It's a proven fact that a healthy diet can help preventing your risk of numerous diseases, from high cholesterol over obesity, arteriosclerosis and heart disease to stroke, heart attack and diabetes. But what many don't know is that eating healthy foods is not enough.
The healthiest vegetables won't give you much good when you store them for weeks of hot summer weather in your kitchen or cook them until they dissolve in the cooking water. Cooking foods in water is still a very popular method, especially for vegetables, because it's often believed to be the quickest way of getting the food done. But it's certainly not the healthiest method, since water soluble nutrients are drawn out of your veggies and thrown away with the water, leaving your food with less nutrients than it could have.
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The secret of getting the maximum benefits from your healthy foods is to cook them in a way that retains nutrients best. Further, they should use little to no fat to prevent adding excess calories. Here are some much healthier and fat-free cooking methods that will help you to make the most out of your food:
- Steaming
- Stewing
- Microwaving
Fat-Free Cooking Method #1: Steaming
Steaming requires a special pot with a sieve insert and a firmly closing lid. The bottom part of the pot contains the water for the steam production, whilst the food is lying on the sieve insert which does not touch the water. Foods are cooked in the steam rising from the water. For best results, steam foods of similar texture (for example potatoes and carrots) or size together. Steaming goes quicker than cooking in water and is much healthier since it retains a much higher amount of nutrients.
Fat-Free Cooking Method #2: Stewing
Foods can be stewed either in on the stove in a closed pot, or in the oven wrapped in foil. Adding fat is not needed, but for hard vegetables like pumpkin or carrots it's good to add some water or stock. Foods with a high water content, for example mushrooms, marrows or tomatoes, don't need additional water. When you use hard foods, stewing takes a while, but you can speed things up by cutting the vegetables into smaller pieces.
Fat-Free Cooking Method #3: Microwaving
Microwaving is quite a controversial cooking method. It's very popular, but there are also many who say it's health-harming. But authorities consider it safe since there is no scientific proof of microwave cooking having negative impact on our health. In fact, it's retaining nutrients better because of the shorter cooking times. Also, microwaving doesn't require any fat. It can be a great option for single people but is barely practical for cooking large amounts of food.
These three cooking methods allow you to prepare a great variety of healthy meals that contain no other fat then the one in your meat. Also, nutrients are retained very well, giving you more health benefits with every meal. These cooking methods are especially beneficial for people with weight problems or high cholesterol levels, since they allow you to cook with a minimum of fat, but even healthy people should make use of them to maintain their health and prevent illness.
Healthy Cooking Methods - 3 Ways to Get Maximum Health Benefits From Your Food With Fat-Free Cooking
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