Cooking with Pulses
CALS Students Develop Recipes for Quick-energy Pulse Snacks
Dietetics students in Family and Consumer Sciences tried out recipes that relied on legumes for flavor and substance during an all-day food and nutrition lab in February. They created breakfast muffins, energy bars, strawberries and cream hummus, trail mix, cereal bars and granola, and invited students and faculty to taste test their creations.
The class, Introduction to Dietetics Supervised Practice II, asks students to develop healthy recipes that can be scaled to 100 portions. The recipes are then tested in the dietetics and nutrition lab during the class taught by Katie Miner and Katie Brown of the Margaret Ritchie School of Family and Consumer Sciences.
“We want them to be familiar with recipe development and testing because when they graduate they will be working with clients and need to be familiar with the process,” Miner said. “They need to be prepared for food service and they need to know how to work with the equipment.”
The recently renovated Carmelita Spencer Foods Lab in the Niccolls Building provides the high-quality commercial-scale equipment to make the exercise workable and enjoyable.
The students worked in teams to standardize and test recipes they previously developed. After testing their own recipe, the teams swapped recipes to make the same products, ensuring the written recipe was accurate. Both rounds of testing involved tasting opportunities for sensory evaluation.
The foods tested included three kinds of lentil granola: with oats, with banana chips and with peanuts. Made with cooked yellow lentils, which were then oven roasted with honey, cinnamon and vanilla.
A muffin recipe used garbanzo bean puree and whole hard white wheat flour. The muffins also included whole garbanzos for texture. The final recipe of the day mixed cooked green lentils, toasted oat ring cereal, peanut butter and pureed dates into breakfast bars.
“We wanted to test recipes that could be used in schools or in the athlete refueling station located in the weight room in the Kibbie Dome,” Miner said.
Athletes look to the station for grab and go snacks they can eat before or after practice.
This is the second year the class has worked with legumes including lentils, garbanzo beans and peas, which are collectively known as pulses.
The United Nations General Assembly declared 2016 the International Year of Pulses for their popularity and to raise their visibility as nutritious foods for people around the world.
“I think pulses are a pretty good food for our students to become familiar with because they are grown here. They are also great protein sources, and they are a nutrient-dense food, so there are a lot of great options there,” Miner said.
The U.S. Dry Pea and Lentil Council, which is based in Moscow on the Idaho-Washington state line, is helping to support the students’ recipe development efforts.
Pulses also have the advantage that people on the Palouse are familiar with eating beans, peas, garbanzos and lentils, and they like them.
Although garbanzo bean breakfast muffins might seem exotic, using beans in baked goods to replace the fat is a pretty familiar trick among bakers, Miner said.
She found the strawberries and cream hummus both novel and tasty.
“We all have a pretty good idea of what hummus tastes like, but if you don’t use olive oil and tahini — the traditional flavors — and add fruit, it becomes more like a fruit dip,” Miner said.