It’s often stated that there’s nothing like a home-cooked meal. This is especially true when you know your way around the kitchen. However, it’s not uncommon for a home-cooked meal to be laden with butter, salt, and other not-so-healthy ingredients. While you still want to enjoy the flavor and great taste, consider these simple ways you can make your home-cooked meals much healthier.
1. Measure Your Ingredients
Oftentimes, the nutritional facts are listed based on measurements. A tablespoon of olive oil contains a certain number of calories and other factors. If you don’t know measurements by heart, it’s easy to pour or add in much more than you actually need. Unless you’re cooking for a large group of people, there’s no reason why you need more than a tablespoon of oil to sauté minced garlic and sliced onions. Pull out a measuring spoon, measure a tablespoon of oil and pour the oil into your pan. By keeping a closer watch on your measurements, you can decrease your chances of enduring diet-related illnesses or health challenges.
2. Steam Your Vegetables
When you’re eating vegetables, it’s pretty common to desire all of the nutrients you can get. After all, there are plenty of great reasons why vegetables need to be a part of your everyday diet. Unfortunately, based on how you cook them, you could be sabotaging your efforts to maintain a healthy diet like paleo or veganism. If you’re deep-frying them in tons of oil, chances are you’re going to decrease the number of nutrients your body will receive significantly. One of the best ways to still prepare vegetables while maintaining a high nutritional value involves steaming them. Besides steaming them, you can always add flavor by including seasonings and a little bit of butter for taste.
3. Invest in the Right Cooking Tools
The tools and machines you use for cooking matter tremendously. Instead of deep-frying your food, join the millions of people who are in love with their air-fryers. It’s a great way to still enjoy the crispy texture that fried food offers without the additional calories and risk of clogged arteries. When it comes to pots and pans, skip the ceramic. Most ceramic cookware releases silicone oil into foods and toxic fumes into the air. To eliminate this problem, choose blue carbon steel pots and pans over ceramic cookware sets.
4. Incorporate Interesting Seasonings and Fresh Herbs
If you’ve purchased fresh herbs and spices that end up spoiling in the refrigerator, work on learning how to preserve your fresh herbs by freezing them properly. If your recipe calls for fresh tarragon, ginger, or rosemary, you can find those ingredients in your freezer. It’s also fun to discover what flavors add more depth to a delicious dish. By adding a handful of cilantro to a pot of stewed chickpeas, you can add a burst of flavor that is akin to what you’d enjoy in a restaurant.
By incorporating these tips on a regular basis, they’ll eventually feel like second nature. When you’re able to remain consistent in your efforts to prepare healthy meals, this can prevent a host of health concerns and support your efforts in maintaining a healthy lifestyle for you and your family. Some of these efforts might not seem like they’d make a significant difference. Still, it’s best to remain consistent because when they become staples in your daily cooking regimen, they’ll become the keys to your ability to maintain optimal health. Who knows? Over time, your tastebuds might even desire air-fried chicken over the deep-fried option.
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