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Paleo Cooking with Essential Oils: Healthy Mexican

Did you know that you can cook with essential oils? It's true, essential oils can be more potent than extracts.

Be careful though. Not all oils can be taken internally and not all brands are the same. Always read the labels! Most of doTERRA essential oils are GRAS (Generally Regarded as Safe) for internal use. The rule of thumb with doTERRA oils is if you see the supplemental facts on the bottle, you can ingest it. Many other brands of essential oils will state, "Do not ingest. For external use only."

Yesterday we attended a team member Joyce's cooking class. Today featured Paleo Recipes. The theme was Mexican food. The essential oils we used were lime, cilantro, cumin, black pepper, and oregano.

Today's recipes were simple and delicious.

  • Snack: Roasted Tomatillo Salsa Verde
  • Brunch: Plantain Chilaquiles de Pollo
  • Dinner: Mexican Zucchini Beef
  • Dessert: Mexican Hot Chocolate Cake with Dulce de Leche

One of the commonly used ingredients is Joyce's custom made "Mexican blend" of essential oils mixed with olive oil. If you haven't cooked with essential oils, it may difficult, since they are very potent, you may need LESS than a drop for a recipe. Having a pre-mixed blend of essential oils in olive oil helps with that. Another challenge using essential oils is heat, if you add essential oils too soon, the oils evaporate (that's what you are smelling). IF you are cooking a hot dish, this blend is used at the end to top off the flavor.

Joyce's "Mexican Blend"
1 oz (30 ml) Pure Olive Oil
5 Drops Lime
3 Drops Cilantro
2 Drops of Cumin
2 Drops of Black Pepper
1 Drop of Oregano

This blend adds another depth to taste of the foods that cannot be reached with the other ingredients alone.

I'll cover one recipe (For the rest, we highly recommend taking a class)

The Roasted Tomatillo Salsa Verde 

Green Salsa is made of Tomatillos. Although they are members of the nightshade family, Tomatillos are not tomatoes. They have a papery husk and have a tart taste. Here is a recipe roasting the vegetables, and mixing

them together with avocado, seasonings and the essential oils.

Ingredients
2 1/2 pounds of Tomatillos, husked, and rinsed
2 large Onions
10 cloves Garlic
4 Jalapenos
3 Ripe Avocados
1 Cup Packed Cilantro
2 Teaspoons Salt
1 Tablespoon "Mexican Blend"
2 Teaspoons Salt
1 Cup Packed Cilantro
3 Ripe Avocados

Cooking Oil (Sun Coco)
Lime/Lime Juice (Optional)

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 450F. Peel and chop the onion into quarters. Cut the jalapenos in half and scrape out the seeds. Discard the seeds. Place the tomatillos, onions, garlic, and jalapenos on a rimmed backing sheet. Drizzle with cooking oil.

Roast in the oven for 15 minutes 0 until the exteriors are blistered but the insides are still slightly raw.

Meanwhile, half the avocados, remove the seeds and scoop out the flesh.

Place half of the now roasted tomatillos, onions, jalapenos, and garlic in the food processor. Pulse until mostly smooth, but do not blend all the way.

Add 1 Tablespoon of "Mexican Blend" salt, cilantro, and avocado. Pulse until mostly smooth. Taste for salt. Add the rest of the remaining ingredients. Optional: Add lime juice to taste.

Store in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 2 weeks.

Plantain Chilaquiles de Pollo

The twisted to this Chilaquiles de Pollo is the Plantains. Normally this dish you would use a tostada. We are

substituting it with broken plantains. In this dish we used the "Mexican blend" in addition to the traditional ingredients. You can use Chicken Thighs or you can use left over rotisserie chicken. This was my favorite dise and the Queso Fresco was a nice touch!

Mexican Zucchini and Beef

This is a simple simmer and stir recipe with ground beef and zucchini with spices and the "Mexican Blend"

Mexican Hot Chocolate with Salted Dulce de Leche

The ingredients used here were gluten free and they substituted Cane Sugar with Date Sugar (or Coconut Sugar). For a gluten free Cake Miz, we used 1 bag of Simple Mills Chocolate Muffin Cake Mix and 1 bag of Pascha Organix Dark Chocolate Chips. The addition of chili powder and cayenne pepper gave it a nice touch of a lightly spicy chocolate cake! There were a few other ingredients. Although we did not use the "mexican blend", cinnamon essential oil was added.

Cooking with essential oils

I really enjoyed this class. I will definitely cook some of these meals at home and I look forward to learning more about cooking with essential oils!



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