Author: Clark Five Design

Cider-Braised Pork Shoulder with Butternut Squash

Cider Braised Pork Shoulder with Butternut Squash from Oregon Valley Farm

This Cider-Braised Pork has the best Autumn flavor, especially served with butter nut squash! I made bowls with ours and it definitely tasted like delicious comfort food! We typically use riced cauliflower, but regular rice or even quinoa would be great if you prefer one of those options.

INGREDIENTS

  • 6–7-pound bone-in pork shoulder (Boston butt)
  • 3 Tbsp pink Himalayan or sea salt (more as needed)
  • 1 large butternut squash
  • 1 Tbsp olive or avocado oil (more as needed)
  • 2 cups apple cider or juice
  • ½ cup coconut aminos
  • ½ cup distilled white vinegar
  • 1 head of garlic
  • 6 scallions, trimmed
  • Riced cauliflower for serving

DIRECTIONS

Place pork shoulder on a rimmed baking sheet and rub salt all over it. Let it set, uncovered, at least 1 hour and up to 2 to come up to room temperature.

Arrange oven racks in upper and lower thirds of oven; preheat to 300F.

Slice squash in half lengthwise and use a spoon to scoop out seeds and “guts”. Season all over with salt and drizzle with a little oil. Place, cut side down, on a separate baking sheet. Set aside.

Once pork is room temperature, pat dry with paper towels. Heat 1 Tbsp. oil in a large Dutch oven over medium-high until shimmering and almost smoking. Cook pork on all sides until well browned. Move pork back to the baking sheet, turn off heat, and even pour out any fat has accumulated in bottom of Dutch oven.

Return Dutch oven to medium-high heat and add apple cider, coconut aminos, and ½ cup vinegar, scraping bottom to get up anything that has stuck. Slice head of garlic in half crosswise and add to pot. Add pork back into the Dutch oven. Cover pork with a piece of aluminum foil and tuck it around pork. Cover the Dutch oven and place in the oven on the lower rack. Put the baking sheet with squash on top rack. Bake pork, turning after 1½ hours, until meat is very tender and pulling away from the bone: 3–3½ hours total. Bake squash until it is nice and soft when poked: 1–1½ hours.

Move pork to a serving dish, saving the liquid in the Dutch oven. Let the pork cool a bit to handle easier. Remove garlic with a slotted spoon and squeeze out cloves into braising liquid, discard skins. Shred pork and return meat to pot with braising liquid. Season pork and liquid with salt and a splash of vinegar. Slice scallions in thin pieces.

To serve, scoop out pieces of squash and arrange on plates or in bowls. Spoon pork and some juices over squash and garnish with sliced scallions. Serve with riced cauliflower.

Buy Pork for this Recipe

Get fresh pork delivered to your door. Oregon Valley Farm offers affordable, high quality, pasture raised, antibiotic & hormone free pork.

This is a great cut for stews or chilis but it is especially nice for pulled pork as it really falls apart nicely!

Lemon Chicken Kabobs with Tomato Parsley Salad

Lemon Chicken Kabobs with Tomato Parsley Salad Recipe from Oregon Valley Farm

These low carb kabobs would be great as an appetizer or dinner with grilled veggies. The are the perfect warm-weather dish with the zesty lemon flavor and cherry tomatoes. You could also serve them with some riced cauliflower on the side.

INGREDIENTS

For the chicken + marinade:

  • 2 Tbsp fresh lemon juice
  • 2 tsp minced garlic
  • 1 tsp dried oregano
  • 1/2 tsp pink Himalayan or sea salt
  • 1/2 tsp ground pepper
  • 1 Tbsp avocado or olive oil
  • 4 (6oz) boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into small cubes

For the dressing:

  • 1 Tbsp fresh lemon juice
  • 1 tsp minced garlic
  • ½ tsp dried oregano
  • ¼ tsp pink Himalayan salt or sea salt
  • ¼ tsp ground pepper
  • 2 cups fresh parsley leaves
  • 1 cup cherry tomatoes, chopped

DIRECTIONS

Mix all the marinade ingredients together in a bowl and whisk until well combined. Place cubed chicken pieces in a casserole dish, pour the marinade over the pieces, cover and let it sit in the refrigerator for two hours.

In a small bowl, combine the dressing ingredients (aside from the parsley and tomatoes) and whisk. Add the parsley and tomatoes together in a large bowl and toss with the dressing. Put in the fridge while you prepare the chicken.

Once the chicken has marinated for a couple of hours, thread each piece of chicken onto a skewer (you’ll have enough for at least 4 skewers). Heat a grill pan to high; place the chicken on the skewers onto the grip pan and cook for about 6 minutes (or until no longer pink in the middle), turning frequently.

Remove the chicken from the skewers and serve on top of the tomato parsley salad!

Buy Chicken for this Recipe

Get fresh chicken delivered to your door. Buy chicken in bulk from a whole fryer chickens to drum sticks and chicken wings.

These meat chickens are raised on a pasture in moveable pens so that they are given the opportunity to eat fresh grass every day.

