Stage 3 of the GAPS Introduction Diet: Avocado and GAPS Pancakes

Stage 3 of the GAPS Introduction Diet adds ripe avocado, GAPS pancakes made from just three ingredients, fried or scrambled eggs cooked in plenty of fat, cooked onion, and the fermented vegetables themselves, not just their juice.^[1] You keep everything from Stage 2 going alongside these additions. Here’s exactly how each one comes in.

Use the six-stage Intro overview to keep this step in sequence.

Help With the Everyday Work of Intro. If you would like more help planning meals and organizing your kitchen routines, my First 30 Days on Intro GAPS: Stages 1–6 course brings the teaching and practical tools together. You can find the course in the WFLI shop catalog.

Ripe Avocado

Mash ripe avocado into your soup, starting from 1 to 3 teaspoons and gradually increasing the amount from there.^[1] Increase it gradually and use the general stage rule: if settled symptoms return, go back to the previous stage and stay longer. When a new food brings on diarrhea, abdominal pain or other symptoms, wait a week before trying it again.^[3]

GAPS Pancakes: Three Ingredients

Start with one pancake a day and increase gradually. The Stage 3 recipe combines organic nut butter, eggs, and peeled, deseeded winter squash, marrow or courgette. For homemade nut butter, soak the nuts in water, then sprout or ferment them before grinding. Blend to ordinary pancake-batter consistency, then fry small, thin pancakes gently in ghee or animal fat you have rendered yourself over low heat so they do not burn.^[1][2]

Eggs and Cooked Onion

Eggs move from soft-boiled to gently fried or scrambled at this stage, cooked in a generous amount of ghee, goose fat, pork fat, or duck fat. Serve them with avocado, if it’s well tolerated by now, and cooked vegetables.^[1]

Cooked onion gets its own specific method in GAPS at this stage, worth calling out on its own: melt about 5 tablespoons of duck fat or ghee in a pan, add sliced large white onion, cover, and cook on low heat for 20 to 30 minutes until it’s soft, sweet, and translucent.^[1] The source calls cooked onion particularly good for the digestive and immune systems and gives this long, slow, covered method. Keep the practical cue: the onion should be soft, sweet, and translucent rather than browned.

The Fermented Vegetables Themselves

This is the biggest structural shift in Stage 3. Since Stage 1, you’ve used fermented-vegetable juice for live probiotic additions. Stage 1 also allows a handful of fermented vegetables cooked in soup. Stage 3 introduces the unheated fermented vegetables themselves as probiotic food. By Stage 3, your gut should be ready for that fiber. Start from a small amount and gradually increase to 1 to 2 tablespoons of sauerkraut or fermented vegetables per meal.^[1]

Watch your stool as you make this shift. It’s the same rule that applies at every stage transition: if introducing the actual sauerkraut brings back symptoms that had settled, that’s a sign to stay at juice-only a little longer and try the vegetables themselves again in a week.^[3]

What Stage 3 Is Building Toward

Between avocado, fat-cooked eggs and pancakes, Stage 3 moves beyond the liquid and very soft foods emphasized earlier. Continue every tolerated food from Stage 2. Once the Stage 3 additions are established, Stage 4 adds roasted or grilled meats, cold-pressed olive oil and fresh vegetable juice.

Everyone in our household stayed on the same Intro stage. That kept me from running several versions of the diet at one table during a stretch that was already demanding.

Common Questions About GAPS Stage 3

Can I Use a Different Nut Butter Than Almond, Walnut, or Peanut?

GAPS gives almond, walnut, and peanut as examples and then writes “etc.”; it does not provide a closed nut-butter list in this instruction.^[1]

Do the Pancakes Need to Be Fermented Like the Nut Flour Bread in a Later Stage?

The pancake batter is mixed and cooked fresh; the mixed batter itself is not fermented. For homemade butter, the book calls for soaking the nuts in water, then sprouting or fermenting them before grinding. Fermented nut flour is a separate Stage 4 bread ingredient.^[1][2]

Why Does Onion Get Cooked So Much Longer Than Other Vegetables at This Stage?

GAPS calls for a slow, covered 20 to 30 minute cook specifically for onion at this stage, until it is soft, sweet, and translucent. The source calls cooked onion particularly good for the digestive and immune systems.^[1]

Is It Normal to React to the Sauerkraut Itself Even Though the Juice Was Fine?

It can happen, since the fiber itself is new even though the juice has already been well tolerated. If that happens, stay on juice a little longer and reintroduce the vegetables themselves after a week.^[3][1]

References

1. Campbell-McBride, N. Gut and Physiology Syndrome (2020), “GAPS Introduction Diet,” Third stage, printed pp. 173-174; First stage, cooked fermented vegetables in soup, printed p. 170.
2. Campbell-McBride, N. Gut and Physiology Syndrome (2020), “What We Shall Eat and Why, With Some Recipes,” Baking at Home, homemade nut or seed butter, printed p. 270.
3. Campbell-McBride, N. Gut and Physiology Syndrome (2020), “GAPS Introduction Diet,” symptom-return and one-week retry rules, printed pp. 168-169.