Certain cooking methods preserve nutrients while avoiding superfluous calories. Should you boil, toast, bake in the oven or in a papillote? Zoom on the lightest techniques for your plate.
Choosing the right foods is good. Knowing how to cook them is better. Indeed, to reduce the caloric load of a dish, it goes above all by the way it is cooked. Excessive use of butter, oil or cream can quickly transform a healthy plate into a calorie bomb. Fortunately, several cooking modes make it possible to limit these unnecessary additions. First of all, boiling is an effective method for cooking vegetables, pasta and rice without adding fat. Be careful, however, not to prolong the cooking for too long, under penalty of seeing the vitamins and minerals dissolve in the water. Grill is also an interesting alternative. This method makes it possible to cook meats, fish and vegetables without adding oil. The intense heat of the grill allows fat to flow naturally, thus reducing its content in food. Baked cooking, too, is appreciated for its ability to brown foods without swimming in fat. It is enough to favor seasonal seasoning and herbs rather than too rich sauces to maintain a low calorie content. Finally, the papillote, which consists in cooking the foods locked in baking paper, is ideal for keeping the flavors without adding fat.
However, when it comes to preserving nutrients and limiting calories, a method is distinguished from others: steam cooking. The latter gets out of the game among the other types of cooking, because it allows, like most, to cook without adding fats, but above all to keep up to 90 % of water -soluble vitamins, such as vitamin C and certain vitamins of the group B. Indeed, according to several studies, the vapor would preserve the nutrients better than boiling, while avoiding excessive caramelization observed during baked or in the oven or grill. In addition, it keeps the texture and the natural flavor of food, thus reducing the need to add salt or other calories rich sauces.
Ideal for cooking vegetables, fish and lean meats, it stands out as the best solution to reduce the calories of your meal while enjoying intact flavors.
