Flavor without sugar. It’s what diabetics want and it’s hard to find. Most “sugar-free” foods are loaded with either fat or fake sugars. And I don’t do well with fake sugars. (See the reviews on the 5-lb bag of sugar-free gummi bears on Amazon.)
So I’m after big, bold flavor. Spicy, deep, rich–foods with flavor is a diabetic’s Holy Grail.
Here’s a quick fix: dried orange peel. Yes, dried. Not chocolate covered, not sugar soaked, although I did love those for a long time, too.
It couldn’t be easier. Peel an orange. Remove some pith, although you don’t have to make yourself crazy getting it all off. Cut peel in strips. Put in 250 degrees Fahrenheit (120 C) oven on a parchment covered sheet pan. After 10 minutes, toss. Leave in for another 10 minutes. Check to make sure the peel doesn’t turn too dark. Cool. They should be crispy.
Put in a ziplock back and run a rolling pin over them till they are dust. Or put them through a spice grinder or a small blender. Done!
- How can you use orange peel dust?
- Sprinkle on cappuccino instead of (or with) cinnamon
- Sprinkle on unflavored, unsweetened yogurt
- Dust over oatmeal and skip the sugar
- Add to tea with the tea leaves before brewing
- Add 1/2 tsp. to diabetic-friendly chewy almond bars to change the flavor completely
- Melt Black and Green dark chocolate (never tastes sour or bitter) add chopped nuts and a bit of the orange dust. Yum.
- Mix into Greek yogurt and use it as a dip for apples and pears
- Stir into whipped cream cheese and fill celery sticks
- Blend a bit with 2 tsp of vanilla and cut into a cup of whipped cream. Use as a topping over fresh fruit.
Be very careful–a little goes a long way. Use less than you think. It’s easier to add more. You can do the same thing with lemon, lime and grapefruit peel. The lemon and lime make a great addition to salad dressing and sauces you put over fish and poultry.
—Quinn McDonald is married to Kent, a personal chef who cooks interesting food that tastes good. Eating his diabetic-friendly food helped her lose 65 pounds in a year.
QuinnCreative 
Pingback: Easy Treat: Chocolate Covered Orange Peels | QuinnCreative
All I can say is thank you. Thank you for sharing those reviews. I have not laughed so hard in a long time. I had to laugh quietly so I would not wake up my husband, I had tears I was laughing so hard. Oh, yeah the dried orange peel sounds interesting too, gonna have to try them.
If you are sensitive to sugar alcohols, as I am, you could laugh AND cry reading those. But I loved them so much, I had to include them.
I laughed like a drain at the gummi bear reviews, I’m amused by Black and Green chocolate (I checked it out) and I’m off to buy oranges.
The gummi bear reviews would be funny if I didn’t understand EXACTLY what happens because I have the same, ummmmm, sensitivity to sugar alcohols. Black and Green is a brand whose very dark chocolate tastes rich and winey, not bitter or sour. I love it.
Me too! Me too!
I checked out Kent’s website…lots of interesting recipes there. I’m all over the Chewy Almond Bars.
thanks for the tip.
He cooks all those for us! And the “seedy bars” (as I call them)–can have many variations by changing nut butters or adding coconut flakes.
How great! I don’t do well with fake sugars either and I was recently diagnosed pre-diabetic. I’m in a painfully slow process of learning how to eat and this sounds absolutely yummy, especially on my cappuccino in the morning! All the other ideas sound great as well, and believe it or not all of them I will be trying out!
Thanks for sharing!
Hugs
Diabetes is tricky, it has almost no symptoms until it gets very bad. It took me a lot of re-structure what I ate, but now I’m grateful.
I’m in.
I miss you so much!
This is a great idea Quinn, TFS! I use fresh peels all the time in my salad dressings but this sounds like a great way to have a dried version, readily available. Excellent! So many possibilities.
And they will last a lot longer than just the peels. I never noticed it because I covered ’em all in chocolate!
Sounds well worth the effort! Thanks.
It’s not much effort since you are peeling the orange to eat it anyway. And the house smells great while you are doing it!
This sounds amazing, Quinn. I’m not one for recipes usually because I hate to cook but this one sounds so useful, especially as I have a lemon tree and also because the hubs buys and eats lots of oranges….= lots ‘o peels.
Ohhh, now I’m thinking of mixing the lemon and orange dust together. Yum!
Thank you! We will try the orange peel dust. If you have read the Eat to Live recipes, they keep my husband’s blood sugar closer to normal. He is type 2.
I’ll have to check out the Eat to Live. Cooking Man handles the food for us, and once I decided not to diet, but change my relationship with food, things got better fast.
I had no idea! I will give it a try since my mother-in-law just sent the annual box of oranges from Florida and we have a ton of skins after squeezing the juice!
Have fun! And tell us what else you put it on.
I was with you until the implication that gummi bears qualify as “food”.
I was actually steering around the gummi bears and going for the sugar alcohol, which does not qualify as a food for me, either.
Oh, I love those too! Have you tried dried strawberries or blueberries? If you like dried orange peel then I would think you would like these too. Though the only blueberries I have had are wild ones (picked from the forest and dried by ourselves) so I’m not sure how the cultivated ones will taste if dried. Worth a try though! BTW, freeze-dried strawberries are really dry and they melt in your mouth, but air-dried ones become slightly sticky and a bit like fudge or sticky toffee.
Trader Joe’s has lyophilized (freeze-dried) blueberries. I’ll have to try them. I’ve dried my own, domestic ones, and you are right, they are sort of like fruit leather. Love them, though, in any form.