Top Ten Healthy Cooking Tips

Nutritious cooking starts with the healthy, fresh and good ingredients that you use to prepare your meals. You simply need to know the very basic laws of nutritious cooking, and you can easily prepare healthy meals, without worrying too much about it. It can even make it easier to prepare meals quickly because you don't need to look for some real exotic ingredients.

Below are certain quick and easy tips that can help you in making your meals more nutritious.

1) Make it a habit to plan your menu in advance and serve the food that is freshly cooked to prevent reheating. Reheating destroys the nutritive value of foods and also changes the original taste of the food.

2) Cover the food with cling film (plastic wrap) before string in the refrigerator to prevent mixing of flavors. Food is to be used not only as a source of calories but also as nourishment to grow, maintain and repair tissues of the body and also prevent disease.

3) Never over-cook the vegetables. The more you cook them, the less nutrition they'll offer to you. Fresh and tender vegetables cook quickly and do not need a lot of seasoning and spices to taste good.

4) These days almost all the vegetables you buy from market are covered with fertilizers and pesticides. To remove them, wash the vegetables in a sink full of potassium permanganate. Then rinse them with plain water. Cut and cook.

5) If your space provides, try to have a little kitchen garden for some basic food ingredients like mint, basil, coriander, chilies etc.You don't need a full field space to have one. These days you can find easy portable pots to include in your kitchen. The greenery will definitely make your kitchen and home look good, along with providing natural and fresh source of ingredients to your meals.

6) Never cook green leafy vegetables in acids like lime or tamarind, as the olive green color of the green vegetables that comes because of these acids indicate that the nutrients from these vegetables wouldn't be absorbed easily by our bodies.

7) To make sure that the food is not overcooked in a pressure cooker, first boil the water without putting the lid on the cooker. Then when it is boiling add the ingredients and cover the lid tightly and cook on low flame for some time till you feel the food is cooked instead of pressure cooking on high flame with many whistles of the cooker.

Buy unpolished and small sized pulses and legumes as some of the vital nutrients get lost in polishing and processing them.

8) Onions are a rich source of quercetin, which is a very significant phytochemical and antioxidant. But the mistake we usually make is that we cut them immediately before having it. Onion should be cut and kept for at least 10 minutes before serving as oxidation helps quercetin to get activated.

9) Milk purchased from a dairy which is not pasteurized should be boiled for at least 10 - 15 minutes at boiling temperature to eliminate the effect of any bacteria or other germs.

10) It can be dangerous using wrong cookware. Never use painted and decorated pots and pans. Some are made of lead and silver toxin material. This can lead to severe digestive disorders. Using aluminum vessels for cooking can cause high levels of aluminum in the brain tissue, because it is tough to remove aluminum from the body. People suffering from Alzheimer's disease have high aluminum in brain tissue. Pyrex and stainless steel is the safest cookware.

Did you find the above article useful? Please share your opinion in comments. Thanks!