Chicken Fajitas (Keto Style)

Chicken Fajita Keto Style Recipe from Oregon Valley Farm

Raise your hand if you love fajitas! These have amazing flavor, and you can absolutely control how much heat you like with the amount of chipotle powder you add. I am kind of a medium-hot spice person myself. I added a whole teaspoon, and it was perfect. It wasn’t over the top hot to where you can’t taste the rest of your meal (but if you like that, perhaps add some jalapeños instead of just using them as a garnish like I did)!

You can make your own riced cauliflower easily in a food processor. I prefer to just have some organic riced cauliflower in the freezer so that it’s there whenever I want it (and for when I don’t have the extra time to rice it myself). You can get riced broccoli and a mix of the two as well! Delicious!

If you really, REALLY want some kind of a tortilla to have with your fajitas, I recommend the Siete brand as it uses gluten free flours like casava, cashew and almond. Just beware that, although lower carb and a much healthier choice as they are gluten free and minus a bunch of the typical junk in tortillas, they do still have plenty of carbs!

INGREDIENTS

Chicken:

  • 1–1.5 lbs chicken breast (pasture raised, of course!)
  • 1/2 – 1 tsp chipotle powder
  • 2 Tbps avocado or olive oil
  • 2 Tbps tomato paste
  • 1 tsp garlic salt
  • Salt and pepper to taste
  • Juice of half a lime

Riced Cauliflower:

  • 4 cups riced cauliflower
  • ¼ cup chopped chilantro
  • 1 lime, juiced
  • 1 tsp garlic salt
  • Salt and Pepper to taste

Veggies:

  • 4 bell peppers (mix of colors), sliced
  • 1 white onion, sliced
  • 1 tbs avocado or olive oil
  • 1 tsp garlic salt
  • 1 tsp cumin

DIRECTIONS

Mix all the ingredients for chicken marinade in a small bowl and set aside.

Place the chicken breasts in a casserole dish and slather the marinade all over all sides of the chicken then cover and set aside.

Warm a pan on medium high heat and spray with an avocado oil cooking spray (Chosen Foods is the brand I use…just do not use something that contains canola, corn or soy oil as those are highly processed inflammatory to us!

Add in riced cauliflower, garlic salt, salt and pepper to taste and sauté until cauliflower is tender (about 5-7 minutes).

Mix cauliflower with lime juice and chopped cilantro in a bowl and set aside

Keeping pan on medium high heat, add 1 tbs oil and sliced onions. Sauté for about 1-2 minutes just until onions start to soften a bit.

Add sliced bell peppers, garlic salt and cumin to pan and sauté until veggies are a little tender but still crisp (about 4-5 minutes). Set aside.

Add more oil to the pan if needed and cook chicken for 4-5 minutes per side (depending on thickness) or until no longer pink

Assemble bowls with chicken, cauliflower rice and fajita vegetables

Optional toppings and garnishes: lime, cilantro, avocado, jalapeños.

Enjoy!

Buy Chicken for this Recipe

Get fresh chicken delivered to your door. Buy chicken in bulk from a whole fryer chickens to drum sticks and chicken wings.

These meat chickens are raised on a pasture in moveable pens so that they are given the opportunity to eat fresh grass every day.

Keto Ramen

Keto Ramen Recipe from Oregon Valley Farm

Ok, your first thought is probably: “How would you do the noodles for a keto friendly ramen?” Right??

Well, if you have never tried shirataki noodles, go do it!! These noodles are made from the root of the konjac plant. What’s special about the konjac plant? This plant offers very few digestible carbs which is what makes it great for the ketogenic diet or any low carb protocol. Konjac grows in Japan, China and Southeast Asia. The name “Shirataki” is actually Japanese for “white waterfall,” which is kind of what they look like with their translucent appearance.

You can find these noodles which are made up of about 97% water and 3% glucomannan fiber (from the konjac plant) in the form of fettucine noodles, spaghetti or angel hair as well as riced! I personally love them with a thai sauce, fettuccine cream sauce and of course in ramen! I don’t love them with marinara sauce….but maybe you will!

Aside from being low carb, glucomannan fiber offers some pretty great health benefits!

Probiotic foods get all the fame and glory when it comes to gut health. However, PREbiotic foods are necessary to essentially feed probiotics (this doesn’t get enough attention!). Prebiotics are non-digestible fiber compounds (a few other forms are garlic, jicama, artichokes)

Dr. Josh Axe explains prebiotics this way: that it “passes through the upper part of the gastrointestinal tract and remains undigested because the human body can’t fully break it down. But once prebiotics reach the colon, where they are fermented by the gut microflora, they create probiotics.”

Optimal intake of prebiotics offers benefits such as:

  • Lower risk for cardiovascular disease
  • Healthier cholesterol levels
  • Better gut health
  • Improved digestion
  • Lower stress response
  • Better hormonal balance
  • Improved immune function
  • Less risk for obesity and weight gain
  • Lower inflammation and autoimmune reactions

Moving on from the noodles (I’m telling you, go try them!)…this ramen is super nutrient dense if you make it using bone broth especially! Bone broth has amazing health benefits. I make it frequently and use it in recipes. However, some people love to just drink it straight (which is awesome!). We do have bones available on our site for purchase. Whether or not you buy them from us, please do yourself a favor and make sure they are sourced from grass fed and finished cattle or pasture raised animals that have had no added hormones or antibiotics. You don’t want that stuff leaching into the broth as the bones cook. For bone broth they are cooked long and slow in order to really draw out all the good stuff like collagen and minerals. However, this also means any of the stuff you don’t want will come out as well.

