Healthy Cooking – A lot of people relate healthy eating to giving up on all of their favourite foods. Well, that is not even close to being the truth. If cooked right, you can make your favourite dishes much healthier. For instance, if you wish to reduce the need for cooking oil, you could switch to non-stick cookware. Also, you can consider steaming or microwaving the vegetables instead of boiling. It will help you retain the nutrition value of the vegetables.
There are a bunch of ways to make meals healthier. You can limit the use of salt, fats, and sugar in your food. Further, you can also include a couple of grains, fruits, vegetables, low-fat dairy, and lean meats for cooking. Foods, which have a high-fat content, sugar, and salt, are 100% less healthy than the foods found naturally.
So, here we have come up with a few healthy cooking tips that you can adopt in your kitchen.
Table of Contents
Ensure that the Fat Content is Kept to a Minimum
Pick lean meats and the low-fat dairy products or the processed foods to ensure that the hidden fat content is almost minimum. Jasmine, an educator who offers do my math homework services for young students, says that she always makes it a point to give healthy fats, such as avocado, olives, soy, seeds, fish, and nuts to her kids.
Well, these are indeed healthy fat options as they have the essential long-chain fatty acids. Moreover, these fat items have good nutrient value in them. However, if you are using fats when cooking, use monounsaturated oils, such as canola oil and olive oil.
Pick Healthy Food at the Supermarket
To cook healthier, you need to shop healthier. So, for that to happen, you need to:
- Pick a low-fat or reduced-fat version of the foods as much as possible. You can opt for low-fat yoghurt, cheese, milk, gravies, and salad dressings.
- Always opt for skinless chicken breasts and lean meat cuts.
- Curtail yourself from shopping for processed meats, crisps, fast foods, pies, cookies, and pastries as they all contain substantial fat content. Daisy, an associate with TAE who offers chemistry homework help services for students, says the best way to prevent your children from eating junk food is not to buy junk food. Well, it is true. If you have ice cream in your fridge, the kid will 100% demand for it.
Low-Fat Cooking
- Angelina, who is a tutor offering best online python course, says that to reduce the oil content in her food she has started using cooking sprays. In addition to it, you can even use a pastry brush for adding oil in the container in which you are cooking.
- Always cook in liquids, such as lemon juice, water, stock, wine, fruit juice, or vinegar as opposed to cooking in oil.
- Use low-fat milk, reduced-fat yoghurt, cornstarch or evaporated skim milk instead of cream in soups or sauces.
- When you have to brown, the veggies put them in a hot pan and spray some oil on them. Do not add the oil fist in the pan. It would reduce the oil absorbed by the vegetables in the cooking phase.
- The perfect alternative to browning the vegetables by pan-frying is rather to cook them in the microwave first, and then crisp them in the grill for a minute or two.
- Opt for chutneys, salsas, pesto, and vinegar over cream and butter sauces or sour creams.
Retaining the Healthy Nutrients
Bianca, an educator with EduWorldUSA and a food and nutrition expert, says that water-soluble vitamins tend to get easily destroyed during cooking and preparation. Thus, you need to take active steps to reduce nutrient loss. For this, you can:
- Scrub the vegetables instead of peeling them. It is crucial because there are many nutrients, which are found close to the skin.
- Steam or microwave the vegetables instead of boiling them.
- If you like boiled vegetables, use only a small amount of water and do not over boil the vegetables.
- Try to include as many stir-fry recipes in your diet as possible. It is because stir-fried vegetables take little time to cook and retain their nutrients.
Cut Down the Salt Content
Salt is the number one flavour enhancer that we use in our meals. However, consuming a diet, which is high on salts, can lead to several health-related problems, such as high BP. Thus, you should take active steps to reduce the salt content in your diet. Some suggestions for this:
- Do not add the salt automatically into the first. Taste it, and add only as required.
- Add a bit of vinegar, olive oil, or lemon juice towards the end of meal preparation. You can even use them on the cooked vegetables. It has a similar flavour as salt.
- Opt for frozen or fresh vegetables over pickled or canned ones as they are packed with high salt content.
- Curtail the consumption of salty processed meats, such as corned beef, salami, bacon, smoked salmon, ham, chicken loaf, and frankfurters.
- Opt for reduced salt bread and breakfast cereals.
- Pick iodised salt.
- Reduce the consumption of processed sauces and condiments.
