100 Percent Real by Sam Talbot

100% Real: 100 Insanely Good Recipes for Clean Food Made Fresh* by Sam Talbot delivers100 whole-food recipes and down-to-earth advice about clean eating proving that real food is an enjoyable choice you can make every day. The Top Chef alumni’s nourishing dishes are overflowing with natural flavor and free of processed ingredients, questionable additives, sweeteners, or preservatives.

Sam starts out providing the five steps to keeping it real. 1) Eat plants and green for real. 2) Cook at home at least three times a week. 3) Don’t eat fabricated or super processed foods. 4) Focus on the Fat, Fiber and Protein Super Trio. and Lastly, 5) Find the fun in food.

The recipes in this book are gluten-free and mostly dairy and processed sugar free. One of the things that hit home for me was his advice on the pantry – to overhaul it. I have things in that pantry that I’ll never see again – time to donate to a food bank and keep a minimum in that location. I think many cooks do this – they stock up because they want to be able to always feed their family but we aren’t the Ingalls trying to survive the harsh winters of Minnesota – the grocery store is three minutes away.

The recipes have some global influences such as the Chicken Meatball Banh Mi, Scallop and Chicken Shumai, Chinese Long Beans with Sesame and Rutabaga Caponata and Chile-Rubbed Skirt Steak with Rustic Chimichurri and we all know how much I love international flavors.

Special thanks to the publisher Oxmoor House and Sam for sharing the following recipe with us.  Be sure to head over to our contest page to enter our giveaway for this gorgeous book that is good for us.

Sweet potato hash brown open-face sandwich with ham and cranberry-dijon Brussels slaw.
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Hands-on: 15 minutes Total: 1 hour, 2 minutes Serves 4 

Is it lunch or is it breakfast? Get ready because waffled hash browns are about to become your new favorite thing. Topping them with ham and veggies makes this a satisfying and complete meal.

2 medium-size sweet potatoes (about 20 ounces), peeled and grated
1 cup thinly sliced yellow onion
3 tablespoons brown rice flour
1 tablespoon coconut oil, melted, plus more for greasing waffle iron
1 large egg, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon kosher salt
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon pure maple syrup
8 ounces Brussels sprouts, shaved
1/3 cup dried cranberries
8 ounces nitrate-free reduced-sodium thinly sliced cooked ham

1. Preheat a waffle iron to HIGH. Combine the grated sweet potato, onion slices, flour, 1 tablespoon coconut oil, egg, and 1/2 teaspoon of the salt in a medium bowl. Grease the waffle iron with coconut oil, and place about 1 1/2 cups of the sweet potato mixture in the center of the waffle iron, spreading the mixture to create a 6-inch square. Close the waffle iron, and cook until browned and tender, about 13 minutes. Remove the waffled sweet potato hash brown, and repeat the procedure to make 3 more hash browns.

2. Whisk together the olive oil, vinegar, mustard, maple syrup, and remaining 1/2 teaspoon salt in a medium bowl. Add the shaved Brussels sprouts; toss to coat. Let stand until the sprouts are tender, about 10 minutes. Fold in the cranberries.

3. Put 1 hash brown on each of 4 plates. Top each with 2 ounces ham slices and about 2/3 cup Brussels slaw.

Excerpted from 100% Real by Sam Talbot. Copyright © 2017 Oxmoor House. Reprinted with permission from Time Inc. Books, a division of Time Inc. New York, NY. All rights reserved.

*Please note in our post title we had to spell out word instead of using the symbol due to technical issues. 

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25 Comments

  • lgroom  on  June 5, 2017

    I try to eat fresh as much as I can (or Wisconsin winters will allow me to.)

  • lhudson  on  June 6, 2017

    Chile-rubbed skirt steak with rustic chimichurri

  • Siegal  on  June 6, 2017

    I use fresh mostly but I like a few things from a can

  • sgump  on  June 6, 2017

    I use a mix of fresh + pantry staples: I'd love for everything to be fresh, but sometimes (e.g., in winter or when particularly harried) that's just not practical.

  • annmartina  on  June 6, 2017

    The terms clean eating and clean food are becoming instant turn-offs for me at restaurants and in cookbooks. Hopefully it will soon be sent to the food adjective dumpster along with hand-crafted. Part of this is triggered in me by the fact that our Caribou coffee shops are now calling their drinks hand-crafted clean beverages.

  • FireRunner2379  on  June 7, 2017

    I use a pretty good variety of fresh and pantry ingredients. We shop at the market a few times a week for fruits and veggies.

  • JenJoLa  on  June 8, 2017

    Yes. My cooking ends up being a variety of fresh and pantry ingredients.

  • mph993  on  June 8, 2017

    Skillet-roasted chicken legs with Meyer lemon and picholine olives

  • klrclark  on  June 9, 2017

    I would make Candied turnips and sweet potatoes with yuzu.

  • Shana.  on  June 9, 2017

    This recipe looks awesome: Smoky harissa-and-roasted red pepper shakshuka

  • kbennall  on  June 9, 2017

    I use a lot of fresh foods, but I definitely have an extremely overstocked pantry.

  • t.t  on  June 9, 2017

    I try to use fresh when I can, but the pantry staples always come in handy.

  • Mariarosa  on  June 11, 2017

    I use mostly fresh ingredients. When my pantry gets too overstocked, I start looking for ways to use up the pantry stuff before things expire.

  • tarae1204  on  June 16, 2017

    Hmm, can you be both? When the pantry gets too big, I focus on using it up. Sometimes I find it easier to be inspired when I have only a few fresh things in the fridge on hand.

  • PennyG  on  June 16, 2017

    I use fresh and pantry ingredients about equally.

  • nadiam1000  on  June 25, 2017

    I use both and try to stick with high quality, low junk factor, like canned tomatoes and beans, rice and grains like quinoa and oils and vinegars.

  • RSW  on  June 25, 2017

    I use both but prefer fresh.

  • cocecitycook  on  June 26, 2017

    I cook fresh and from a well stocked pantry.

  • thewoobdog  on  June 26, 2017

    I have an overstocked pantry precisely because I actually prefer to cook from fresh ingredients! I'm currently trying to cook as much from the pantry (mostly canned beans, grains, etc) as possible just to whittle down the sheer volume of food that's accumulated.

  • DFed  on  June 26, 2017

    "The recipes in this book are gluten-free and mostly dairy and processed sugar free" = sold! 🙂

  • Uhmandanicole  on  June 27, 2017

    I use a balance between fresh ingredients and whatever's in the pantry. I try to keep a stocked pantry so that I will always have something on hand for a quick meal.

  • abihamm  on  June 27, 2017

    I have been working very hard to get more fresh ingredients. Its been and adventure

  • orchidlady01  on  July 9, 2017

    I cook using fresh ingredients and items from my pantry. I keep my pantry stocked with the basics.

  • bonita7878  on  July 9, 2017

    I do a bit of both fresh and pantry; between two jobs and three kids with extra-curricular activities I am spread thin as it is.

  • philanthropicHR  on  July 9, 2017

    I don't know how to cook much so I mostly eat prepared stuff.

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