recipes Archives - Homesteader DepotHomesteader Depot

Homemade Cottage Cheese (Video)

I love all things homemade, especially if it’s easy! This recipe for healthy homemade cottage cheese looks totally amazing, and I can’t wait to try it myself. The cool thing about recipes like this is that they are really simple and easy, and most of the time it takes to make them is spent straining the cheese. This cottage cheese is also very nutritious and an excellent source of healthy fat and protein. Check it out: If you enjoyed this, you might also like…. Long-Term Survival for Homesteaders… Natural Healing Secrets You Need to Know… Effective Primal Diet Hacks…

Dandelion Jelly Recipe

Dandelions are so useful! You can use the leaves, flowers, and roots for all kinds of nutritional and medicinal benefits. However, it’s not all leafy greens and home remedies! You can make a deliciously sweet jelly with it, too, that’s great to use in place of jelly, jam, or honey to top toast or sweets. The first step is to collect your dandelions. You will need 4 cups of just the flowers, so it’s actually easiest to simply pick the flowers off the stems when gathering them, rather than just cutting the whole stem and having to go through […]

6 Creative Ways to Use Bone Broth

You’ve probably heard of the growing popularity of bone broth lately, and if you haven’t, you should definitely know about it. It’s not really anything new, but recent trendy diets have emphasized the regular consumption of hearty, super-nutritious bone broth as a way to get essential vitamins, minerals, and, most importantly, gelatin. Gelatin is a wonderful addition to any healthy diet, but particularly beneficial for anyone concerned about bone or joint health. The great thing is it’s very cheap and easy to make, unfortunately, it’s not always so easy to find creative ways to consume it! Especially this time of year, […]

How to Make Natural, Raw Sour Cream

Sour cream is a delicious staple condiment of American cooking, that can greatly enhance the taste of many delicious dishes, from potato pancakes, to baked potatoes, to nachos. Most people will be familiar with the store-bought version, a thick, gooey cream that comes in a plastic container and often with additives and even artificial flavoring. But did you know you can very easily make your own at home? Like pickles, homemade sodas, yogurt, and sourdough, sour cream is one of the many delicious, healthy, and easy home fermentation products that anyone can try themselves. And it just so happens to […]

How to Make Whey Ricotta (Video)

I mentioned whey, recently in my article on healthy homemade probiotic lemonade, so if you’ve read that already you’ll be familiar with it. Whey is what separates from curds when milk curdles, or what comes off of cheese or yogurt during the straining process. One of the coolest ways you can use up extra whey (and if you’ve ever made cheese, you’ll know how much you get) is to make homemade ricotta cheese. When whey first forms, it is full of protein strands, and you can essentially “harvest” these through a simple process to make delicious ricottta cheese. It’s a great way to make […]

How to Make Pickles at Home

Pickles are one of the most classic and widely recognized forms of brine preservation. While the term “pickled” can apply to various forms of preserving various kinds of vegetables, what most of us think of when we think of “pickles” is the classic, brine-preserved cucumber that has become a staple of delis and diners across America. It most famously made its way into the American diet through Jewish delis in New York City, and, like any classic food, it can be made easily at home. While the formula is simple, however, there can be a bit of trial and error involved, […]

Dandelion Pesto Recipe

Dandelion is a wonderful plant, that the majority of Americans just think of as a weed. If you’re not already foraging your yard’s dandelion for natural remedies or food, you definitely should be. Dandelion grows virtually everywhere, and I can almost guarantee it’s growing somewhere near you, either in your backyard, local park, or any field or meadow nearby. It was a staple of Depression-era cooking, and it’s tasty, nutritious leaves can be prepared in a number of ways. You can easily eat them raw, but if you’d like to enjoy them in a very delicious way, try this amazing […]

Simple Yet Healthy Homemade Ketchup

Ketchup is an American staple, but did you know you can make it very easily at home? Unfortunately, a lot of store-bought ketchup is made with loads of sugar and sometimes even artificial coloring and flavoring. If you’re craving some delicious ketchup but want a healthy, whole-food version that doesn’t sacrifice health for taste, I’ve got the perfect recipe! This recipe uses all natural, easy-to-find ingredients, and instead of lots of cane sugar like regular ketchup typically has, it requires just a bit of honey and coconut sugar, which are much healthier and both have a very low GI index […]

How To Make Caramelized Onions in a Slow Cooker

I don’t know about you, but I love caramelized onions. What I don’t love is spending half an hour in front of my stove, stirring the onions and waiting for them to get to just the right degree of caramelized. Caramelized onions are a delicious addition to a wide variety of dishes, from soups to salads to pork chops and beyond. They can make a very simple, dressed-down seem like it’s straight out of a fancy French restaurant. Of course, the fancy part of it is probably due to the careful process of making caramelized onions, which many home cooks […]

The Easiest Way to Consume More Liver

We have been covering the health benefits of liver recently, including a very delicious way to prepare it that makes it quite enjoyable to incorporate into your diet. This way to prepare it is liver pate, which is made out of mostly liver and butter. While I certainly find this recipe to be quite delicious and enjoyable, it’s also pretty caloric and rich, and not necessarily what you want to eat on a regular basis. There are also many who simply do not find liver pate to be enjoyable, in fact, they find it to be just about as repulsive […]

