Often municipalities have low budgets, but by complying with the criteria of Diet for a Green Planet it does not […]
Here are some quick tips from the cooks in Södertälje Municipal School restaurants:
Organic hen is a tasty, healthy and environmentally friendly meat. In modern egg production, laying hens are slaughtered when they are only a year and a half and a large part of the slaughtered hens has gone to mink food or simply incinerated, even though the flesh is a valuable resource that should not be allowed to be thrown away. Millions of Swedish hens that have gone on the garbage dump every year.
Hen meat was used 40-50 years ago as a standard ingredient in Swedish home cooking. The hens simply were first laying eggs and then became meat – a good way to harness resources. The whole hen including bones, was cooked and gave both meat and a flavorful broth that formed the basis of lovely casseroles.
Chicken was rarely eaten, it was a luxury product gained, when you bred rooster chicks that for obvious reasons could not become laying hens. A laying hen flock of up to 40 hens only needed one rooster, so most of the young roosters were slaughtered as soon as they were about half a year old.
Poultry production has changed and become industrialized. We have forgotten to eat hen and instead started consuming large amounts of chicken. Today's chickens are bred to grow fast and slaughtered at about 5-6 weeks old. Chickens are raised indoors and fed food that people would be able to eat, and organic chicken products are only available on a very small scale in Sweden.
At the municipality of Södertälje, we find it unacceptable how poultry meat is wasted, and we therefore aim to replace a percentage of the chicken products we buy with hen.
Tips on good recipes using hen can be found below:
4 servings | 50 servings |
300 grams of organic hen mince | 4 kg organic hen mince |
1 diced yellow onion | 3 kg diced onions |
1 chopped garlic clove | 1 dl chopped garlic |
3 tablespoons tomato paste | 100 grams tomato paste |
400 grams crushed tomatoes | 4 kg crushed tomatoes |
100 grams cooked grey pea | 1 kg boiled grey pea |
100 grams cooked yellow peas | 1 kg cooked yellow peas |
2 tablespoons paprika powder | 1/2 dl paprika powder |
2 tablespoons smoked paprika powder | 1/2 dl smoked paprika powder |
1 tablespoon chili powder | 1/2 dl chili powder |
Salt and pepper to taste | Salt and pepper to taste |
Sauté the onion, garlic and tomato paste in a frying pan or sauteuse pot, add the hen and brown until cooked through. Add the crushed tomatoes and all the spices, salt and peppering to taste. Let simmer for a while, taste and serve.
Tip: This is very good to served together with spelt pita bread and a dollop of yogurt.
The climate emissions of rice production are considerably greater than that from whole grain cereals. This is due to the release of greenhouse gases from the waterlogged paddies. Some farmers grow their rice in dry paddies for short periods to reduce gas release, but it’s always better for the environment to regularly use Swedish whole grain products as an alternative to rice in schools - for example whole wheat, whole barley, naked oats and spelt. Whole grain cereal production cause less green house gas emissions and can be grown locally. Whole grain cereals are like rice in that they have a neutral taste and can be served in combination with most dishes.
Whole grains cereals also have a better nutritional value and a higher fiber content than that of polished rice. Research has shown that whole grain cereals such as barley, acts as prebiotics i.e. stimulates the growth of good bacteria in the gut, helps regulate blood sugar, reduces the risk of developing type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Whole grain cereals are also usually inexpensive to buy, and therefore there are many good arguments for replacing rice with more Swedish grown whole grain cereals.
In Södertälje, for the last
couple of years we have been working to replace rice with Swedish cereal
products. One activity we did was Barley is back! (Korn is back! in Swedish)
campaign. Feel free to use the material to make your own campaign, at your
school or in your municipality. Why not try this tasty recipe for tabbouleh
with whole grain, today:
Tabbouleh
with whole grain barley
[1] Livsmedelsverket, hämtat 2018-08-30
[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26259632
4 servings | 50 servings |
2 dl boiled whole grain barley | 2.5 L boiled whole grain barley |
4 tomatoes | 50 tomatoes |
1 red onion | 12 chopped red onions |
6 tbs finely chopped parsley | 10 dl finely chopped parsley |
4 tbs cold pressed Swedish rapeseed oil | 7 dl cold pressed Swedish rapeseed oil |
2 tbs lemon juice | 3,5 dl lemon juice |
Salt and black pepper | Salt and black pepper |
Cook the grain as instructed below.
Soak the grain in the water overnight so that the phytic acid has broken down, and the nutrients in the grain are made more digestible. Add oil and salt just before boiling.
Cook the grain in the existing water for 10 min in the oven on the steam setting. Take the oven-pan out of the oven and put on a lid, set aside in the heating cabinet to swell for about 30 minutes before serving.
Serve instead of rice with casseroles, chili, curry or similar dishes.
Soak the grain in the water overnight so that the phytic acid is broken down, and the nutrients in the grain are made more digestible. Add salt or vegetable stock and stir just before boiling.
Cook the grain for 5 min in the oven on the steam setting, remove the oven-pan from the oven and pour off the leftover liquid and cool down the cooked grain.
When we started work on Diet for a Green Planet in Södertälje, we began to introduce more legumes to the food served in our schools. This was the best way to gain alternative protein sources. Legumes are rich in plant-based protein and served in combination with whole grain cereals become very nourishing, rich in important dietary fibre and with at high nutritional content.
Eating legumes is nothing new in Sweden, different kinds of peas were previously our most important source of protein. Today, legumes are in vogue again and both the National Food Administration and scientific reports like the EAT-Lancet recommend that we increase our intake of legumes markedly, both for our own health and because it is a resource-efficient way of producing protein.
In Södertälje, we first started experimenting with making dishes that are popular in Södertälje's schools – like hummus and falafel-with Swedish yellow peas. This went very well! Since then, the range of Swedish legumes has increased and now there are both Swedish grey peas, fava beans and lentils of different colors available.
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