Since my 50 Shades of Paleo article, I’ve had friends who are interested in trying out the diet ask me for meal ideas, in particular Asian paleo-friendly meals. Most of the paleo recipes I’ve seen out there tend to be western-style meals, although I have come across a few resources with Asian recipes as well.
It can be a little challenging to enjoy a typical Asian meal on a paleo diet, mainly because rice and noodles make up a large proportion of our staples in Asia. However, if you understand the underlying principles of a paleo diet, you can make simple adjustments to your meal that will allow you to “have your cake and eat it too”. So, to help you out, I’m going to outline a few substitutes you can use on a paleo diet to replace the grains in your meals.
How to break our deeply engrained rice culture
Grown in Asia for at least 10,000 years, rice has richly influenced the cultures and lives of billions of people. Over 90 percent of the world’s rice is produced and consumed in the Asia-Pacific Region. That means that almost all the meals we eat in Asia ask for some form of rice or its product. And since the paleo diet avoids the consumption of grain, rice is not on its recommended food list. What then?
Enters the cauliflower–a well-documented paleo-friendly substitute for rice. To use it as a rice substitute, you need to cut your raw cauliflower into pieces, then pulse it gradually in your food processor until it resembles rice grain. Once you have your cauliflower ‘grains”, you can make steamed “rice” to eat with your dishes or use it as a base for fried rice (here’s an easy receipe for fried rice on the Paleo Magazine).
The art of noodle making, paleo-style
It is widely believed that the noodles were first invented in China, slowly spreading to other parts of Asia like Japan and Korea because of travel and trade. After thousands of years of evolution, each country in Asia has developed their own recipes for noodles. But, as you know, most noodles are made from either wheat flour, rice flour, mung bean starch, big no nos while on the paleo diet. Does that mean that our noodle eating days are over?
Not quite because there are a number of substitutes for noodles on the paleo diet. This includes the use of vegetable noodles, which you can create using a spiralizer or a julienne peeler. Common vegetable noodles include zucchini, carrot, parsnip, turnip, sweet potatoe, squash, and broccoli. The list goes on depending on how creative you want to be with your vegetable selection.
Other options include this paleo-friendly pasta recipe which I found on the Paleo Cupboard. Instead of wheat flour, they use tapioca flour and almond meal as the base. I’ve found that it produces noodles that are very close to the original.
Alternatively, if you are familiar with how to make traditional Hakka Yam abacus seed, this is actually a paleo-friendly recipe which you can utilise for noodles. I’ve also used the same recipe with sweet potato instead of yam to create sweet potato noodles.
Kelp is also commonly used to make kelp noodles or you can also purchase kelp noodles online at iHerb. And, I’ve recently found a Korean sweet potato noodles at NTUC Fairprice, with the texture of glass noodles, which you can also use in your noodle dishes.
So as you can see, going grain-free in Asia isn’t really as hard as you think. You can still cook most of your usually Asian recipes by using rice or noodle substitutes that are grain-free and paleo-friendly. It doesn’t require a total revamp, just a little creative adjustment. So, why don’t you unleash a little creativity in your own kitchen and make your own grain-free meal today?
![Portobello Baked Egg [GF, PF]](https://cookin-lab.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/portobelloegg.gif)
Cook In:Lab 
You must be logged in to post a comment.