Paltrow suggested using arugula as a ‘dairy substitute’ in a meatball recipe
Gwyneth Paltrow stopped by the “Today Show” this week to talk about bringing her restaurant venture Goop Kitchen to New York — after a string of 14 successful Goop Kitchen locations in California. The concept is a good one: It focuses on takeout and delivery only.
“It’s engineered for takeout and pickup and delivery only,” Paltrow explained to host Savannah Guthrie. “Every time we tasted something, we put it in the back of a car for 45 minutes to make sure that it arrived still tasting great.”
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She discussed her well-known love for cooking; her Instagram account regularly features recipes and offers a behind-the-scenes look at what it’s like in her kitchen from day-to-day. She’s got four cookbooks under her belt and is a known proponent of clean eating. After talking about her new venture, her kids and the exhaustive testing that went into developing the Goop Kitchen menu, she moved over to the kitchen set with Guthrie and co-host Carson Daly to show them one of her favorite recipes: Goop’s Turkey Meatballs.
Much of Goop Kitchen’s menu is gluten-free, allergen-free, peanut-free and easy to make gluten- or dairy-free. She illustrated this, by highlighting a hack she uses to replace the dairy in meatballs: arugula.
Yes, that arugula. The peppery, delightful, leafy green that is in no way dairy-adjacent.
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“If you want to avoid dairy, one trick that I do is I dice up arugula and I put it in,” Paltrow explained. “It sounds weird, but it kind of adds, like, a nice texture to it. And it’s delicious.” This isn’t as weird as it sounds; meatballs often feature leafy herbs like parsley. Greek meatballs use mint. But, it was the “dairy-substitute” part that confused, well, pretty much the entire internet. And frankly made for some hilarious responses on Threads.
“Is she a male Instacart shopper?” Now we’re picturing Paltrow holding a block of Pecorino Romano in one hand and a bunch of arugula in the other. Replacement?
As a Greek and Italian mom, cook and food lover, I can confidently attest that meatballs don’t need dairy to be delicious. But also, Paltrow’s recipe looked really good.
Arugula is definitely not a dairy substitute, but we’ll allow it.
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