One of the best ways to keep yourself and your family healthy is by cooking and enjoying healthy home cooking.
Good nutritious food helps your body to stay strong and perform the important functions it needs to in order to keep you healthy. Not only that, but good home-cooked food tends to contain fewer calories than a restaurant or takeout meals, which means cooking at home can help you to stay trim too.
Of course, for many people, cooking healthy homemade meals can be a struggle due to costs, time constraints, and simply not knowing how to put a healthy meal together. If you are one of those people who finds healthy home cooking hard to achieve, here are a few simple hacks that might help:
Buy Frozen Produce
Frozen produce is just as healthy as fresh, and in some cases, can be even healthier. Not only that, but it is often more affordable, and will almost always require less preparation than fresh produce. So, if you want to cook with more fruits and veggies, but you don’t have the time, cooking skills, or money to do so, shopping frozen could really help you to change that.
Invest in an Instant Pot
The Instant Pot is a great tool to have in the kitchen. Not only can you cook up delicious recipes like this quick and easy instant pot tortilla soup, but you can so so faster and using less energy than you would when cooking on the stove. Not only that, but you generally do not have to use as much oil, or even any at all in some cases, when cooking, which means your meals will be healthier and you will not have to spend hours slaving away to produce a tasty meal for dinner.
Consider a Slow Cooker too!
If you typically do not have enough time to cook a healthy meal when you get home in the evening, or if you often feel too tired to do so, so you end up ordering takeout instead, it might also be worth investing in a slow cooker or crockpot.
These simple devices allow you to prep a meal ahead of time. Simply throw your healthy ingredients (meat, vegetable, stock) into the slow cooker in the morning, turn the timer on, and when you get home from work, you will have a healthy meal waiting for you. It doesn’t get much easier than that.
Stock Your Pantry with Healthy Staples
It’s a lot easier to cook something healthy at home when you have a whole host of healthy ingredients ready and waiting for you. So, one simple thing you can do to improve the healthiness of your home cooking is to stock your pantry with lots of healthy staples like dried beans, lentils, oats, and herbs.
Use Olive Oil
If you do need to cook with oil, switching out your usual vegetable for olive oil is really smart, Why? Because olive oil is known for its anti-inflammatory properties and its high level of antioxidants, which will help to keep your brain and heart-healthy. It tastes so much better than the average seed oil does too.
Dress with Lemon
Instead of using a storebought dressing which can be loaded with sugar and fast, or instead of spending ages making your own healthier versions, next time you have a salad, why not simply squeeze some fresh lemon or lime juice over your salad, along with a sprinkling of sea salt and a little pepper. You could also add a few herbs and spices if you prefer something a little more complex. You’ll save money, calories, and time by doing so and it will taste amazingly fresh.
Stir Fry
If you’re in a real hurry, but you want to cook up something healthy, simply stir fry it. cut meat into think strips and it will fry in a small amount of oil very quickly, as will raw veggies and noodles. You can build a really nice meal by stir-frying it in a tablespoon of oil with a little soy sauce, or the seasoning of your choice and it will take you so little time that you really will have no excuse not to do so.
So there you have it, healthy home cooking does not have to be as difficult as you might have imagined, and in fact, it can be a lot of fun once you get into the swing of things. Time to get in the kitchen and cook up a storm!
