I’ve seen quite a lot of recipes for stuff containing Huel, but the one thing they all seem to miss is why would I bother?
I don’t mean the whole pointless blogger pre-amble about it being their mothers sisters grandmothers daughters favourite recipe handed down from generation to generation and it makes them feel happy when someone said a mean word…
Tell me what the benefits are of making stuff out of Huel!
Shrugs. Why would you bother to make anything when you can buy it pre-made at a supermarket?
For me, cooking with Huel just makes a change from drinking a shake and since Huel’s main ingredient is oats you can use it in place of flour in most recipes, so it’s versatile and pretty easy to make whatever you’re creating more nutritionally complete.
Huel is great, but sometimes I want cookies and cookies made with Huel are probably better for me than buying them from a shop. Plus Huel makes good cookies.
I said probably because you don’t tend to get a nutritional breakdown on shop bought cookies. I guess if you are eating cookies, nutrition isn’t your primary concern.
For me, making cookies at home with Huel rather than flour increases the protein content, reduces sugar/carb content and means I get something that tastes good, satisfies a craving for cookies but doesn’t cause a bad sugar crash cycle which would send me off on a snack fest.
It’s the same for all basic foodstuffs no? You could eat basic boiled potatoes every day, or a boiled egg, or bread, or boiled pasta,… But people like to experiment and adapt their food, so why not with Huel? Especially when it’s a big part of your daily food intake.
The benefit of making stuff out of Huel is the same as the benefit of Huel. Nutritional completeness.
You can compare the nutritional information of flour and Huel and see if that makes it worth your while. But @ROAG is quite right; don’t make cookies if you don’t fancy making cookies.
@soopahfly I suppose there is the advantage that Huel has protein and fibre plus micronutrients. Whereas flour is just carbs.
Huel is lower GI so won’t spike your sugar levels in the same way.
Some people might want to use it because it is gluten free.
You seem to want us to convince you but I’m not sure why… bake with it if you want to. Or just drink it and eat normal biscuits. Whatever suits you best
From our pov it’s a nice stepping stone. I think the idea of diving straight into having Huel for [insert meal] is a big step for someone, particularly someone who considers themselves a ‘foodie’. Baking with Huel or similar kind of breaks down the barrier I think.
It’s the same question about smoothies, why would someone add Huel to a smoothie of greens and veggies and supplements when Huel has all the nutrients you need. I guess some people just want to normalise it? As well as changing the taste, but I can’t believe anyone adds wheatgrass and chlorella to anything for their taste!
At the risk of sounding like a Huel cultist: Huel is, nutritionally, close to perfect. Which means if you substitute it for any other ingredient in a recipe, the final product is more nutritionally perfect than it would otherwise be. (I’m oversimplifying but you get the idea.)
It’s easy to think of exceptions where this definitely isn’t true. For example, if you substituted the oats in Huel for more Huel the resulting Huel would actually be worse.
Some vitamins are not heat stable so there will be some minor changes to the nutritional profile.
But the same goes for every food that you cook - there is some nutrient loss if you heat any vegetables or grains etc. But on the other side, some nutrients are more easily digested or absorbed after cooking.
With baking, it won’t effect the water soluble vitamins however so it’s better at retaining nutrition than boiling food as there is then vitamin loss into the water.