Friends, candidly, I feel that many of us just focus on the
ingredients to use while cooking to make it healthy and tasty. Agreed that of
course it’s the ingredients that give a dish its quality, but what matters more
is the way these ingredients are cooked. Healthy cooking is more about using
healthy methods of cooking with ordinary ingredients, rather than using a lot
of “healthy ingredients”. In fact, most
edible things are healthy in this world and their best nutritive properties can
be brought out by simply cooking them appropriately. And, let me tell you that
healthy cooking is no Herculean task, it is just that we need to concentrate on
very common and trivial culinary matters that we might have learnt or known but
tend to forget. So let us discuss how we can improve the nutritional value of
foods by correcting the methods of basic culinary procedures.
I, specifically, felt a need to share my knowledge about using
basic culinary procedures for healthy cooking, as I am sure there are many like
me who are not born nutritionists, and therefore need to learn from knowledge
gathering and experience. So here we go….
Peeling
Peeling vegetables and fruits is the first thing that we do
with these nutritious edibles. It is rather interesting to note that healthy cooking
starts with this first and basic procedure. However, there are certain points
that we tend to forget or ignore. Our
nutrition geeks have opined that peeling should be done when absolutely
necessary (that is if the skin is very tough, blemished or dirty). Well, you
may not like the idea, and I am not saying that something like a bottle gourd
should not be peeled, but surely apples can be had with their skin on, isn’t
it? There is a good reason for this…
According to the revered makers of the laws of nutrition, firstly,
the peels are packed with nutrients. If
you want to read further on the peels of which fruits and vegetables are
nutritionally a plus point for them, read here :stack.
Secondly, by peeling
you risk losing the water soluble vitamins and flavor compounds that reside
just below the peel. One thick cut and the nutrients are lost. I am not an
expert at peeling and invariably I have consigned huge chunks of nutrients (vitamins
B and C) to the waste bin when I was not enlightened with nutrition
knowledge. So just get a great peeler
and do the job carefully taking care that you slice off only a thin layer of
your fruit or vegetable.
Thirdly, the peeled fruit or vegetable should be cooked
immediately to prevent damage caused by atmospheric microorganisms and the oxidative
effect of the air. A few years ago, once while travelling by a local train I
noticed a group of ladies peeling potatoes and cutting them neatly into small
cubes to save food preparation time after they reached home. Well,
understandably these days a working woman has to literally struggle to get both
her official and domestic duties done, but this robs the vegetables of their
nutritional value.
Peeling does not rob all nutrients as per some
misconceptions. Luckily, the carbohydrate and protein content of a fruit or
vegetable remains intact.
