Preparing nutritious meals is more important than ever but it can sometimes seem like a rather tricky and time-consuming task. However, it doesn’t have to be. These easy food prep and cooking hacks, brought to you by loveFOOD’s nutritionist Angela Dowden, will take the hard work out of eating healthily.
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Keep potatoes in big chunks
The smaller the pieces of potato, the more surface area there is for water soluble nutrients like vitamin C and riboflavin (vitamin B2) to leach from when potatoes are boiled. Keep roast potatoes chunky too, as smaller pieces similarly have more total surface area to absorb fat through during cooking.
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Marinate meat before barbecuing
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Blot with kitchen paper
Use kitchen roll to soak up excess fat from the top of takeaway pizzas, and to serve home-cooked fried foods like chicken and French fries on too. Each teaspoon of oil that ends up soaked into the paper is around 38 calories you aren’t going to consume yourself.
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Consider getting a ceramic knife
Not only brilliant for chopping veg, a ceramic knife could have a nutritional advantage too. The reason? Unlike stainless steel, ceramic doesn’t contain iron and traces of copper that can speed up the browning rate when you cut into produce such as avocados and lettuce. Known as enzymic browning, this oxidation reaction shows that valuable micronutrients – that have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties – are being destroyed. So switch to a ceramic knife to slow down the discolouration.
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Steam or microwave broccoli
Steaming is known to leach fewer nutrients from greens and is a particularly good way to cook broccoli, which can lose valuable glucosinolates – potential anti-cancer compounds – when boiling or frying. Microwaving with a small amount of water essentially steams food from the inside out, making it an excellent cooking method for this vegetable.
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Swap heavy cream for hummus in tomato pasta sauce
OK, it might sound unlikely, but try this swap for yourself and we guarantee you’ll be pleasantly surprised. Hummus in place of cream in a tomato pasta sauce, or the Italian-American specialty vodka sauce, works brilliantly. And as well as tasting delicious, it also cuts levels of saturated fat and calories substantially.
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Add white beans to your smoothie
Blander-tasting beans like cannellini or butter beans are perfect in a smoothie, as they add protein and make it more filling. Try whizzing a small handful of the beans along with a banana and berries to make an energising breakfast drink.
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Swap fat for mashed banana in muffins
To reduce saturated fat in your favourite muffin recipe, the American Heart Association suggests using three ripe, very well-mashed bananas, instead of half a cup of butter.
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Spread sarnies with avocado
Butter on a sandwich can easily provide a quarter of your daily recommended limit of saturated fat. Swap it for a thin spread of puréed avocado instead and much of that saturated fat will be replaced with the healthier unsaturated kind that is heart healthy. A spread of avocado goes particularly well with a tuna or chicken salad filling.
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Big up basil; max out mint
To get more goodness from herbs, promote them from garnish to featured green – for example in this mozzarella, cherries and prosciutto salad. Gram for gram, mint has 3.5 times more iron than beef, and basil and chives both have more folate than broccoli. But to get the goodness, they need to be eaten in larger amounts than is usually the case.
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Healthier sizzling
Instead of adding extra oil and calories when your stir-fry vegetables begin to stick or burn, add a splash of low salt stock or water instead, keeping the veg moist and healthy.
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Low-fat Chinese
Fancy Chinese takeout? Cut down on fat, salt and sugar by ordering steamed vegetables with shrimp (plain rice or noodles optional). Then zing up with your own healthier dressing made from sesame oil, lime, reduced-salt soy sauce, plus garlic, ginger and chilli flakes to taste.
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Season with nutritional yeast
The savoury, slightly cheesy flavour of this vitamin-packed powdered yeast means it can substitute salt in a variety of dishes, including pasta, vegetables and salads. Try it sprinkled on popcorn, added to scrambled eggs or to stuffing.
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Add cauliflower to your mash
Swap half of the potatoes for cauliflower next time you make mashed spuds – you’ll not only be reducing carbs and calories, but also upping levels of vitamin C and folate.
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Switch out some minced beef for lentils
If your recipe requires 1lb (around 500g) of minced beef, try using ¾lb instead and substituting the final part with just over a quarter cup of cooked lentils. You’ll be switching some animal protein for healthier plant protein, having more fibre and reducing calories too.
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Stock up on frozen veg
Most of us know this, but it’s worth a reminder – frozen vegetables often have as many or even more nutrients than the fresh produce in the grocery store, so it’s absolutely fine to use them for fast and healthy everyday meals. Freezer cabinet veggies get blanched and flash frozen within hours after harvest, whereas fresh produce is often hanging around longer, leaving more time for vitamins to be depleted.
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Switch to lower sodium salt
When you can’t avoid adding salt in cooking, have a potassium-substituted version (potassium chloride) in your cupboard rather than straight sodium chloride. Both taste like regular table salt, but potassium helps keep blood pressure healthy and normal, whereas excess sodium raises blood pressure. Lo Salt has 66% less sodium than table salt, while Morton Lite has 50% less.
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Make ‘fried’ chicken in the oven
Crispy coated chicken that tastes every bit as good as fried can be made by coating the chicken pieces in beaten egg, then in seasoned breadcrumbs. Spray with rapeseed (canola) oil, and then cook on a baking sheet at 220°C/425°F until crispy. You reduce calories by over a third this way.
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Keep potatoes out of the fridge
Don’t store raw potatoes in the fridge if you intend to cook them at high temperatures, such as by roasting or frying. This is because the process causes ‘cold sweetening’ – a natural sugar level rise in the spuds – which in turn increase levels of acrylamide when the potatoes get brown and crispy. Acrylamide has been classified as a ‘probable human carcinogen’ by the International Agency for Research on Cancer.
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Turn down the toaster setting
This is another way to ensure your acrylamide intake doesn’t get too out of hand. The browner the toast, the more acrylamide it contains – the same is the case for oven chips and any breaded or battered items, so cook them to pale golden but not deeper.
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Try pressure cooking
Pressure cookers start from around £18 ($22) and can handle putting a full meal on the table in less than 30 minutes (including cooking meat from frozen, which slow cookers can’t do). Because everything steams in next to no time, you get maximum retention of vitamins.
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Buy parboiled white rice
Brown rice is healthier, but if your recipe works best with white, always buy the easy-cook rice (parboiled) version, which has been pre-steamed in the husk. The process helps the grains to stay separate and fluffy when cooked at home, but also drives B vitamins and protein from the bran into the starchy interior, so that it is more nutritious even after the bran has been removed.
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Leave garlic before cooking
To maximise the health benefits, you should allow garlic to sit for 10-15 minutes after prepping it. Chopping releases an enzyme that creates the formation of several sulphur compounds that might have beneficial effects on heart health and the immune system. Cooking too soon deactivates the enzyme before it has had chance to work.
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Choose deeper green leaves
When it comes to salad leaves, a rule of thumb is the greener the better – kale, spinach, rocket and romaine all have more vitamin A, vitamin C and folate than butterhead and anaemic iceberg lettuce.
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Eat pasta the day after cooking
Chilling pasta causes ‘resistant starch’ to form, and reheating increases this level even more. The great thing about resistant starch is that it can’t be broken down by normal digestion – instead it’s fermented by friendly bowel bacteria. The result is a smaller blood glucose peak and lower absorption of calories – lowering diabetes and obesity risks.
