Cooking can be a fun hobby and enjoying your dishes can be even more fun. Unfortunately, using ingredients like butter and oil make a dish delicious, but aren’t the healthiest option.
Follow a few simple tips to create healthy and tasty meals.
Change your ingredients.
Swapping out a few ingredients can instantly make your dish healthier. For example, mashed potatoes are a great comfort food, but come with a lot of carbs. Instead, try using cauliflower. Use a food processor to puree it. With the right seasonings, you may not even know the difference.
Go fresh.
Choose fresh foods to get the most out of your meal. Not only do fresh foods taste better, but they also offer more vitamins and minerals than frozen foods. Skip anything processed whenever possible. Processed foods use preserving methods that take away a lot of the nutritional value and add in things like salt that make them much less healthy. Make a cooking challenge for yourself by visiting the local farmer’s market and choosing one new ingredient each week. Search for recipes to use the ingredient and experiment with some new meals for your family.
Saute or steam your veggies.
We all know that vegetables are healthy, but when they’re cooked with butter and oil, they quickly lose a lot of their nutritional value. Instead of frying your vegetables, consider steaming them. You’ll still get a great taste, without all of the calories. When sauteing, use vegetable broth rather than oil.
Bake instead of fry.
More and more people are recognizing that fried food doesn’t have a place in a healthy diet. Why do so many of us love fried food? It’s the crunch that makes most of us choose fried. You can get the same flavor and crispiness by baking. Prepare fish, chicken, or veggies by dipping them in milk and coating them with breadcrumbs. Stick them in the oven until they get brown.
Skip the salt.
Salt is the first ingredient that should be removed to work toward a more heart healthy diet. Canned, processed, and frozen foods often contain a high amount of sodium. Skip those foods and prepare fresh foods instead. Get familiar with some new spices and use them to flavor your dishes instead of reaching for the salt shaker. Chopped fresh herbs are great for adding an extra boost to an otherwise ordinary meal.
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