Soaking and Sprouting Times for Seeds (Infographic)

I shared an article last week on sprouting alfalfa, and I did mention that you can use many other kinds of seeds and beans as well, using this method. It is definitely true that the basic principle of soaking, draining, and sprouting applies to many seeds and beans, they vary, sometimes quite drastically, in ideal soaking time and the amount of days it takes for them to sprout. Here is a great resource from nourishsystem.com for any aspiring sprouters out there. This is a chart that lists many of the popular sprouting seeds, grains, nuts, and beans, and all the information […]

Delicious Beef Liver Pate Recipe

I recently shared a post on the health benefits of liver, and I did promise I’d post a liver pate recipe. Liver pate is a great way to eat liver, it’s super delicious and actually very good for you, at least in moderation, as while it includes lots of healthy fats, it’s still pretty caloric. It is a classic example of fattening-but-healthy French food, and liver pate from France has gained a worldwide reputation for its decadent flavor. And it’s really not too hard to make at home! I chose a very basic recipe that calls for ingredients you already […]

The Simplest Way to Peel Garlic. Period. (Video)

Garlic is a homestead kitchen staple, but let’s face it; it’s more than a little tedious to fidget with the papery skin of each individual clove. Sure, you could smash your garlic with a knife or a mallet and make a big mess. If you have half an hour or more to spare, you could soften the skins in hot water. If you need to peel enough garlic to season food for an army, or make a hefty portion of a natural remedy like honey-infused garlic, you can shake them into oblivion between two bowls, but that’s more trouble than […]

How to Grow Alfalfa Sprouts

Spring will soon be upon us, and you might be eager to get your garden started. If you’re impatient to have fresh greens again, you might want to try sprouting as you wait for the seeds in your garden to germinate. Sprouting seeds is a great way to get quick, delicious nutrients you can throw in sandwiches and salads, and they only take a few days to grow right on your countertop. This is also a great option for folks who don’t have room to garden! Fresh sprouts are not only delicious and easy, they’re actually really good for you […]

How to Can Butter (Yes, Really!)

Lately, butter has come raging back as nutritionists reveal it’s actually quite healthy for you. For a few decades, butter was demonized as too fattening and unhealthy, but as vegetable-oil based alternatives were introduced, we saw obesity rates skyrocket. Not sure why no one ever noticed the correlation, but it turns out that in fact, the saturated fats that come from butter are not only better for you, they can ultimately help lose weight when coupled with a balanced diet full of “good” fats, and free of processed foods and sugars. I personally love butter, and was really excited to […]

Fermented Probiotic Soda Recipe

You’ve probably heard of or even made your own probiotic kombucha drink, which has been all the rage among foodies and health-minded folks over the last few years. You can easily find it bottled in many grocery stores and restaurants these days, and you can also pretty easily brew it at home, as an easy, super-healthy, homemade probiotic. A lesser-known homemade probiotic drink is those that can be made using a ginger bug, which is a culture grown with ginger and sugar and used as the base for healthy, delicious sodas. Back in the day, this is how drinks like ginger ale, cream […]

How to Make Healthy Gummy Candy

Gummy candy is a great treat, but unfortunately, it’s usually loaded with dyes, preservatives and chemicals. Like many junk foods, there are healthy versions you can make at home, but DIY gummy candy has a unique quality among healthy alternatives to candy: it’s actually really good for you. The base of homemade gummy candy is gelatin, which is an excellent source of protein, minerals, and vitamins that help improve skin, hair, nail, dental, and bone heath, ease the symptoms of arthritis, relieve tendonitis and other muscle and joint-related health issues. It’s amazingly good for you, but make sure you buy gelatin from grass-fed […]

How to Make Hard Candy (Video)

This is a homemade recipe I’ve always wanted to try, and this fun and informative video on how to make your own hard candy at home is really great! Using simple tools and ingredients that you probably already have at home, (with the exception of a candy thermometer, not everyone might have that), they walk you through the simple process with clarity and humor. Candy making is simple, but it’s also a very precise chemical reaction that’s taking place, as you bring the ingredients to extremely high temperatures to achieve the desired consistency, so I think it’s really useful to […]

How to Use Extra Whey

Every aspiring or seasoned dairy farmer is familiar with whey, the byproduct of making yogurt, cheese, and other delicious dairy products. In the process of making many of these dairy products, the whey is often discarded, but it’s actually quite nutritious on its own, and can be reused in many different ways. Use in almost any recipe in place of water or even milk. Whey adds depth of flavor to bread, soups, sauces, marinades, and main dishes. If you are overrun with whey, you can even boil pasta or rice with it! Soak grains and legumes The acid and cultures in […]

Coconut Oil Candy Recipe

In case you have been living under a rock, coconut oil has soared in popularity in recent years for being an insanely healthy superfood. Regular consumption of coconut oil will provide a multitude of benefits, including: Reducing wrinkles and sagging skin Fighting fungus and bacterial infections Supporting the pancreas, liver and kidneys Preventing Alzheimer’s Easing digestion Improving bone health Maintains healthy blood sugar Reduces cholesterol The problem is, most people won’t feel like swallowing a spoonful of coconut oil daily. It is, of course, easy to incorporate into your diet by cooking with it or putting in smoothies, but if […]