Tip Of The Week: Healhy Cooking

Tip 2: Healthy cooking methods

Instead of frying foods – which adds unnecessary fats and calories – use cooking methods that add little or no fat.

Healthy cooking methods include:

• Stir-frying.  Use a non-stick pan to cook vegetables, poultry or seafood in vegetable stock, wine or a small amount of oil.  Avoid high-sodium (salt) seasonings like soy sauce, teriyaki and seasoning cubes.

• Roasting.  Use a rack in the pan so the poultry or meat doesn’t sit in its own fat drippings.  Instead of basting with the animal drippings, use fat-free liquids like tomato juice, lemon juice or wine.  When you want to make gravy from the drippings, chill it first then use a strainer or skim ladle to remove the fat.

• Grilling and broiling.  This method, you use a rack so the fat drips away from the food.

• Baking.  Foods are placed in covered cookware with a little extra liquid in an oven.

• Poaching.  This involves cooking cracked egg, chicken or fish by immersing it in simmering liquid.

• Sautéing.  This means to brown or cook food using a shallow with small amount of vegetable oil over high heat, making sure that the food doesn't stick to the pan by making it "jump" in and out of the heat. Use a pan made with non-stick metal or a coated, non-stick surface, so that you will need to use little or no oil when cooking.  Use a non-stick oil spray or, as an alternative, use a small amount of wine or, broth or a tiny bit of oil rubbed onto the pan with a cooking brush or paper towel.

• Steaming.  This method involves putting foods especially vegetables in a basket over boiling pot of water (covered).  This method retains more flavours and won’t need any salt.

• Pressure cooking. Pressure cooking give “fast food” a whole new meaning! This method involves cooking food, using water or other cooking liquid, in a sealed vessel, known as a pressure cooker. Food cooked in a pressure pot/cooker requires very little water and time, which means that vitamins and minerals are kept intact. The pot seals in steam created by the boiling liquid, which intensifies the flavours. This means that you won't need to add any fat or oil for taste or richness. You may not need to season the food either. Soups and stews that would usually take hours to cook on the burner or a whole chicken can be ready in 15 minutes, rice in five and most vegetables in about three.

• Modify or eliminate recipes that ask you to deep fry, use butter or sauté in animal fat.

• Avoid added oils and butter; use non-stick cookware instead.

• Don’t add salt to food as it is cooking; add little towards the end of the cooking.

• Remove poultry skin and trim the fat from meat.

• No Cooking. Raw food diets have gained lots of attention recently, and for good reason. Many studies suggest there are of benefits of including more raw foods into your diet: Studies revealed that eating the rainbow consistently reduces the risk of cancer, but the jury’s out on whether raw or cooked is really best overall. On the one hand, since the food is mostly plant-based, you end up eating more vitamins, minerals, and fibre, with no added sugars, salt or fats unlike with cooking. But while some raw foods might be super-healthy, studies have found that cooking can actually amplify some nutrients, like lycopene in tomatoes and antioxidants in carotenoids such as carrots, sweet potatoes, spinach, and peppers.