During the peek of a full-blown gout attack, it’s highly unlikely anyone can stand, let alone cook. If you could, then you have super hero level pain tolerance, or on some wonderful painkillers. Nevertheless, these five recipes of gout friendly meals are for the gout sufferers willing to change their crappy diets. If you are looking to learn new recipes with low purine foods, yet tasty, then you’ll find it here.
For beginners, ingredients can sound so uncommon and foreign. Wondering in aisles and searching through shelves can be time consuming. However, these selected recipes are simple to prepare and use common ingredients found in any decent grocery.
1. Macaroni and Cheese
Let’s begin with the simplest version of a basic meal or side dish; the classic mac and cheese. It doesn’t get any easier than this classic with only three ingredients. Plus, cheese and pasta have very low levels of purines, which makes this a gout friendly meal. (Prep/Cook time: 15min.)
Instead of shredding your own cheese, you can use the packaged shredded cheese. Once you get used to making this, there are plenty of other gout friendly recipe variations to try when you need to change up the flavor.
Now, if you can handle making your own mac and cheese, then you can step your game up for the next recipes.
2. Vegetable Casserole
An all veggie casserole means a gout-friendly meal. This is straightforward to prepare you’d expect a bland taste like millions of other vegetarian recipes. However, it is rather flavorful and zesty. This recipe involves familiar ingredients and simple preparation. (Prep time: 15min. Bake time: 35min.)
The hardest part for me was finding dill weed. I’ve never used it until this recipe. It’s what livens this delicious dish. Bottled dill weed is typically found in the aisle with pepper powder and dried seasonings. Popular brands are McCormick, Badia and Simply Organic.
3. Vegetable Pancake (Yachaejeon)
Here’s a very tasty recipe for a gout friendly meal. It is a Korean-style vegetable pancake. Don’t worry about the mushrooms. You may have heard they contain purines, which they do, but not enough of the kind to ignite uric acid overproduction. (Prep time: 25min. Cook time: 10min.)
To learn more about why purines from vegetables are not as lethal as from red meat, read: Five Gout Reasons Not To Be Scared Of Purine-Rich Vegetables
This recipe requires seven vegetables for a little more chopping and measuring. It might take longer if you are a beginner, but the video is very helpful. My beginner tip here is to start on very low heat when pouring the batter into the hot oil to prevent burning. Then gradually increase heat. If you like sweet potatoes, like I do, you can add more as long as you make enough batter to coat them. Lastly, you got to have the sauce with this dish!
4. Baked Chicken & Pasta with Béchamel Sauce
It’s wiser to eat chicken and turkey because of their lower purine content compared to red meat. This healthy gout friendly recipe requires to stir-fry chicken and vegetables, boil pasta, and then bake everything together. A little more prep work, but not complicated. (Prep time: 25 min. Bake time: 20 min.)
The key to this gout friendly meal is before baking; drain well the extra grease from the chicken-vegetable mix and keep the pasta half-cooked. This will prevent the dish from becoming too soggy at the bottom of the tray.
Note, the word ‘plain’ is misspelled for plain flour in the video. Just in case, you think it was a hard to find bougie ingredient. From this dish you basically learn how to stir-fry chicken and vegetables. (Something you can do for thousands of other dishes.) If out of pasta or sauce, simply serve over rice or in a wrap. To save even more prep time, use a store-bought béchamel sauce.
5. Turkey Meatloaf
Turkey has a much lower purine content than red meat. This ground turkey meatloaf bodes well for gout sufferers. It is also great for times when you want something heartier. This gout friendly meal requires a short prep time and uses common ingredients found at a grocery. (Prep time: 10 min. Bake time: 45min.)
The secret is in the sauce. Instead of the ketchup-mustard topping sauce, I like to use store-bought marinades like BBQ, sweet chili and teriyaki. You can try other sauces, but always check for sneaky gout-causing ingredients like MSG (monosodium glutamate), anchovies, baker’s yeast extract, meat broth and high fructose corn syrup.
You can add any vegetable fillers to the mix, as long as they are small enough to stick together. If you can make more of the raw ground turkey mix, pack it into lunch size containers and freeze them. Then, all you will need to do is thaw and bake for future meals.
Final Thoughts
Having chronic gout does not require to be a vegetarian. However, you do need to recognize the awful eating habits that got you gout in the first place. As much as you enjoy devouring red meat and shellfish favorites (like I did), you really cannot afford to overindulge as often. If this is where you are with your diet, then these recipes for gout friendly meals are a great place to start for replacing a high purine meal.
The recipes are straightforward, even for beginners. The YouTube videos are very helpful for the visuals. Naturally, the recipes get easier and faster to prepare the more you repeat them.
One step at a time. Learn basic cooking skills. One meal at a time. Replace one gout-igniting meal with one gout friendly meal. Eventually, uric acid level goes down because of fewer purines in your diet. This gradual change to low purine meals will payoff in becoming more GOUTPROOF!
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