You can make bone broth in a slow cooker or even an instant pot (hello! Game changer!!). We also offer these veggie and spice kits that are from organic ingredients that make the process that much easier!

You can clearly use regular beef stock for this, but I am personally always looking for opportunities to make my meals and snacks as healthy and nutrient dense as I can! This is why even the kind of salt you use is important (please do not use regular table salt as it is highly processed and stripped of the amazing minerals our bodies need).

I did not use soft boiled eggs in this recipe simply because I forgot (kicked myself for that). However, what a great addition for even more protein, and healthy fat plus essential nutrients like choline! We were done such a disservice when we were told to stay away from saturated fat and eggs in particular!! Head here to listen to my podcast (episode from March 12) where I talk about some of this (namely why cholesterol is NOT evil) Vibrant Life – Living a Holistic Lifestyle for Optimal Health.

Okay! On to the Keto Ramen recipe:

INGREDIENTS

  • 1 lb top sirloin steak (I used tenderloin because I had it on hand and it’s my favorite cut. It was delicious!), cut into 1⁄4-inch-thick slices
  • Pink Himalayan or sea salt and black pepper
  • 4 (8-ounce) packages spaghetti-style or angel hair shirataki noodles
  • 5 cups beef broth (here is our bone broth recipe)
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 tsp grated fresh ginger
  • 1 Tbsp toasted sesame oil
  • 1 Tbsp rice wine vinegar
  • 1 Tbsp fish sauce
  • Pinch of red pepper flakes (optional)
  • 5 Tbsp coconut aminos, divided (I avoid soy due to thyroid and hormone impact but if you prefer you can use soy sauce)
  • 12 cremini mushrooms, sliced thin
  • 4 green onions, sliced (white and green parts separated)
  • 4 soft-boiled eggs

DIRECTIONS

Season the steak well with salt and pepper and set aside and then cook according to how you like yours (obviously this will be different depending on what cut you choose. Have it cooked and set aside while you prepare the rest of the dish).

Rinse the shirataki noodles by soaking them in water for about 10 minutes, then drain them in a colander.

In a large soup pot or Dutch oven, add the beef broth and bring it to a simmer over medium heat, then reduce the heat to medium-low.

Heat a large skillet over medium heat. Dry fry the noodles in the skillet for about 3-4 minutes, tossing them as they cook.

To the noodles, add the garlic, ginger, sesame oil, vinegar, fish sauce, red pepper flakes, and 4 tablespoons of the coconut aminos. Stir-fry for 5 minutes (the noodles should turn brown from the sauce). Add the noodles and sauce to the pot with the beef broth.

For the skillet, turn the stove to medium and add the mushrooms, the white parts of the green onions, and the last tablespoon of coconut aminos. Stir-fry until the mushrooms are tender and the onions are soft.

Divide the noodle mixture among 4 bowls. Top each bowl with the steak, cut into ¼” slices, and the mushroom mixture. Pour the broth over each bowl, dividing it evenly among the bowls. Optional: finish each bowl with an egg, sesame seeds, and the green parts of the green onions.

Buy Ingredients for this Recipe

Beef Bones are chalked FULL of micronutrients, minerals, good healthy fat, & restorative amino acids such as glycine, alanine, proline, and hydroxyproline in the gelatin.

Top sirloin steak is flavorful and somewhat tender and can be cut into almost any size portion, made into kabobs, fajitas, and makes great steak sandwich recipes.

Keto Minestrone Soup

Keto Minestrone Soup Recipe from Oregon Valley Farm

You will NOT miss the noodles in this soup! It is SO flavorful and filling! Made with chicken bone broth, it is the perfect immune booster as well during the colder months.

INGREDIENTS

  • 1 Tbsp olive oil
  • 1 cup chopped onion
  • 1 cup shredded carrots
  • 1 Tbsp minced garlic
  • 20 oz Italian sausage, cooked, drained
  • 8 oz white mushrooms, sliced
  • 3 stalks celery, sliced
  • 1 green bell pepper, chopped
  • 1 tsp dried oregano
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 4 cups chicken bone broth (more if you want yours more “soupy”)
  • 14.5 oz can diced tomatoes (do not drainI like using fire roasted!)
  • ½ tsp crushed red pepper flakes
  • 2 Tbsp chopped basil
  • ½ tsp pink himalayan salt or sea salt
  • ½ tsp pepper

DIRECTIONS

In a large pot, heat olive oil over med-high heat on the stove.

Add onion, carrots and garlic. Cook for a couple minutes. Add cooked sausage. Combine well and cook for another 5 minutes.

Add remaining veggies and cook for another 5 minutes.

Add remaining ingredients: oregano, bay leaves, chicken bone broth, tomatoes, red pepper flakes, basil salt & pepper. Cook 10 minutes and serve!