5 Easy And Digestive Apple Recipes

The apple is one of the most helpful fruits that we find in the supermarket throughout the year, although its season begins at the end of summer and it is at this time and in the following months when we find it collected in its time, with better flavor and more. nutrients.

There are many varieties of apple, which makes them especially versatile for the kitchen. We have them with a neutral and smooth flavor, ideal for balancing intense dishes, but there are also very sweet or acidic ones, as well as a whole spectrum of appetizing textures.

One of the properties that we use the most of the apple when we cook with it, both sweet and salty, is the capacity of its most characteristic fiber as a thickener : pectin.

It is precisely pectin that is one of the substances that the apple brings and that helps us improve our digestive health. By acting as a fiber in our body, it helps prevent the effects of diarrhea and constipation. In turn, together with glycine, they help us by functioning as an antacid.

That is why the apple is one of the stars of our weekly menu today, an especially digestive vegan weekly menu.

• You can download your weekly seasonal vegan menu here.

In this and other menus we refer many times to applesauce, since it is a simple recipe that we can make whenever we have apples at home. It also works as a reuse recipe and we can cook it practically without sugar, which makes it a good alternative to jams.

The sugar that is added to the jams has a preservative function, such as the oil in the preserves or the salt in the salted products. However, if what we are looking for is a digestive menu, we will always choose compotes without sugar and baked fruits.

The compote is one of the five recipes that I present below and that you will find in today’s healthy weekly menu.

1. Apple and mandarin compote

This compote works very well with many other fruits, so it can be adjusted to the season without much trouble. The procedure is the same.

Ingredients:

• ½ kg of sweet apples
• ½ kg of tangerines
• 1 lemon in juice
• 1 cup of water
• ½ teaspoon cinnamon

preparation:

1. We peel and tear the tangerines, remove all the white strands that we can and cut the segments in half.
2. We wash, peel and core the apples. You can leave the skin on if you like it better like that. We cut the apples into wedges.
3. In a pot, we put the water, the lemon juice and the cinnamon over low heat. You can have it prepared so that the apples do not rust
4. We add the fruit to the pot and raise to medium heat for about 10 minutes.
5. We lower the heat for the last 10-20 minutes, in which we must stir so that it does not stick to the bottom.
6. We will remove from the heat when it has the desired consistency and let it temper.
7. We keep in an appropriate glass jar, with a lid, and in the fridge.

The texture of the compote becomes much more consistent when it cools completely, so keep in mind that if you let too much liquid evaporate, it will be too thick later.

2. Apple and mandarin jelly

Since we have started to make compote, we are going to take advantage of the last minutes of thickening to make gelatin with a part of the recipe (or we can make more of the compote to also make gelatin). It is a fun way to consume fruit and it works very well as an individual dessert, so in this case we will make glasses.

We will follow the compote recipe until step 4, but having crushed the fruit before putting it in the pot, and from there we start with the gelatin.

To gel we will use agar agar powder. The mixture must reach a temperature between 85ºC and 95ºC. Of course, it only takes a few minutes to get up. Agar agar gels already at 32-45ºC, so you have to be quick and, once we lower the heat, we will have to pour the mixture into the mold or the designated containers.

Ingredients:

• the ingredients of the compote above
• 8 g agar agar

preparation:

1. We follow the previous recipe for apple and mandarin compote until step 4, but crushing the fruit before adding it to the pot (we can always leave some pieces if we want chunks in the gelatin) and leaving it over medium heat for about twenty minutes. We mix well the liquid part with the fruit.
2. We add the agar agar and stir vigorously to integrate it well. We need it to come to a near boil for the agar agar to work.
3. We continue stirring for a few minutes and lower the heat. We see what texture it has taken.
4. Without letting it cool down, we mold it or place it in cups that withstand the heat well.
5. We let them cool down and just chilled in the fridge.

One of the advantages of agar agar is that, if we do not like how it has been, we put everything back in the saucepan and with the heat the thick liquid will remain.

If it is too firm, add a little lemon or orange juice to make it softer.

If you are adding more agar agar, be careful, because every gram you add adds strength to your gelatin.

3. Aubergine and apple pate

Baba ganoush is a recipe originally from Lebanon, a country with a Mediterranean diet on its Asian side. This roasted eggplant paté or spreadable cream may be reminiscent of hummus and serves as inspiration for many other patés, in this case with apple.

