Recipes

On this page, there are links to many recipe resources, plus you can scroll down for a number of basic GAPS recipes.

There are a lot of recipes in the GAPS book. Also some on Dr Natasha’s website, including some for fermented foods.

GAPS practitioner Deb Gully has a Recipe website, which comprises her 15 step guide to introducing real foods into your diet, along with her recipe blog. It has many GAPS recipes including recipes and ideas for Easter, Xmas and traveling, plus some basic recipes like fermented foods, broth, starch free breads and crispy nuts.

Deb also has a Pinterest board with more recipes, also divided into categories. Mostly GAPS, but not all.

There are a number of websites that have recipes suitable for the Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD), which GAPS was based on. The stages of the SCD are different from GAPS, so always check that the recipe is suitable for where YOU are at in GAPS. A couple of them are Pecanbread.com and SCDRecipe.com

Elana’s GF Pantry also has some lovely recipes – most of her baking is based on ground almonds. Many of them can be easily converted to GAPS by replacing agave nectar with honey.

There are many Paleo sites that have recipes suitable for GAPS – too many to list!

There are also a lot of GAPS, SCD or Paleo recipe books available, but with so many online resources available, you probably don’t need a book as well.

Scroll down for recipes including: Stocks, GAPS Intro soup, Fermented veges, Fermented cabbage juice, Crispy Nuts, GAPS breads and some baking recipes.

Stocks

Detailed recipes for bone broths are available on the Weston Price website, towards the bottom of the page. If you are going to turn your stock into vegetable soup, you can simplify these recipes by leaving the vegetables out of the initial stock.

Lynn’s soup

Buy a medium or large crock pot or slow cooker. A large pot will do, although you’ve got to be home while it cooks – with the crock pot you can leave it on all night and day and not worry about it.

Go to the butcher’s or the meat counter at the supermarket and ask them for marrow and joint bones (thigh bones, cannon bones, are best) These will probably be beef ones, although lamb is probably ok too. Stick em in the crock pot and fill it with water, leaving an inch at the top. Add freshly cracked black pepper and good quality sea salt from Common Sense Organics. You need unrefined stuff – it should be a little or a lot grey coloured. You can also use a chicken skeleton (chicken frames they’re called).

Cook it for 12-36 hours. Chicken only needs 12, beef needs more. When it’s done, be sure to knock all the marrow out of the bones into the water. There will be blobs of fat and stuff, you can stick those in the blender if you want to break them down or just crush them with a fork or whatever. Some people throw in a splash of Apple Cider Vinegar to help draw more minerals from the bones.

Once you have the broth, you can cook each bowl of soup separately with fresher veggies and a maybe a pinch more of good sea salt.

If you’re using chicken, make sure it’s organic. Also, it’s good to cut the meat off the bones and cook it separately because if you cook the whole chicken, the meat absorbs most of the nutrients from the stock. This is fine, but you don’t get as much (or as nutrient-dense) broth from it.

Deb’s GAPS Intro soup

When you’re doing the GAPS intro stage 1 – you need to use all the meat, fat and marrow in your soup, to give you enough sustenance.

Make your stock as usual, but use meatier cuts. Cook till the meat or chicken is just cooked, then take the meat off the bones and put to one side. I like to have three bowls – one for meat; one for fat, skin, marrow, any gelatinous bits, etc; and one for the bones. The meat and fats go into the fridge. The bones go back into the pot with a splash of apple cider vinegar and cook for a few hours more. When you’re ready to make your soup, pour into a clean pan through a colander, and throw the bones away. In a classic stock recipe, you would then skim the liquid fat off the top, but we need it in this soup. Chop up your veges and cook in the stock till tender. Then get your bowl of fatty bits out of the fridge and add it back to the soup. Take a wand blender and blend till everything is combined, and you have a thick creamy soup. Add salt to taste. Shred the meat and add it back to the soup.

This will be your main food while on the early stages of GAPS Intro.

Variations: I like this variation as it “hides” the fat and the veges, which some children (and adults for that matter) don’t like. But you can leave your veges chunky, and have the fatty bits loose, if you prefer.

Also on the Intro stage 1, you can eat the meat off the bones with some steamed veges, as long as you have plenty of stock with the meal.

Sauerkraut

Lynn uses the sauerkraut recipe in Nourishing Traditions, by Sally Fallon, but uses bay leaves instead of carroway.

The following recipe is by a friend of mine, who is Russian and eats sauerkraut every day as part of a traditional diet.

Libby’s sauerkraut recipe

Take a large “white cabbage”. Cut off the outside green leaves until you have clean leaves. Wash the leaves you cut off and save them.

Using a knife, or food processor, cut the cabbage into quarters and slice the cabbage quarters fairly finely [3-2mm slices] into four heaps.

Optional extra: For each quarter, take about three good sized carrots, about the bulk size of one third of each quarter. Peel the carrots, and shred them into four piles, slightly finer pieces than the cabbage.

Take a large enamel or plastic bucket or stew pot or similar. DO NOT USE METAL CONTAINERS.

