Top Ways to Prepare Your Meals Healthily
We have all been cooking more and more for ourselves since the Covid-19 pandemic. In this time, you may have found yourself trying to recreate your favorite restaurant meals, takeaways, or treats that you were unable to get whilst in some form of lockdown. It is when you start cooking things for yourself like this that you realize just what goes into them.
Once you see recipes full of ingredients or processes you don’t understand, you start to wonder how healthy the food is that you are making. Whereas in fact, cooking for yourself is the easiest way to make sure your food is healthy! So, with that in mind, let’s take a look at some of the ways you can amend recipes or prepare food more healthily.
Avoid Deep-Fat Frying
Plenty of our favorite food revolves around deep-fat frying. Chips, chicken, doughnuts, and plenty of other foods are fried. You can create these sorts of treats in a healthier way, though. There are deep-fat and air fryer alternatives, and with an air fryer you can recreate a lot of the similar textures and tastes as a deep-fat fryer but with much less oil and fat. However, done properly, you can create awesome “fried” chicken in a standard oven or convection oven. Better still, you can do it using ingredients you know are healthy. Basically, the deep-fat fryer is not your friend if you are trying to be healthy.
Reduce Added Fat
While we do need various fats in our diet, such as Omegas, we do also tend to add a little more fat than is totally necessary at times. Too much cooking oil – as discussed above – is one of the main culprits, but there are other ways we can reduce added fats. For example, try frying food in liquids such as stock, water, or citrus juice instead of oil. Or, you could use a frying spray instead of a bottle of oil. Both of these methods help reduce added fat to stir-fries and baking methods.
Retain Vegetable’s Nutrients
When cooking food we change not only its temperature but also its nutritional content. Most veggies contain water-soluble vitamins, meaning they are easily removed from the food during cooking. Over-boiling greens is the main reason for this happening. Too much boiling water surrounding your greens will suck all the goodness out of them. If you liked boiled veg, keep the water to a minimum and cook for no longer than the recommended time.
Don’t Over-Salt
Every single recipe includes seasoning. Salt definitely does bring flavor to the party when cooking. It helps bring the flavors out of almost everything. However, many of us are throwing way more salt in the mix than there needs to be. Avoid the temptation of salting your food extra-generously at every stage of the cooking process. Certainly, don’t add salt again when the food is on your plate!
These simple tips will help you prep healthier meals. You’ll notice the difference right away, as you start to fill your body with nutrient-dense foods. It really is that easy to make small changes in the kitchen for a big effect.
