7 healthy cooking hacks
Try these healthy hacks that simplify preparing healthy meals!
Now that you've mastered the fruit and vegetable hacks discussed in last month's blog post, it's time to get cooking. Try these healthy hacks that simplify preparing healthy meals. With them, you will be able to serve your family nutritious food without spending all of your time in the kitchen.
Of course, cooking together with kids is time well spent. The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia's Nutrition in the Kitchen cookbook is a collection of 50 recipes and useful nutrition information written by Children's Healthy Weight Program, and was designed to get kids and their families cooking together. Have your children scroll through and let them choose what's for dinner.
Be a magician. Slow cooker, crock pot, magic dinner machine. Whatever you want to call it, this simple device allows you to cook all day without even being home. Plus, it's not just for beef stew anymore. A quick search will yield recipes for slow cooked oatmeal, breads, lasagna, vegetarian chili, and more.
Turn up the pre-heat. Pre-heating the oven is every recipe's Step #1. Let your roasting pan pre-heat inside and you can cut the cooking time in half. Tossing vegetables onto a hot pan eliminates the need to flip them halfway through.
Make pasta, not a mess. When boiling pasta, brown rice, or any other whole grain, place a wooden spoon across the top of the pot to prevent the water from boiling over. Since wood is a poor heat conductor, the hot water avoids it and stays in the pot.
Add a boost of fruit. You can substitute fruit purees like applesauce for oil or butter in most recipes. Use half as much fruit as the total amount of fat called for in the recipe.
Cook in bulk. Cook smarter (not harder) by preparing a big batch of an ingredient you use often. Grill enough chicken breast to use in a salad one day and in a stir-fry or tacos another. The same goes for whole grains and toasted nuts.
Steam your eggs. No one likes struggling with hard-boiled egg shells. Steam them instead. Place eggs in a steamer basket over 1 inch of simmering water for 12 minutes. The shells will slip right off.
Individualize. Repurpose the muffin pan to make individual portions of almost anything. Meatloaf, crust-less quiche, pizza cups; the possibilities are endless and the results are adorable.
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