Ingredients:

• ½ kg of aubergines
• 2 apples
• 1 tablespoon tahini
• ½ teaspoon ground thyme
• ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1 clove of garlic and paprika to taste (optional)
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• extra virgin olive oil
• Salt

preparation:

1. Wash the aubergines well and grill them, better on the grill. You can also cook them on the stove or in the oven, but one of the great assets of this dish is smoking. With the oven they will be more digestive.
2. To make them in the oven, preheat the oven to 200ºC. Place them on a well greased non-stick tray, or one lined with baking paper or silicone and some olive oil.
3. Bake for about 30 minutes, although you may need 40 or an hour, depending on the thickness of these and your oven. You can click them to see how they are. It is necessary that the meat of the eggplant is perfectly cooked.
4. Remove them from the oven, peel them very carefully and let them finish cooling.
5. If you are going to make the aubergines in the oven, you can also roast the whole apples to make them more digestive. Apples are usually made at a lower temperature, but at the same time, so you may only need to remove them a little earlier.
6. We peel and core the apples, raw or roasted.
7. We place the aubergine meat with the cut apple in the blender or food processor glass. Add the rest of the ingredients and beat until everything is perfectly blended.
8. The paprika and garlic would be added in the whipping step if they suit us well. We can also roast the garlic in the previous process, keeping an eye on the times.

You can enjoy this pate with different types of breads, crackers and vegetable sticks.

4. Zucchini, apple and tempeh cream

Vegetable creams get us out of a hurry at any time, since they can be made from scratch quite quickly or have them prepared in the freezer.

Thawing at room temperature is not safe, and it is best to put it in the refrigerator or use the microwave. We can also pass it through the food processor again so that it takes on a better consistency or heat it directly in a saucepan with a little vegetable broth.

Ingredients for 3 or 4 servings:

• 200 g tempeh
• 2 medium or large zucchini
• 1 sweet onion
• 2 sour apples
• 1 tablespoon flax seeds
• 1 cup vegetable broth or water
• 3 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
• ground black pepper
• 2 tablespoons tamari or soy sauce
• 1 handful of onion sprouts (optional)

preparation:

1. We wash and peel the onion, apples and zucchini. Core the apples and remove the stem and base of the zucchini. We cut everything to medium or small dice, if we want it to be done before.
2. In a pot, heat two tablespoons of olive oil and sauté the onion for a few minutes. Add the cut zucchini and stir, making sure that the onion does not burn.
3. When everything is poached, add the cup of broth, apple, flax and soy sauce. We let it cook over low heat with the door lid and we stir.
4. After about ten minutes, we turn off the heat and add the pepper.
5. We blend with a hand mixer or a food processor until we have a fine cream.
6. We cut the tempeh into small cubes and sauté it in a pan until it is golden brown.
7. We serve the cream in bowls and add the crispy tempeh on top.

We can finish the dish with some green shoots and serve hot or cold.

5. Baked seitan with roasted apple

During the coldest months we can take advantage of those cooking days in which we turn on the oven to make this baked seitan with apple and, if you like, potatoes.

Ingredients for 4 servings:

• 400 g of seitan
• 2 sweet paws
• 1 large white onion
• 1 sprig of rosemary
• 1 sprig of thyme
• 1 lemon
• olive oil
• salt and pepper
• 2 potatoes (optional)

You will also need a string suitable for cooking and oven.

preparation:

1. We wash the lemon and cut it into slices, discarding the two ends. We fillet the seitan and wash the rosemary and thyme.
2. We keep the bouquets of rosemary on the branch. We reserve some for the potatoes and we gather the seitan fillets, placing the bouquets between them. We will also alternate one or two thin slices of lemon with the seitan fillets.
3. We tie the seitan.
4. Preheat the oven to 200ºC and prepare a baking tray greased in oil or with baking silicone.
5. Peel and core the apples and place a lemon wedge inside.
6. We peel the onion and the potatoes. Cut the onion into thick half moons and the potatoes, if used, into medium cubes.
7. We place the onion, apples and potatoes on the baking tray and add thyme and the remaining rosemary. We also put some thyme on top of the seitan.
8. We pour a very fine drizzle of olive oil on top, better sprinkling it if it can be so that it is well distributed, and season it (you can not do it with the apple).
9. We bake the tray without the seitan for 20 minutes.
10. Add the seitan in the middle and bake for about 20 more minutes. Check the point of the potatoes and if they need more time turn the seitan.
11. We serve on a plate some seitan fillets with onion, apple and potato. We can remove the bouquets of rosemary and lemon if we prefer, since they are not usually eaten.

Download the weekly seasonal menu

The menus ask for variety, especially in nutrients. That does not mean that we cannot repeat a dish several days a week thanks to a good batch cooking and weekly planning. The same thing happens with fruits: although they have very different properties, it can be difficult to vary the fruit each day, especially if we do a weekly purchase of fresh ones.

When we want to make a very digestive menu, we must avoid certain preparations or ingredients: fried, spicy, some raw, ultra-processed, sweets and alcohol. We will look for those ingredients and recipes that we know our body processes well and we will take advantage of the digestive power of foods such as apple, oatmeal or potato.

This is what we have done in this weekly downloadable menu, in which you will find the previous apple recipes integrated to make the most of its season and properties.