Healthy but not boring

You don’t have to sacrifice taste for nutrition. Suresh Venugopal offers a few healthy cooking hacks

Traditional Indian diet is well-balanced and wholesome. A desi meal encompasses all essential nutrients required to maintain a balanced diet. However, along with the nutrition, we also plate fats, masalas and other ingredients which in excess can affect health and wellness. Overheating and re-heating further affects the food by diminishing its nutrition quotient. Empty calories lead to weight gain and other health issues. When overcooked in water, fresh ingredients lose essential water-soluble nutrients. This can be controlled and monitored when cooking to ensure the food maintains its optimum nutrition and tastes good, too. Here are a few healthy cooking hacks:

Choose the right source of fats

Ghee, oils, butter, and others are essential additions to our wholesome diet. However, one should practice moderation and control. Different body types react differently to fat sources. Dietary fats are essential for the human body since they provide the body with the required energy and support cell growth. However, one has to understand what works for their body type. Overheating of fats is also known to strip the source of its healthy fat quotient. Monitor the heat when using frying, sautéing and basting. Also, control the quantity of oil, ghee or butter to ensure you pack your dish with the best flavour and fragrance while keeping the calories at its minimum. You can also substitute oil, ghee and butter for vegetable broth, water, vinegar or tamari (coconut aminos) to prevent ingredients from sticking to the pan.

Optimise the water content

Not only does boiling rid vegetables and meats of germs and other bacteria, but it also strips them of their nutritional value. It is essential to monitor the amount of water and cooking time required for ingredients to ensure we cook while retaining the natural flavours and nutrients of our ingredients. Optimising the water quantity also prevents shrinkage and effectively reduces the quantity of salt and spices required.

Monitor the heat

The Indian style cooking is an elaborate process and exposes the ingredients to high heat for a long time. This can lead to over-heating, which in turn, results in loss of essential nutrients and original flavour. By monitoring the heat required, you can ensure your recipe is prepared to bring out the best flavours of your ingredients and retaining most of the nutrition.

Get the right cookware

With a variety of cookware in the market, it’s difficult to understand which best suits your kitchen requirements. Best opt for full metal cookware to ensure no chemicals and artificial additives seep into your cooking. Stainless steel, cast iron and clay cookware are favourable metal options. The new generation intelligent cookware is R&D-based utensils, designed in a smart and intuitive fashion, and help vegetables cook in an optimum manner. These smart cookware brands are optimising heat by even distribution, controlling water, fats and ingredient measures as well as cooking with technological advances which are gradually gaining popularity in the market among young adults and health-conscious individuals.

(The author is CEO, AMC India)