Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
If I ever needed a need something to eat quick I would just get 2 slices of bread, pepperoni, and a slice of swiss cheese. Perhaps I'd make multiple sandwiches depending how hungry I was. I'd be straight for a couple of hours.
Ever since I eliminated deli meats its been hard making quick meals. I spend too much time cooking on the stove. I dont mind cooking but I'd like to be able to making something quick.
I wanna be able to have meat in my diet. So are there any deli meats that are safe too eat? Meaning no nitrates and not processed.
If I ever needed a need something to eat quick I would just get 2 slices of bread, pepperoni, and a slice of swiss cheese. Perhaps I'd make multiple sandwiches depending how hungry I was. I'd be straight for a couple of hours.
Ever since I eliminated deli meats its been hard making quick meals. I spend too much time cooking on the stove. I dont mind cooking but I'd like to be able to making something quick.
I wanna be able to have meat in my diet. So are there any deli meats that are safe too eat? Meaning no nitrates and not processed.
I thought about tuna but that has mercury.
You'll certainly be surprised to know that you can make your own pepperoni at home and it's not even hard to do. Grass-fed beef with no hormones or any other additives is easy to find anywhere. Ideally you should have a smoker and use hog casings but you can make it without either. I knew a man who was a pepperoni fanatic who made delicious pepperoni (sorry, I have no idea where he is) because he wanted only the best for his pizza. This stuff was good. Perform a search "making pepperoni"; you'll get reasonable results; I do recommend using dogpile for this rather than a consumer search engine.
Sausage making is easy.
Making Swiss cheese is involved but you can easily make your own Mozzarella. Buy a Bread Machine and you have an easy way to make bread with any and only the ingredients you wish.
So many people think that these tasks are onerous and take years to learn; it's just not so.
I'm not really a big fan of deli meats, but you can find nitrate free/minimally processed cold cuts at places like Whole Foods and Trader Joe's. One brand is Applegate.
The key to quick meals is to do all your washing, chopping, cooking en masse after you go shopping, and have Tupperware containers full of stuff in the fridge at the ready, from which you can assemble sandwiches, wraps, and quick pasta and rice dishes.
Buy a package of raw chicken breast or raw chicken fingers, cook them all at once, store in the fridge. You'll have easy cold chicken for sandwiches.
Burgers are a no brainer too (Laura's Lean Beef is hormone & antibiotic free).
Tuna--a couple of cans a week won't kill you. If you want to be neurotic about it, limit to once a week.
Fried egg sandwich is also fast and easy. If you're worried about cholesterol, just use the whites. Add tomato and cheese. Very satisfying.
Hummus sandwich. Sounds weird, but also quick and satisfying. I like hummus and portobello mushroom.
If all else fails, there's the tried & true banana and peanut butter sandwich.
You could always bake your own ham or chicken and use that meat for your sandwiches.
So easy to do. You don't even have to cook a whole ham or a whole chicken. Get a couple of nice fat chicken breasts which cook up quickly or a small boneless ham roast. Both can be sliced, packaged up and frozen. Even most cheeses freeze very well - you can buy a chunk and slice it yourself. Pre-packaged sliced deli meats and cheeses are ridiculously expensive anyway ...
I wanna be able to have meat in my diet. So are there any deli meats that are safe too eat? Meaning no nitrates and not processed.
.
I don't think there are any health related issues with nitrates or nitrites. Veggies like beets, carrots, celery and lettuce are the most significant source of nitrates in our diets.
Those nitrate free meats found at whole foods and trader joes aren't really nitrate free, they use celery as a source of nitrates. read the labels.
Food has never been convenient, until the last 50 yrs or so. I think there is a price to pay for that convenience in the form of the junk they add to it to sanitize it and extend its shelf life and the loss of vitamins/minerals and taste. So if your concerned about whats in your deli meat and want to exclude that then there isn't really a convenient way to recreate that.
Options.
Make your own. Pretty easy to do really and you can spend a few hours making a large batch once a month. A food processor can turn out some pretty decent bologna or franks. A good grinder is needed to make fresh sausages.
Substitute. Roast a chicken or turkey and debone it and you can use that to make sandwiches or you could make a terrine (top pic) or a pate (bottom pic). Loads of recipes for all kinds of meats. Just slice them up like deli meat. Do a couple of them every few weeks, divide and freeze and you should be in sandwiches all the time.
Good. The less processed food you eat, the better. If you still want cold cut style meats, but that are much higher quality and less processed, buy PDO protected proscuitto or Spanish jamon. Yes they will be expensive--$20-30+/lbs. but you don't need a lot, and really is price something you can put on your health? You can do what they do in Europe, where you just have a nice piece of bread, one or two slices of jamon/proscuitto, some sliced hard boiled egg, lettuce, and something like sundried tomatoes or roasted red peppers on there with a drizzle of infused olive oil of your choice (or just used the oil from the sundried tomatoes). A great sandwich. Make ones like that and $8-10 of proscuitto can last a week.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
