Even when you're making an effort to eat healthier meals, it's possible to enjoy many of your favorite foods. Simply by preparing these items in slightly different ways, you can turn a less healthful choice into a low-fat, low-calorie recipe. Making recipe modifications to cut back on fat and calories doesn't mean that you must also cut back on flavor. Making low-fat and low-calorie recipes can be an easy experience.
New Cooking Methods
One of the components that can really increase the fat and calories in a recipe is the cooking method. Never fry or saute items in oil. Instead, substitute grilling, broiling or baking the food to lock in moisture without adding fat and calories. Steaming, boiling and poaching are also tasty, fat-free options.
If a recipe calls for basting the food in oil, butter or fat, try using a different cooking liquid. Wine, juice and broth can all bring out rich flavors in meat and vegetables without adding too many calories.
Use Produce
Add vegetables and fruits to recipes to decrease the calories and fat in a dish. If, for example, a stir-fry or pasta dish calls for two cups of chopped vegetables, increase that amount to four. Broaden the variety of vegetables in a soup or stew to stretch the recipe and make it more heart healthy.
Additionally, introduce produce items to recipes that do not originally call for them. Finely chopped spinach, carrots, bell peppers and apples can be mixed into dishes made with ground meat, such as hamburgers and meatloaf, without drastically changing the flavor or texture.
Lean Meats
Focus on using lean meats to cut back on fat and calories. White meat cuts of chicken and turkey, pork tenderloin, Canadian bacon, lean ham and extra-lean ground meats are all excellent choices and can be easily substituted for their higher-fat counterparts in recipes. Any variety of fish is also a solid addition to recipes, though the fish should be unbreaded if it's frozen and packed in water (not oil) if it's canned.
Avoid using dark meats, bacon, sausages, processed meats, regular ground meat and high-fat, untrimmed cuts of beef and pork in recipes.
Low-Fat Dairy
A simple recipe tweak is to substitute low-fat or fat-free dairy products for full-fat items. Most of the time, it's not noticeable in terms of flavor, but it can make a big impact on the calories and fat in a recipe. When a recipe calls for milk, use a 2 percent, 1 percent or skim variety. Fat-free plain yogurt can be substituted for sour cream; low-fat or fat-free cream cheese can easily stand in for the full-fat version. Almost all hard cheeses have a low-fat counterpart that tastes and melts the same as the original.
Baking Substitutes
Baked goods are often based off of fatty, calorie-laden recipes because they call for so much butter, oil and sugar. However, creating a low-fat, low-calorie recipe for cookies or cake is based on a series of simple substitutions. Decrease the fat content of baked goods by adding half of the oil, margarine, butter or shortening than the original recipe calls for. Replace the other half with an equal amount of mashed bananas, canned pumpkin, unsweetened applesauce or prune puree. These items give the baked good moisture without adding many calories or any fat.
Sugar adds a lot on unnecessary calories to baked items, and most of the time a recipe calls for more sugar than it actually needs to taste good. Try adding half to two-thirds of the amount of sugar the original recipe calls for, then supplementing the item with sweet spices and flavorings, such as cinnamon and vanilla, to make up the difference.
Cutting Back
Monitoring portion size is a big part of making low-fat, low-calorie recipes. Make sure you are keeping to the portion size recommended on the original recipe, even if you have lightened it up.
Even a more healthful version of a recipe can be higher than desired in fat and calories. If this is the case, cut the recommended portion size. Dishing up a third or half of what you would normally consume, then filling the rest of the plate with healthy items such as fruits and steamed vegetables, can help in creating a more balanced diet that is low in calories and fat.
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