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Plant Forward Comfort Foods

REAL Food: Plant Forward Comfort Foods for Fall

Usually, cooking from scratch means you need a recipe. As a food service company, we promise to serve ‘REAL Food’ and our recipes are the starting point in being able to deliver on that promise.

Healthful Food from Scratch: Our Resources

Our culinary teams use a Thomas Cuisine recipe database with offerings that have gone through a strict revision process to make sure we are using the cleanest ingredients possible. This resource helps us plan menus, manage waste, and stay up to date on costing so we can provide cuisine that is not only delicious, but relevant to food trends and modern environmental practices. Without our recipe database, we wouldn’t be able flex our offerings to incorporate modern food practices like “Plant Forward” eating. Plant Forward options typically trade a small portion of animal protein with grains or vegetables – for instance, Thomas Cuisine Chef Norris created an all new recipe showing us how to make satisfying chicken enchiladas that feature chicken and portobello mushrooms as the main ingredients. Because we focus on cooking from scratch, we can embrace healthier practices when it comes to serving food – one of which is getting more veggies in our diet and reducing the amount of animal proteins we eat.

Chicken and Portobello Mushroom Enchiladas

Let’s take a look at one of our most recent Plant Forward Thomas Cuisine recipes: Chicken and Portobello Mushroom Enchiladas by Chef Norris. Below, you can download the actual recipe that our Chefs use in the kitchen, but we scaled it to feed a family of 4-6 instead of the large batch that our kitchens use when feeding hundreds of visitors, residents, or patients. This REAL Food recipe features how to bake and shred the chicken, how to make enchilada sauce from scratch, and then how to bake everything together for a satisfying comfort food that you won’t feel guilty about eating.

Thomas Cuisine Food Service Chef Justin Norris

Meet Thomas Cuisine Chef, Justin Norris

Chef Justin has been inspired by Thomas Cuisine’s approach to food since 2012, and became a Chef Manager for our Pendleton, Oregon healthcare location in 2014. Justin is humble, crediting much of his culinary learning and progression to the chefs who have mentored him along the way. He remains willing to try new things and embrace change when it comes to creative cuisine which is why we selected him to create our newest recipes for Plant Forward Comfort Foods for Fall. We hope you enjoy his Chicken and Portobello Mushroom Enchilada Recipe, this recipe is the same version that our culinary artists use, which means you could possibly see this same dish at any healthcare, senior dining, or corporate cafe that we operate. As you’ll see in this recipe, our secret to quality food is using REAL ingredients and cooking from scratch to nourish your body and mind.