Place half of the washed cabbage leaves on the bottom of the container.

Mix in another bowl one quarter of the cut cabbage with its share of shredded carrot. Add some salt, mix in about one level tablespoon per large quarter of cabbage to start with [then use more or less next time to taste]. Use more if you want to use sea salt.

Place the mix of cabbage, carrot and salt into the container and repeat until all is mixed. As you place the mix in the container, squeeze it as strongly as you reasonably can to draw out any liquid.

Place the rest of the cabbage leaves on top of the mix to finish.

Place an ice cream container or similar on top of the leaves, filled with water [NO WATER IN THE CABBAGE MIX, THE WATER GOES IN THE CONTAINER TO MAKE A WEIGHT]. We use an old plate upside down on top of the cabbage leaves to ensure good cover and spread of pressure, and then put the weight on the plate.

Leave for three or four days, then take off the weight and top leaves, turn over the mix and re-lay the leaves and weight. Sometimes under the weight liquid will rise over the leaves, simply stir it back in when you stir the mix. The product should be finished to eat in about six-eight days. (Note: Lynn has found that in colder weather this can take up to 3 weeks)

When tasting tells you the sauerkraut is ready, take it out of the container and store it in the fridge in any sealed container you want to use.

Update: Libby has noticed recently that some of the cabbages were too young and didn’t give enough juice when pounded. Because of this they went rotten, instead of fermenting. So just be aware of this with spring cabbages.

Sandor Katz, the author of WILD FERMENTATION has a clip on Youtube that shows how to make sauerkraut. It is well worth watching.

Fermented Cabbage Juice

I found the recipe for this on a NZ website Jacqueline Organics. If you are doing the Intro stage where you use sauerkraut juice only, this recipe is a lot easier than making the full sauerkraut recipe. It’s also easier to sip this if you don’t like eating sauerkraut.

My experiences so far making it:

Batch 1 – The cabbage I bought from Commonsense Organics was quite small, so it didn’t make 3 blender loads – only 1 .5. As she said, it was very smelly, right from the start and did need to be fermented outside. It took about 6-7 days to be tangy enough, rather than 3. It wasn’t that great tasting, but not too bad either. Since I bottled it, it has been left on the bench and not refrigerated, and it seems to be tasting better as it gets older. Or I’m getting more used to it. Either way, its all good.

Batch 2 – as she says, I added some of the first batch to it, but since my cabbage was again small, I onyl added 1/4 cup. Funnily enough, it doesn’t smell anywhere near as bad as the first batch and although you can smell it when you get within a couple of metres, I have been able to keep it inside. It’s currently on Day 3 and tastes nearly ready.

Later updates:

I have found that you can also ferment red cabbage juice, and it doesn’t smell so much. Though I think it’s also not quite as effective a digestive tonic.

So I have been doing a mixture of red and green cabbage, which is a nicer flavour and smell, but still helps digestion. Build up to 1/3 or 1/2 glass before each meal.

Another variation is to add some chopped raw beetroot, and a small amount of salt and extra water to each batch, so you are also getting the benefits of beet kvass.

Crispy nuts

Soaked and dried at low heat, to make them more digestible.

  • 4 cups of nuts – skinless peanuts, almonds, slivered almonds, macadamias, skinless hazelnuts, pine nuts
  • 1 Tbs sea salt

Mix nuts with salt and filtered water, and leave in a warm place for at least 7 hours. Drain in a colander. Spread on a stainless steel baking tray and place in a warm oven (up to 150F /65C) for 12 to 24 hours, turning occasionally, until completely dry and crisp. Or use a dehydrator. Store in an airtight container.

Variation 1: Walnuts or pecans – use 2 Tbs sea salt instead of 1. Walnuts need to be stored in the fridge.

Variation 2: Cashews – “raw” cashews aren’t actually raw, so can’t be soaked as long, or they will go slimy. Soak for 6 hours maximum, and cook at a warmer temperature – 200-250F or 95-120C.

Variation 3: Salty or spicy nuts – crispy nuts aren’t very salty, and can be used in other recipes. If you like saltier nuts for a snack, you can use more salt when soaking. Or, halfway through the cooking, take out, toss them in some butter or coconut oil and some extra sea salt and continue drying. At this point, you could also add some savoury spices or other flavourings.

Variation 4: Use them to make your own nut butter. Though it is a lot easier to buy Graeme Reilly’s ready made peanut or almond & brazil butter, made with soaked nuts. We keep a stock in Kilbirnie, and he has other stockists round Wellington, or we can send it out.

Starch free breads

To get a starch free bread, you need to use some kind of nut flour. A good quantity of eggs are required to give it some lift, and some fat is also helpful.
There are a variety of starch free bread recipes available, and you may want to try some of them:

  • Breaking the Vicious Cycle, by Elaine Gottschall (the SCD) has a nice almond bread
  • Eat Well, Feel Well, by Kendrall Conrad has a cashew bread
  • Cooking with Coconut flour by Bruce Fife has a coconut flour bread
  • Dr Mercola’s No Grain Diet has a walnut, flaxseed and zucchini bread
  • Paleo diet bulletin boards often have nut based breads

Almond zucchini bread

This is the bread I made for my Overfed 2 talk in May 09. It is based on a recipe in Breaking the Vicious Cycle but with grated zucchini instead of dry curd cottage cheese. It is also similar to the GAPS basic bread, though that doesn’t have the zucchini or baking soda.

