Home Made Mayo and Gluten Free Crab Cakes!

     It's always fun (for some of us) to cook big fancy dinners where you put a lot of thought and care into planning out a menu and shopping for ingredients. But where people really need help is cooking simple week night meals that satisfy and don't resort to compromising your health goals. Also not breaking the bank is an important requirement.

One helpful book that I picked up semi recently was Paelo Comfort Foods by  Julie and Charles Mayfield.

There are a lot of great recipes in here that make it possible for people to still eat their favorite foods (biscuits, bread, muffins, fried chicken.....) while not only staying gluten free but also keeping all other nasty ingredients out of the kitchen. The problem with a lot of gluten free products is that they are still highly processed and contain a lot of sugar, but this cookbook contains only clean foods that wont set you back.

One of the recipes I put to good use is their recipe for home made mayo. The problem I was having was that I could not find a mayo that was free of seed oil. All of them (even the "natural" or "organic" brands were based with canola or safflower oil. As I have said in previous posts, these oils are often pretty much rancid and will wreak havoc on your cells if we consume too much of them. The idea of making my own was daunting, until I realized how easy it is! All it really is is blending an egg with oil very slowly and adding some salt pepper, mustard and whatever else you want. It takes about five minutes.

A good oil to use is avocado oil because it is a very safe, healthy fat. It also has a very mild flavor. However, it isn't cheap, so the recipe calls for 1/2 cup avocado oil and 1/2 cup olive oil. I don't mind the olive oil flavor in mayo, but if you don't like it you can use all avocado oil. I don't want to give away the recipe in the book, but here is another good one from Nom Nom Paleo. I have seen a bunch of recipes (they are all more or less the same) but some of them say to only use the egg yolk and some say use the whole egg. I use the whole egg because it is easy and comes out great! So why waste the white?

 

 

And there it is. So easy. I think sometimes we get so used to convenience foods that we forget how easy it can be to make stuff ourselves. So try to make your own mayo, it's tastes a lot better too and keeps for about 2 weeks!

So after I made the mayo, I wanted to make something quick and easy. I remembered I had bought crab meat from Trader Joe's, so I looked in my Paleo Comfort foods book and saw that they had a recipe for crab cakes. I actually didn't have all the ingredients, so here is MY version of the crab cakes in the book

You will need:
around 1 lb crab meat (I had a little more)

1/4 cup Mayo
1 egg
Worcestershire sauce
Chives or Scallions
Bell Pepper
Parsley
1/4 cup Almond flour 
1/3 cup Almond flour (separately)


400 degree oven

First I took 3 cans of 6 oz of crab meat. You don't have to get the super expensive stuff, the 15% leg meat is fine (it's only crab cakes...) Drain it and put it in a bowl to the side. Make sure you drain it really well, I think I would have gotten even better results if I paid more attention to this step.

Then I chopped about 1/2 a red pepper, a bunch of chives, and a bunch of parsley and set it aside. Then, in a separate bowl I whisked together 1/4 cup of mayo, 1 whole egg, some Worcestershire sauce, and some salt and pepper.  Then pour the mixture over the crab, and gently using your hands add in the chopped ingredients. Blend in 1/4 cup of almond flour as a binder. Then, use your hands to press the crab cakes into little patties, and dredge them in the 1/3 cup of almond flour, then put on a greased cookie sheet. Pop them in the oven and 15-20 minutes later you have yourself a tray full of crab cakes!

 

Simultaneously, I was able to chop up some other veggies with some bacon, and roast them in the oven at the same time. Couldn't be simpler. 

Also, if you want more of a well documented recipe, here is another one from Nom Nom Paleo. Enjoy!