Simple Ways On How To Cook Vegetables

By | July 1, 2009

Healthy Methods To Cook Vegetables

Vegetables are cooked to enhance taste without paying attention to the loss or retention of nutrients. Vegetables are the major sources of vitamins, minerals, fibers, and antioxidants. Some nutrients are found specifically in some particular vegetables and cannot be supplemented by other foods. The essentials nutrients of vegetables may get lost by faulty cooking habits like frying. The nutrients either evaporate with water or are burnt by overheating, thereby depleting the nutritional content of vegetables.

Healthy Cooking Methods For Vegetarian Recipes

As such, it is essential to not only include vegetables in your diet, but also to employ healthy ways of cooking vegetables so as to retain their nutritional content.

Some of the most popular and healthy ways of cooking vegetables are:

Steaming: Steaming is a quick and easy technique of healthy cooking. It is not essential to have a steaming basket to employ this technique. Any vessel with a lid can be used for steaming, provided the quantity of water and salt is appropriate. The vegetables that can be cooked by steaming are carrot, broccoli, spinach, beet, peas, and parsnip.

Panning: Steaming doesn’t necessarily require water and salt. Rather, vegetables can be steamed in their own juices. The method of panning includes olive oil and vegetables being cooked in a pan, with the required seasonings and constant stirring. The vegetables that can be panned are carrot, beans, cabbage, and summer squash.

Roasting: The process of roasting involves covering cut vegetables in olive oil in a pan and adding garlic powder, onion powder, pepper, and salt. This bowl must be placed on a cookie sheet and roasted as required. This method of cooking food preserves minerals, vitamins, and also favors. As such, it is not only quick, but very healthy too.

Stir-Frying: In this method of cooking, a frying pan is taken and is generally greased with oil or any cooking liquid and chicken broth and cut vegetables are put in the pan. The vegetables are to be stirred continuously till they become tender.

Grilling: Though not an easy method, it is a healthy cooking technique which includes charcoal grilling, smoking, and other similar techniques.

There are many other ways for healthy cooking as well. All these techniques for healthy cooking not only preserve the nutritional content, color, and flavor of food, they also reduce the cooking time as most of these methods do not employ the use of water for cooking. So what are you waiting for? Cook your veggies the right way and open your eyes to enhanced taste and better nutrition.