It is suitable for the Pre-Intro stage of GAPS, and for later stages. But because it has baking soda, it’s not 100% friendly, so no good for the Intro or early stages of the diet.

  • 3 eggs
  • 2.5-3 oz melted butter, ghee, or coconut oil
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1 cup grated zucchini
  • 2 ½ cups ground almonds (or other nut flour)

Preheat oven to 175C (350F). Line a loaf tin with baking paper (this step is vital). Beat the first 4 ingredients together. Mix the flour and zucchini into the wet ingredients. The mixture should be thick but not dry. Add a little more ground almonds if needed. Spoon into tin and smooth the top. Bake for about 45 minutes, till brown on top, and a skewer comes out clean.

Coconut almond loaf

I used a combination of ground almonds and coconut flour for the bread we had at GAPS presentation 2. It was the pumpkin version. (You can get coconut flour through me, if you are in NZ, or there are recipes available for bread that just uses ground almonds.) This bread is my favourite, and is a cross between the SCD almond bread and Bruce Fife’s coconut bread. It has a good texture and will keep for a couple of weeks in the fridge without going mouldy (the pumpkin version may not keep as long). It’s a bit dry and hard by then, but still tastes good. It can be toasted, but carefully at a low setting, and makes great biscotti.

It is suitable for the Pre-Intro stage of GAPS, and for later stages. But because it has baking soda, it’s not 100% friendly, so no good for the Intro or early stages of the diet.

  • 5 eggs
  • 4 oz melted butter, ghee, or coconut oil
  • 1 cup cottage cheese, yoghurt, yoghurt “cheese”, kefir, kefir cheese, or cooked, mashed pumpkin
  • 1 heaped teaspoon baking soda
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • 2 ½ cups ground almonds (or other nut flour)
  • ½ cup coconut flour, sifted

Preheat oven to 175C (350F). Line a loaf tin with baking paper (this step is vital). Beat the first 5 ingredients together. Mix the flours together and beat into the wet ingredients. The mixture should be thick but not dry. If you have used kefir or yoghurt, you might need a bit more ground almonds. If it’s bit dry, add a little extra cheese or pumpkin. Spoon into tin and smooth the top. Bake for about 45 minutes, till brown on top, and a skewer comes out clean.

Biscotti

To get some crunch, you may like to make bread into biscotti. Cut into thin slices, then cut them in half. Brush with some olive oil, or duck fat, or ghee, or just leave plain. Lay on a baking tray, lined with baking paper, and bake at 175C till lightly browned. Turn off the oven and leave them in till completely cool. Watch them carefully though – it’s easy to burn them (which is what I did the day of the presentation!)

Starch free Christmas Cake

This is also suitable for the Pre-Intro and later stages. This version has no added sweetener, but you could add some honey to it. Stir through up to 1/2 a cup after taking the boiled fruit mix off the heat. This is a beautiful dark cake, but because it’s boiled, you don’t need to mature it for a month. It will improve with maturing, but can be eaten the same day, and still be delicious.

Take a large pan, and melt together:

  • 3/4 cup water
  • Juice of one orange
  • Rind of the orange, plus rind of a lemon, finely grated
  • 170g butter or coconut oil
  • 2 tsp mixed spice & 1 tsp ginger (or other spices of your choice)

Finely chop:

  • 900g-1kg dried fruit. Use a packeted mix, or choose your own mix, eg: 250g raisins, 250g sultanas, 150g prunes, 150g figs, 100g dates, 100g cherries

Add to the pan & simmer for 5-10 mins, stirring often, till the fruit has soaked up all the liquid (though some of the oil may not soak up, esp if using coconut oil). Leave to stand for 30 mins, while you prep the rest of the ingredients.

The full recipe fills a 8” x 8” (20cm x 20cm) square tin, or make a half-mix & bake in a loaf tin. Line tin with a double layer of brown paper, which comes to about double the height of the tin. Then line with a double layer of baking paper.

Sift together in a large bowl, and mix well:

  • 1 cup ground almonds
  • 1/2 cup coconut flour
  • 1 tsp baking soda

Beat up:

  • 3 large or 4 small eggs

When the fruit mix has cooled to lukewarm, stir through the beaten egg. Then stir through the dry ingredients. The mixture should be a thick batter and quite hard to stir. If it’s too runny, add a little more rice flour or arrowroot. Spoon the mixture into the pan, and bake at 150C for 1.75 – 2 hours for the full recipe, or 1.5 – 1.75 for the half recipe. Use the usual skewer test, or listen – when it stops sizzling, it’s ready.

Cool completely before removing from tin. Wrap in some baking or greaseproof paper, then in a teatowel and store in the bottom of the fridge.