If you’re trying to improve your health, one of the first things you can do is improve the way you cook your food. But when people talk about healthy cooking, it can sound a little intimidating and a little less than delicious.
But healthy cooking doesn’t have to be difficult or boring. With just a few small changes you can make a big difference in the health of you and your family. Once you get used to doing things a different way, it will become simple and easy.
Forgo Deep Frying
One of the easiest ways to lower the fat content of your food and boost your heart health is to skip frying foods. When you fry foods, you add a large amount of oil to your food. While fat is something that your body needs, it doesn’t need it in such high amounts.
Fat is full of extra calories, so the oil you’re adding to your food will sneak in many extra calories you don’t need if you’re working to eat healthy. In addition, most oils used for frying are not the healthiest kind for your heart.
Instead of deep frying your foods, there are a few different ways you can cook them. If you’ve never tried cooking with these methods, you’ll have to experiment to see which one works best for you.
Grilling
One of the healthiest ways to cook is to use your grill. There are several different types of grills. If you prefer to use outdoor grills, you can use charcoal or propane. Gas grilling is quicker, but doesn’t have the same flavor.
Grilling can also be done indoors. There are many indoor grill models available for purchase. Indoor grills won’t give you the smoky flavor that you get from outdoor grills. However, they help you to eliminate extra fat from cooking and allow you to cook foods quickly.
Baking and Broiling
Using your oven is another option. Old fashioned baking and broiling produces delicious food without having to add excess fat. Baking is the process of cooking your food evenly. When you broil food, you use only the top element of your oven.
With baking you get a constant temperature in the oven and your oven will cut off and on to keep that steady temperature. With broiling, the top element will stay on constantly. This can produce the same type of effect as grilling your food.
Broiling works well for cooking steaks and other types of meat. You’ll have to turn the pieces of meat over in order to get consistent cooking on both sides. You’ll also need a broiler pan that allows fat to drip through to the bottom away from your food.
Pan Frying
You can sauté your food in a pan as well. This is a type of frying, but you don’t need as much oil as you do with deep frying. For this type of frying you can usually use one or two tablespoons of oil as opposed to a quart of it.
You can also use the most heart healthy oils with pan frying. You’ll want to use oils that are monounsaturated. These oils actually help you to lower your cholesterol. Extra virgin olive oil is generally the best choice for heart health.
Steaming
Steaming is another powerful way to cook. This is especially good for cooking vegetables. You can purchase a special steamer that plugs into the wall or you can actually convert a pan into a steamer by inserting a special steaming basket.
With steaming, you’ll add a little water to the pan, then add the steaming basket. You’ll place your veggies on top of the basket. The water won’t actually cover the vegetables at all. You’ll then need to put a lid on the pot.
As you heat the water at the bottom of the pan, it creates steam that will surround the food and cook it. Steaming doesn’t take a long time and it’s one of the best ways you can cook to preserve the nutrients in your food.
Slow Cooker
One of the greatest tools you can purchase for your kitchen is a slow cooker. This is a healthy way to cook and can really be a timesaver in your life. With slow cookers you can add ingredients to the pot, set the temperature, and then walk away for hours.
This is especially helpful if you have a job outside of your home or just a very busy schedule. You can put healthy foods in to cook but then you can continue with your activities knowing that you’ll have a great meal for dinner.
The biggest complaint people have about slow cookers tends to be the cleanup. However, there are liners now you can place inside your slow cooker that make cleaning it much easier. You simply throw them away when you’re done.
Part 2
This is the end of Part 1 of The Basics of Healthy Cooking at Home. You can read Part 2: Substituting, Eliminating, Adding, here.
