Are your kids veggie-phobic? Does the goal of five servings of vegetables a day sound impossible? Veggie Powder to the rescue!
What’s Veggie Powder?
Veggie Powder is a great way to sneak vegetables into your meals and enhance the nutrition of your soups and casseroles. Since it’s made with dehydrated vegetables, you have a concentrated source of vegetables. Just 1/2 cup of Veggie Powder equals 8 servings of vegetables.
The other good thing about Veggie Powder is it’s a great way to use up all the good vegetables that normally would go to waste because either we don’t like them or they do not preserve well: The stalks of broccoli, cauliflower and Swiss chard, asparagus, eggplant, summer squash, cabbage, celery, etc. Add to it other dried veggies: tomatoes, peppers, beans, broccoli, peas, carrots, mushrooms, onions, celery, etc and maybe some herbs: parsley, chives, oregano or basil. Put it all into a blender and blend until it is a powder.
Directions:
Make a mixed Veggie Powder by taking a variety of your veggies and powderizing them in the blender. Yes! It’s that easy.
For these mixed powders, I like to be sure to add at least some dried onion, chives, tomatoes and celery. Tomato is always good in soups and meats. Onion, chives and celery always brighten up the flavor. For meat loaf, I like to add mushrooms to the mix. There really is no limit to what veggies you can use in your Veggie Powder.
Use this powder as a soup base. It will add color and flavor to your soups and casseroles and will thicken soups up a little bit. Or use Veggie Powder in place of crackers or bread crumbs in your meat loaf or meat balls for a low-carb, nutrient-rich main dish. Use 1 cup of veggie powder to 2 lbs of ground beef and you get two servings of vegetables for every serving of meatloaf. And remember: these are
veggies or veggie parts that you otherwise would have tossed. How cool is that?
Meat Loaf/Meatballs Recipe:
1 – 1 ¼ C veggie powder. When mixing this with meat, I like a Veggie Powder that is strong on tomatoes, onions, mushrooms and herbs.
2 eggs
2 lbs. ground beef
½-1 tsp salt (to taste)
1/8 tsp pepper
Mix well. Form into meatloaf or meatballs and cook. The vegetables retain the juices of the meat and add a nice flavor.
Storage note:
I’ve found that in our humid midwest, the powder doesn’t store very well. Now matter how hard I try to keep moisture out—vacuum packing it right away, adding a silica gell pack, no matter what, it turns into a solid Veggie Brick that doesn’t dissolve very easily. So I just keep all the veggies vacuum packed in jars until I want powder, then I blend them into powder as needed. Those of you living in the arid West might not have that problem.
Want more help getting more from your vegetables? Check out the PHC Store, where we have several cookbooks focusing on different vegetables, each with dozens of recipes. And my super-eBook on dehydrating includes all the basics you need to start drying your garden produce. It includes drying charts, information on choosing the right dehydrator and recipes to get the most from your dried foods.
