Low-Fat Cooking is for Everyone

Low-fat cooking is no rocket science. It’s a simple trade off between preparing slightly in advance and eating healthy non-fattening food. Add to that – it’s ok to eat a little extra when your meals contain less salt, oil and preservatives. So what is this low fat cooking all about? How exactly can you cook something low-fat at home? Do you really stand a chance at losing weight after a month of eating low-fat home cooked meals?

Yes you do. Because low-fat cooking is all about keeping the good and throwing the bad. Not only will you eat healthy, you will also enjoy your non-fatty home cooking. And since this is no rocket science, I’ll start you off on your way to low-fat heaven. Here are some easy tips to make your very own kitchen a low-fat zone:

1. Use non-stick pots and pans: Simple – the better the non-stick pan, the lesser oil you need for cooking.

2. Put your taste buds through a healthy eating crash course: Reduce salt content in your cooking a little at a time. If you miss the salt, first try pepper, lemon, vinegar or some other taste-giver and see if it works for you.

3. Remove fat and skin when you’re washing meat (mutton, chicken, pork, etc). The fat will be the white-ish parts that skirt meat pieces.

4. This one’s a no-brainer: Do not fry food. Eating fried foods and complaining about being fat, is like smoking and complaining about a bad throat. It makes no sense. Coating food with bread crumbs instead of batter, and baking instead of frying is a great cooking substitute – You get both the flavour and the crunchiness.

5. Cook a vegetable each time you cook a meat dish: This is about more than just low-fat cooking. Supplementing your main dishes with vegetables is the best way to curtail how much you eat.

6. Use an oil spray: There is never a reason to use more oil than needed. So if you’re using three tablespoons of oil for 500gms fish, or 600gms cauliflower, then you need to enter cooking rehab. Invest in an olive oil spray and lightly coat your food when stirring. This keeps the flavour intact and is easy on your kitchen budget as well.

7. Minimise use of processed, packaged and quick-to cook taste givers, since these are usually high in sodium and other preservatives. We don’t need an organic food revolution to tell us that our mothers had the right idea when they made their own flavourers from scratch.

8. Use powders instead of milks and creams: For example, use coconut powder blended in hot water as a substitute for coconut milk. And the bonus is that along with being a low-fat substitute it actually tastes better. You can do the same with mustard.

9. Replace cream with yogurt in dishes that need to be creamy.

10. Substitute, substitute, substitute. Brown rice instead of white, multigrain and whole wheat instead of all purpose flour, steaming instead of frying.

Develop your own low-fat cooking style instead of just following instructions on blogs, websites, magazines or TV shows. Cooking isn’t difficult, nor is planning what you’ll cook. And to top it all, low-fat cooking has a tremendous advantage over unplanned cooking – it calls for fewer ingredients. This makes low-fat cooking easy on your wallet and time!