meals that taste good by explaining what it is that makes food become meals.
Plus if you like science you’ll find it interesting — and you might recognize certain aspects, like the overview of osmosis and diffusion on page 29, from your high school biology class!
An Everlasting Meal
An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace looks at the more philosophical side of cooking and the process of cooking sustainably — using every last piece of the item so nothing goes to waste.
She doesn’t call it an eco-friendly book, but Adler wrote a book about cooking in an eco-friendly way.
She also shows that eco-friendliness doesn’t have to break the bank; the subtitle of the book is “Cooking with Economy and Grace,” and it’s inspired by a Depression-era cookbook.
The prose is elegant and it’s worth reading over and over again for that alone, but the recipes are also both inventive and delicious.
Takeaways
The two cookbooks both contain recipes, but more importantly, they tell you how to think about food and how to transform it into a meal (or two, or three). Local and in-season food is emphasized, and each discusses the ways your senses can help you in the kitchen.
Most importantly, each tells you that anyone can learn to cook good food, and that what you do with the principles inside each is up to you. There are no limits on where your culinary adventures can take you, they say, nor should there be. Armed with these two books, your imagination and the contents of your local grocery store are your only limits.
You can buy Salt Fat Acid Heat and An Everlasting Meal on Amazon. Your local bookstore will probably have Salt Fat Acid Heat too.
Ultimate Nightshade-Free Survival Guide
So you’ve decided to go nightshade-free. Congratulations!
Maybe you did an elimination diet and found you’re sensitive to nightshades, maybe you have an autoimmune issue and heard from a friend that cutting out nightshades helped them, or maybe you have a loved one who can’t eat them and you’re just wondering what that means for Thanksgiving dinner.
This article will serve as a primer on nightshades and going nightshade-free, and will be regularly updated with additional specific recipes (though all recipes on this blog will be nightshade-free).
Table of Contents:
— What is a nightshade?
— What isn’t a nightshade?
— Foods that have nightshades
— Nightshade-free cooking
— Nightshade-free spice and sauce substitutes
— Talking to other people about nightshades
Nightshade-Free Old Bay Seasoning Alternative
For those of you unfamiliar with it, Old Bay is a seasoning mix originally from Maryland.
It’s often used on crabs and shrimp or in seafood soups, though you can put it in or on pretty much anything — french fries and other snack foods are popular choices.
Last but certainly not least for our purposes, it’s made with red pepper flakes and paprika. A tin of Old Bay is a no-go for anyone going nightshade-free.
If you’re not much for seafood, you might be able to go your whole nightshade-free life without missing Old Bay. If you like seafood, however, or if you’re from an area where people use it liberally (I grew up about an hour’s drive from Baltimore, so my family always had a can in our pantry), you’ll want an alternative.
Nightshade-Free Chili
When I was growing up, my dad always made a big pot of chili once it got cold. He actually won a neighborhood contest for it once! Filled to the top of the massive stockpot with meat, beans, spices, and tomatoes, it was delicious… and, once I realized nightshades were exacerbating my health problems, off-limits.
I needed a nightshade-free chili, even though the name “chili” itself is a nightshade! I knew it wouldn’t be easy to find something similar that omits half the key ingredients.
I wasn’t going to let that stop me, though! Instead of swearing off eating it forever, I figured out how to make my own nightshade-free chili. It tastes like ‘regular’ chili but omits the ingredients I can’t have. Now, every fall, my dad and I both make pots of chili. They’re different, but both still good!