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Healthy Cooking Techniques
 When
cutting back on sodium, fat, and cholesterol, how you cook is just as
important as what you cook. Armed with nothing more than a quality non-stick
cooking pan, you can learn to prepare foods with little or no oil for a
healthier way of cooking. People with heart failure and their families don't
have to give up taste or the foods they love. Often minor changes in how
favorite foods and recipes are prepared can make a big difference. The
cooking techniques described below demonstrate how you can best capture the
flavor and nutrients from your food without adding excessive amounts of fat
or salt.
A few tips to
keep in mind:
- Use nonstick cookware, which
eliminates the need for oil or butter.
- Use oil sparingly. Choose
olive, peanut and canola oils, which are lowest in saturated fat.
- Use vegetable cooking sprays,
wine or vinegar instead of oil or butter.
- Trim all visible fat from
meat before cooking and drain off all fat drippings after cooking.
Remove fat from soups, stews, sauces and gravies by chilling and
skimming it off.
- Bake Since baking generally does
not require that you add fat to the food, it is
a great alternative for cooking besides breads and desserts. Use this
method to cook uniform-sized pieces of vegetables, fruit, seafood,
poultry or lean meat. Bake foods in covered cookware with a little extra
liquid
- Enhance Enhancing with spices and
herbs is one of the best ways to add color, taste and aroma to foods.
Add fresh herbs toward the end of cooking. Add dried herbs in the
earlier stages of cooking, crushing them first to release their
concentrated flavor. When substituting dried for fresh, use about
one-third the amount. Other ideas for adding color and flavor without
fat or salt are citrus zests, flavorful vinegar, a sprinkle of toasted
nuts or seeds and garnishing with bell peppers.
- Grill or Broil One can grill outdoors or
broil indoors. For grilling smaller items, use a long-handled grill
basket, which prevents pieces from slipping through the rack. To broil
place food on a broiler rack in the oven. The rack is important so that
any fat drips away from the food.
- Microwave This is a good alternative
because it's fast and doesn't add any fat or calories. It is an
excellent way to cook vegetables because the nutrients don't get boiled
out and it is faster than steaming.
- Poach To poach foods, gently
simmer ingredients in water or a flavorful liquid such as broth, vinegar
or juice until they are cooked through and tender. Poach foods that
contain little fat, as all of it ends up in the sauce. Tomato juice, wine
and vinegar can be used for stove-top poaching. You can also poach foods
in foil packets in the oven.
- Roast Using higher temperatures
than baking, roasting is good for poultry, seafood and meat. When
roasting, put a rack in the pan so the meat or poultry doesn't sit in
its own fat drippings. Instead of basting the meat with pan drippings,
use fat-free liquids like wine, tomato juice or lemon juice. When making
gravy from the drippings, use a gravy strainer or skim ladle to remove
the fat.
- Saute Using a good-quality
nonstick pan, you can cook food with the addition of little or no fat.
You can use a nonstick vegetable spray, a small amount of broth or wine,
or a tiny bit of oil rubbed onto the pan with a paper towel. When
necessary, use liquid vegetable oils that have no more than 2 g of
saturated fat per tablespoon.
- Simmer Simmering, also called
braising, cooks foods in a liquid medium in a nonstick frying pan on top
of the stove. Sometimes the liquid comes from the ingredients
themselves, such as the juices that ooze from fruit during cooking.
- Steam One of the simplest cooking
techniques is steaming food in a perforated basket suspended above
simmering liquid. It is a way to keep all the nutrients in the food as
well as the flavor. If you use a flavorful liquid or add enhancement to
the water, you'll flavor the food as it cooks.
- Stir-fry Using a wok or frying pan,
one rapidly stirs vegetables, poultry, and seafood in vegetable stock,
wine, or a small amount of oil until cooked. Avoid high-sodium seasonings
like teriyaki and soy sauce.
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