Chia Power

Vegan Chia Seed Egg Replacer

My daughter has been baking vegan cookies lately and told me that this works fine. From the website, Vegan Baking:

This recipe makes the equivalent of 1 egg.

3 Tablespoons water
1 Tablespoon white chia seed meal

You basically mix the two together well and let it sit until the gel forms. Go to the website for more details.

There's no reason not to use black chia seeds, and one of the commentors says you can even mix the chia meal in with your dry ingredients and add water to the whole mix. I'm not so sure about that.

 

Chia Crunch Cookies

Recipe is here.

Clean Eating

Tiffany of the Gracious Pantry has a wonderful food blog that I'm going to start following!

She's got lots of recipes containing chia seeds including this interesting approach to making strawberry-chis seed jam!

 

Chic Energy Bites

Pulse dried fruit, nuts, and chia seed in your food processor and out come these.

Recipe is here.

Kids Cook USA

I am reblogging this from the wonderful Kids Cook USA blog.

Back in 2010, nine-year-old twins, Georgia and Michael, collected and posted 1000 healthy recipes from children around the country. Here's a healthy raw vegan contribution from the Roll Kids.)

CHIA SEED PUDDING

by The Roll Kids

(Tyler,14 Trapper,13 Mathis, 6 and Jaya, 2)

What's Chia Seed Anyway?

Chia seeds are known to be the "runner" food of the Aztecs. They are packed with protein. This recipe features chia seeds and is a raw vegan pudding that is great brain food. We often make it the night before a school exam. We eat it chilled in the morning for breakfast.

 

Ingredients

2 tbsp raw cacoa powder

4 tbsp raw honey

8 tbsp chia seeds (black)

1 medium-sized avocado

2 tbsp organic coconut oil

2 cups filtered water

 

Directions

Put chia seeds in a small bowl with filtered water stir for three to five minutes until they become gelatinous (like Jello). In a food processor, add chia seed and water mixture, honey, avocado, cacoa powder, and coconut oil. Process for 3 minutes, stopping to scrape down the sides of the bowl. Adjust honey and cacoa powder to taste. Pour into individual serving bowls and chill (not you, the pudding). Serve cold and enjoy!

Chia Seed Salad Dressing

½ cup chia gel (1/2 cup water with 2 tsps of chia seed. Stir and let sit 15 minutes)

Add ¼ cup olive oil, 1 tsp lime juice and 1/3-1/2 cup vinegar (to taste) along with 1-2 minced garlic cloves.
Add 1 tsp mustard and about a teaspoon of dried herbs…I used tarragon and basil.

Then you just go crazy with the immersion blender.

Dressing keeps for up to 2 weeks in the refrigerator.

 

Chia Chips?

I haven't tried this recipe, from Amie Valpone of the Healthy Apple,  

but it looks easy and delicious. Please leave me a comment if you try it.

 

Ingredients

• 1/3 cup chia seeds
• Gluten-free or Whole Grain tortillas
• 2 Tbsp. nutritional yeast
• 1 Tbsp. grain mustard
• 1 Tbsp. lemon juice
• Sea salt and pepper, to taste
• Dash of chili powder
• Olive Oil

Directions

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
• Spread tortillas in a single layer on a nonstick baking sheet lined with parchment paper.
• In a bowl, combine chia seeds, chili powder, sea salt, pepper, nutritional yeast, mustard and lemon juice; mix well.
• Slice tortillas into triangle shapes.
• Brush each tortilla with olive oil and sprinkle mixture over triangle pieces.
• Bake for 5-10 minutes or until tortillas are brown and crispy.
• Enjoy dipped into guacamole, Greek plain yogurt or salsa!

Chia Recipe Links

Chia Sunrise Bars by Heather

Gluten Free Almond Brownies by Joanna in Portland.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Chia Chips by Amie Valpone

Several Salba recipes: Lasagna, hummus, muffins from the Saturday Evening Post.

Raw Vegan Waldorf Salad with Apple Chia Dressing  by Joanne of Foods for Long Life.

If Popeye Ate Oatmeal in Minneapolis.

These links all date from 2009--- I originally listed 15 links, and just now deleted the 9 links that no longer worked. But I'm sure there are many many more recipes out there..... YOUR SUGGESTIONS ARE MOST WELCOME.

Superfood Scramble!

This has got to be the best way to eat chia seeds AND the best way to enhance your scrambled eggs.

My recipe:

First, prepare a thick chia gel: Add 1/4 cup of chia seeds to 1.5 cups of water. Stir several times over the next 10 minutes to break up any clumps. This may be made in advance and kept in the fridge for up to 2 weeks.  (I make and store mine in a shaker jar.)

Now, prepare your scrambled eggs: For  2 servings, use 3 eggs and add about 1/4 cup of chia gel, as pictured above. Whisk together. Cook as usual.

Sometimes I like to add whatever I can find in the fridge: mushrooms and cheeses or spinach, tomatoes, onions, peppers. I saute the veggies first in a little olive oil, then add the eggs, stirring occasionally, then melt in some cheese at the end. Maybe this is more of a frittata than a scramble. You can invent your own.

Nutrition data:

When you replace some of the egg with chia seed gel, you improve the nutritional value of your scrambled eggs:

For each chia-enhanced 2-egg serving you get:

25% reduction in cholesterol

1 gram of saturated fat is replaced by 1 gram of omega-3 fatty acids

a bonus of 1.6 grams of dietary fiber 

P.S. The chia seeds improve the texture of scrambled eggs, and don't change the flavor at all.

