Cooking Made Easy: How to Prepare Healthy Meals for Your Family

Home cook and feed your family lots of delicious foods. This post from a reader explores the different nutritional benefits of various cooking methods.

Your family’s health and well-being are your responsibility, especially when you have growing kids and elderly members. With the increase in pollution and unhygienic environments, the only way to stay healthy is to maintain a stable lifestyle and switch to healthier food habits. You insist that your family members exercise or take up a sport to stay active, but you should also pay maximum attention to their meals that’ll provide them with the essential nutrients and keep them healthy.

Here are a few ways to prepare easy and healthy meals for your family.


Switch to healthier ingredients

Food items and ingredients like eggs, legumes, vegetables, fruits, and lean meat should be incorporated into your family’s meals every day. The healthiest fruits contain less sugar. You need to balance these ingredients in your meals to provide the necessary amount of protein, carbohydrates, and fat. You can reinvent a few of your kids’ favorite recipes to keep them interested in healthier food choices. Try to keep the dishes, colorful and flavorful.

Switch to healthier cooking techniques

Instead of sticking to your usual deep-fried or sautéed cooking techniques, you can switch to healthier cooking techniques like steaming, grilling, stir-frying, and boiling to reduce the amount of trans fat and oil in your food, making it nutritious and delicious.

Steaming

Considered to be one of the healthiest cooking techniques, steaming doesn’t require any oil and retains maximum flavor from vegetables. Even though it might seem bland at the end, a useful way to keep your food tasty is by adding some seasonings in the water before you steam. There’s also no chance of burning here, and it’s probably the easiest method to use. An added benefit of steaming is that you can steam almost any kind of food, from vegetables to meat and fish, with the same consistency and precision.

Grilling

You can now feed your family healthy burger patties as you used to. Grilling is a fun and tasty way to cook food. With healthier ingredients and wiser choices of sauces and condiments, you can most definitely use grilling as an everyday cooking method for your family. You can either use charcoal cookers or gas bbqs that are easy to use and possibly contain heat and temperature controls. Grilling your food also retains essential nutrients such as riboflavin and thiamine. This technique provides you with a delicious and crispy outer crust while the insides stay juicy and tender.

Stir-Frying

This cooking technique is inherited from Asian cuisine, and it has replaced deep-frying. If your family members find it difficult to quit fried food and need a little grease or oil in their meals, you can switch to stir-frying. The food cooks quickly and uses very little oil. Stir-frying vegetables can help in retaining all heat-sensitive nutrients, as the food doesn’t overheat. The end results, look colorful and delicious, urging your family members to eat their veggies—it’s a great way to start adding more vegetables in your meals.

Boiling

Boiling your food might be the least preferred way of cooking due to the bland results, but it’s highly desirable due to its numerous health benefits. Boiled food is easier to digest and reduces stomach inflammation. It also soothes acidity issues and promotes weight loss along with healthier skin, hair, and digestive system. A lot of people confuse boiling with steaming, but there’s a major difference between them. Boiling requires full immersion of the food in water, whereas steaming requires the food to be placed in a vessel above hot water to cook it through the vapor produced. The taste and nutritional value in the two cooking methods are different, as well.

Try the above cooking methods on different days to offer versatility and try different recipes for your family members every day.

Re-plan your snacks

Instead of the usual cookies and milk or chips for evening snacks, you should keep cut fruits and veggies and keep them handy. A few examples of healthy snacks are apple slices with peanut butter or carrot sticks with hummus. The key is to not exceed the calorie count and still provide enough energy and nutrition for your family, depending on their age and physical activity. You can also offer a few other healthy snacking options like air-popped popcorn or baked vegetable fries.

Incorporating healthier cooking methods and ingredients in your daily meals is the key to switching to a healthier lifestyle. You can also involve your kids in cooking to keep them interested and curious about the food they’re preparing and eating. After all, eating healthy can be fun and delicious, and shouldn’t be considered as a punishment.