PAT April 29, 2012
Steamed, baked or fried: Learn how to prepare your meals, limiting fats and saving nutrients.
Healthy cooking doesn’t mean that you have to become a gourmet chef or invest in costly equipments. You can use basic cooking techniques to prepare food in healthy methods. By using healthy cooking techniques, you can cut fat and calories. Read it for your health!
Boiling
Boiling, the most ancient and traditional methods of cooking food, is a simple technique that keeps intact the taste. It is best used when you want to apply a style of easy cooking and light foods.
- This type of cooking is more convenient to use with pots. Do not put the lid when you boil vegetables for just a few minutes: so the vegetables will keep a nice bright color.
- The cooking time is variable, from a few minutes up to about twenty for vegetables more consistent. Bring the water to a boil, add the salt and the vegetables and cook it for the time needed.
- Pay attention to the amount of salt: the ideal is always adding little salt, 5 grams of integral sea salt for every liter of water are sufficient. Eventually you can accompany the boiled vegetables with a rich sauce. Keep in mind that the salt tends to enhance the bitter taste of some vegetables such as chicory, or the endive, for which in this case reduce the amount.
- It is important not to put the vegetables in water before boiling.
- The cooking water is full of nutrients, so it’s a good idea to reuse it for a soup.
A Pressure
Contrary to popular belief, pressure cooking is a healthy and very useful technique for the preparation of foods such as whole grains and legumes, which require long cooking times. In this sense, we call it a green cooking because you can save gas, water and salt. And it is truly one of the best ways to cook the wholegrain cereals: the grains are well cooked and well-shelled at the same time, if you use the right amount of water.
- The idea that inside the pressure cooker will reach extremely high temperatures which can damage some nutrients, is unfounded: the temperature rises only 10 or 20 ° C over the boiling water, a heat that is far exceeded when using the oven, so sometimes even vegetables can be cooked in pressure to remain tasty, require very little time and little water.
- The only difficulty of this technique is well calculate the time to prevent excessive cooking.
Stir-frying
Stir-frying is one of the most popular cooking techniques. You can use it with everything, usually vegetables, rice, pasta and meat for quick-cooking, as well as the fish. In practice the technique is to keep the ingredients moving in the pan placed on a high heat. You can do this with a wooden spoon or gripping the handle of the pan and trying to imitate the classic motion so much admired in professional chefs.
- The food, before this operation, must be reduced to small pieces to allow a quick firing. In particular, the vegetables are typically cut sticks, sliced or diced, more rarely in large pieces. In preheated skillet pour a little oil, mixed with water if you want a lighter jumped, and jumping the ingredients for a few minutes over high heat. Then put a salt towards the end of cooking. If you have chosen a big cut, you should add a bit of water, even a pinch of salt and continue cooking for a few minutes, and putting a lid on the pan.
- If the vegetables jump well, in the end it will be slightly crisp and bright color. This technique is ideal when you want to make a cheerful dish, as well as tasty.
Stewing
Braise means to cook over a low heat and long in a covered saucepan. The term derives from the stove, on which were once limited to food that require slow cooking and prolonged. It is a way of cooking like steaming, except that with this technique is not only the steam to cook the food but also water or other liquids (broth, wine, vinegar), to which you add herbs and spices to enrich the flavor.
- Normally, the food is done by braising first, but it is also possible to cook lighter stews by avoiding this step, as for example in simmered Japanese vegetables. In this preparation, for flavoring food, kombu seaweed shall be positioned on bottom of the pan, on which you cook layered food you have to cut it into fairly large pieces, putting in the lower layers with those that require more cooking time. Then salt lightly and pour a little cold water. When cooked, the water will be completely dried, and the food be soft and flavorful, thanks to the addition of a little soy sauce.
- The stew is a energetic and heating dish, ideally suited to be consumed in colder months.
Steaming
If you do not have a steamer, for this cooking, specific stainless-steel basket is sufficient or, if you prefer, the most eastern woven bamboo basket. After pouring 2 inches of water at the bottom of the pot, enter the basket and put in the food to be cooked, so that they are not immersed in water. Salt lightly. Cover, bring to a boil and cook over low heat until done. The baskets can be lined with vegetables leaves to flavor the content.
- The effect of this cooking is similar to boiling and allows to maintain the flavor of the vegetables as well as considerably reduce the dispersion of some nutrients in water. Even the water in the steamer can be reused in other dishes.
Baking
Besides the world’s most famous recipes such as bread and pizza, there are countless dishes you can prepare in the oven. Versatility, therefore, but also practical: at home, we know, it is the ideal solution for when you find yourself having to cook for more people and do not want too much time cooking.
- In practice, baking can sometimes seem banal, but it is never to be taken lightly. It is a technique that requires care and precision to give the best results. In preparing the bread, for example, the temperature of the first ten minutes may be higher, it may take a small amount of steam and the cooking time must be precise. Other preparations have to be stirred when half cooked or undergo a browning at the end, all of which, without our presence of mind, risk the least imperfection.
- The cooking of the food in the oven takes place through convection using dry heat, at a temperature between 150 and 250 ° C. It is important not to set the oven to its maximum temperature unless expressly requested by the preparation: the majority of the recipes in the oven require optimum cooking temperatures below 200 ° C.
- Besides the air as a means of convection, there now exists the possibility of using the steam that has become indispensable in professional ovens and now with some home cooking can have a combined convection-steam oven. The combination with the steam has contributed to reconsider baking as a lightweight and diet technique because it does not require any type of fat in cooking.
- It should be remembered that the right amount of fat in many recipes in the oven is very limited, and the attention that we just talked about that will help you enjoy a good flat, tasty and perfectly cooked.
- Although its effectiveness is used daily throughout the year in the canteens and restaurants kitchens, baking is the quintessential winter equipment, particularly suitable when it is cold and the body requires a bit of heat and more power in our food preparation.
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