Chia Mayonnaise

We've had lots of home-grown tomatoes which we like to eat with real mayonnaise. Unfortunately, these calories can add up: one tablespoon has about 100 calories, most of which comes from fat. (Mayonnaise, if you make it yourself, is really just a mixture of raw egg yolk, vegetable oil, vinegar, and salt.)

So today, I mixed chia gel 1:1 with mayonnaise and added a little extra salt. The texture was perfect, and the taste delicious. (Even though it looks a little like frog's eggs.)

MORE: I copied the write-up below from a now defunct blog entitled "Eat This."

Chia Gel to Extend and Replace Mayonnaise

Adding chia gel to mayonnaise in a 1:1 ratio works well to cut down on fat and calories in a recipe. 

Say your recipe calls for 1/2 cup of mayonnaise. This has 800 calories and 88 grams of fat.

It only takes about 1 tablespoon of chia to make a quarter cup of chia gel if using a 1:4 ratio for a thicker gel. (1 part chia to 4 parts water). 1 tablespoon of chia has about 50 calories and 3 grams of fat.

So cut your 1/2 cup of mayo down to 1/4 cup and mix it with 1/4 cup of chia gel.

The total calories and fat ends up being 450 calories and 47 grams of fat instead of 800 calories and 88 grams of fat. 

You just saved 350 calories and 41 grams of fat. This is great news when making anything that calls for a lot of mayo, such as egg salad, tuna salad, or pasta salad. Plus, chia seeds are good for you so you're doing something healthy for your body.

Note: using white chia seeds such as Salba instead of black chia seeds will make the mayo/chia mix more aesthetically pleasing but it doesn't affect the flavor at all if you use black seeds. It might be a good idea to have both black and white seeds on hand in the kitchen for different uses.

 

Chia Fresca

This is a Mexican drink made with lemon, chia seeds, and a sweetener (honey, agave syrup, sugar, etc.) It's been made for centuries in the highlands of Mexico.

Here's a photo of a jar of Chia Fresca, submitted by my colleague, Dr. Joseph Cahill. He photographed it in the market at Huehuetenango, Guatemala.

My recipe for E-Z Chia Fresca:

To 1 glass of commercial lemonade, add a teaspoon of chia seed. Shake or stir to separate the seeds. Let sit 10 minutes until the seeds swell.

(Note that it's MUCH better if you use homemade lemonade!)

 

 

ALSO, please see Rachel Laudan's post for more information. She calls is "Agua de Chia" but it's the same thing.

Chia Seed Raw "Tapioca Pudding" Recipe

1 cup cashews
3 cups water
2 tablespoons agave nectar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
¼ teaspoon almond extract
pinch celtic sea salt
¼ cup chia seeds

• Place the cashews and water in a blender and blend on high speed until smooth
• Blend in the agave, vanilla, almond extract and salt
• Place the chia seeds in a large mason jar (½ gallon size), pour the cashew mixture into the jar and shake well (very well!)
• Place in the refrigerator overnight
• Serve

Serves 2-4 people

This looks really good to me! If you don't follow a raw food lifestyle, you might not have agave nectar on the shelf. You might try substituting honey or maple syrup for sweetener (or maybe even Splenda.)

 

THIS RECIPE COMES FROM ELANA'S PANTRY. YOU SHOULD CHECK OUT THE WEBSITE FOR GREAT GLUTEN FREE AND HEALTHY RECIPES!!

Chia Seed Pizza Crust

Saturday night is pizza night at our house, so tonight I volunteered to create chia pizza. It turned out great!

Here's what I did: In a big bowl, I dissolved 1 pkg of yeast in one cup of very warm water (but not hot water, which would kill the yeast).

A little at a time, I added 1/2 cup of whole wheat flour, 1 cup of white flour and 1 tablespoon of chia seeds, in that order, mixing with a wire whisk the whole time. It looked like the first picture.

Then I sprinkled a little bed of white flour onto my counter and turned the dough out of the bowl. It was pretty sticky, so I put flour on my hands before I touched it.  I folded and squeezed it and turned it (in other words, I kneaded it) for about 10 minutes, adding about 1/4 cup of flour as I did so. By the time I was done it looked like the 2nd picture. You can see the chia seeds speckling the surface of the dough.

I oiled my favorite red bowl, put the dough in it, and set it near our woodstove where the yeast would get nice and warm and do its thing. When I came back about an hour later, the dough was all puffed up, as you see in the 3rd picture.

I brought it back to the kitchen counter, kneaded it a bit more, gradually sprinkling in about 1/2 teaspoon of salt. The dough was really light and easy to handle, so it was easy to stretch it to fit the pan.

Then, of course, the fun began. I smeared the dough with tomato sauce and then decorated the pie with chopped fresh garlic, thinly sliced onions and red peppers, and some slice salami, just stuff that I had in the fridge. I had a pound of fresh mozzarella cheese which I sliced and arranged all over the top.

Then into the oven at 500 degrees for about 15 minutes.  It came out perfect. The chia crust was thin, moist, and just right. The chia seeds added just the right amount of crunch. Delicious!

Chia Banana Pudding

Chia Burgers

Tonight we tried an experiment.

Method: We added about 1 Tbsp of ground chia seed to 1/2 pound of ground turkey. From this we made 2 turkey burgers (on the yellow plate).

We also made a couple of "controls": these burgers were made without chia and are pictured on the white plate.

Results: We could taste the chia seed, in the burgers, but it wasn't unpleasant. The burger also didn't shrink as much and seemed moister and more uniform.

Conclusions: This leads us to wonder if the chia seed held onto some of moisture that normally drains out of burgers as they grill. The next time we try this, we'll weigh both burgers before and after.