Bison Roast & Mashed Parsnips – Paleo Prep

Every once in a while it’s nice to switch up your routine and try something different. While many believe it’s best to stick with one type of diet, I actually have found it helpful to try out different diets throughout the year.  It keeps your diet fresh, enhances your understanding of food (and wellness) and helps you discover which foods or diets can help accelerate your wellness goals.  So, today, here’s a paleo-specific meal prep (that can absolutely be used for any well-balanced diet).

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS PREP…

What I love about this prep, besides the fact that it can be done in about 1 hour, is the use of parsnips.  While it is a well-known veggie, it is not used too often.  Parsnips have a robust flavor profile – they are sweeter than carrots, but have a nuttier flavor, making it an easy to add to both sweet and savory recipes.  In this prep, the sweetness of the parsnips is offset by the savoriness and saltiness of the roast.

“HELP! My pot roast is tough and dry!”

Ah, I’ve been there. Here are a few tips to help:

• Reduce the cooking time.  Cooking it too long dries the meat out and all the moisture/liquid goes into the broth.  Reduce the amount of time you’re cooking it.  This is especially important if you are using leaner cuts of meat like this bison chuck roast!   And don’t toss it out just yet!  Place the overcooked meat in a slow cooker and cook on low for a few hours.  It won’t be as juicy, but it wont feel like a tire either.  I don’t always do this, but reading the user manual on your machine helps a lot!  They often anticipate our questions and include cooking time tips.
• Add less broth.  Too much liquid in the pressure cooker “boils” the meat instead of cooking it. Use the minimum amount of liquid needed for your pressure cooker to braise, not boil the meat.

“HELP! I want a thicker broth!”

No worries!  This is a minimal recipe, using the least amount of ingredients as possible and omitting items that may increase calories unnecessarily. Plus, this is a paleo recipe, so the usual addition of wheat flour is not paleo-approved.  To make it thicker, once the cooking cycle has ended, remove the roast from the cooker.  Then, mix 1 tablespoon of arrowroot with 1 tablespoon of water and pour it into the cooker.  Stir it up to thicken, then add the roast back to the cooker.

Bison

I’ve really been enjoying the casual incorporation of bison steaks in my diet.  Before I had only really used ground bison, but ever since Kroger started to carry varying steak cuts of bison, I’ve been taking it as an opportunity to experiment more with it.  Most definitely try it out – it is leaner and it’s packed with iron and omega-3 fatty acids.  Women who are iron deficient should consider a serving of bison in their diets on a weekly basis or as needed.

Greek yogurt?! WT?!! That ain’t paleo!

Yeah, I know that yogurt is a hot button in the paleo community. Why?  Well, paleo in its strictest form avoids dairy products which would include yogurt.  However, there are quite a few paleo-enthusiast that sing yogurts praises and think it has a place in a well-balanced diet; so, the community is pretty divided on this.  One of the main reasons, I’ve gathered, that so many are against it is because the way the yogurt is commercially produced.  It is often loaded with hormones and additives, etc which don’t make it “natural,” one of the key tenets of the paleo diet.  To that end, so long as full-fat and organic yogurt products are used, many paleo-dieters have integrated dairy into their diet. It really comes down to your individual dietary preferences and needs.

I used Greek yogurt instead of full fat coconut cream in this recipe in order to keep the calories slightly lower and to make the recipe easier to source.  However, if you’d like to swap in the coconut cream, or coconut yogurt (not my favorite btw), then you can and should do that in order to keep in line with a strict paleo diet.