What small things do you do to make your cooking healthier?

[ferriswheel]

I've posted on aibu because I figure at one time or another we've all tried to tweak our cooking to make it healthier.

I guess aibu to ask you to share your tweaks?!!

Mine are...

When cooking rice I put in a handful of lentils.

Oil spray for frying and roasting.

Grill for sausages, try to replace real sausages with vegetarian ones.

Cut the fat off meat.

Any others I'm missing out on?

We try to cook as much as possible from scratch. We buy veg, meat, fish, eggs, cheese and butter at the market. Only really use the supermarket for cleaning products, toiletries, etc these days.
I have reactive hypoglycaemia, so we also minimise bread, potatoes, rice, pasta as much as possible.
Oh, and we drink water (sometimes infused with lemon or ginger or something else), tea, coffee, wine, but never any fizzy drinks

Blend veggies into sauces. Beetroot completes a spag bol.

Buy half and half pasta/rice/bread (whole grain and white)

Use butter not margarine

Fry light coconut oil

Oven cook chips

Buy the 'minis' of sweat treats (mini chocolate bars, small bags of haribo) - makes it easier that i have a 6yo so I but the amount of sweets that I don't mind him having

Portion size is a big thing for me, go off the size of your hand (there will be some sort of article on the internet somewhere explaining).
I buy small plates so I cannot physically overload the kids plates, this means no unnecessary extra calories that will turn into fat and make them unhealthy (very hard to force a one year old to give you his hand to gauge how much pasta to give them)

For a few months we tried a new vegetarian recipe each week. If no one likes it we never have to eat it again, if we like, it goes on the household go-to shortlist. After a few months it was easy to have a whole of week of vegetarian meals. Now we rarely have meat at home.

Weekly soup night.

We had this tonight, actually. Carrot, sweet potato and lentil soup accompanied by anything you fancy.....tonight was bread and butter and random freezer bits (falafel, veggie sausage roll and one sausage each)! I also do cheese chunks alongside it.

Surprisingly filling and tasty. Soup night was a mumsnet tip and one I'm so grateful I read. Cheap, healthy, filling. Kids are getting used to it!

KingLooie, can I ask what meals you make?

I never have anything with 'fake' sugar in anymore, but I'm finding that more and more products are replacing some of their sugar with sweeteners so i now have to check the labels (i think its to do with the sugar tax)

I try and have half my dinner plate full of veggies, the other half meat and carbs.

When dd was born we stopped adding salt (and stock cubes) to our cooking - for a year or so we found it a bit difficult to adjust as everything tasted bland, but now i find restaurant meals too salty.

so I need alternatives for crisps!

Popchips!

What I have instead of crisps -

Crudités and dip
Carrot batons seasoned and maybe herbs or spices too.
Celery & peanut butter

grate cauliflower into lots of things- eg bolognese sauce/ curry/ shepherds pie etc- it kind of dissolves in and you can't see it. Same with grated broccoli (though can't get away with as much!) and grated courgette or a handful of lentils. I doubt it makes much difference, but at least it's some veggies for veggie rejecting DC1

I LOVE crudités and dips but my problem is I will literally eat a whole pot of tsatziki (sp?) in one sitting

I have no off button

Pop chips are great!

Use chickpeas instead of pasta in pasta salad recipes.

Add a big handful chopped spinach to everything savoury, it usually works.

Big bowl lentil and veg soup before dinner, you eat less.

Stewed fruit for pudding, feels like a treat.

Odd one but I get DH to dish up rice /pasta portions as he always serves heaps less.

Olives can be a good alternative to crisps if you are in the mood for savoury nibbles.

Can't see where anyone has suggested frylight so not sure why people are going on about how crap it is.

I took the original suggestion of using an oil spray to be some pure oil in a spray bottle, which is a good tip. You can buy these ready filled, or buy a spray bottle to fill with any oil you choose.

I pre cook any meats used as an ingredient, then drain all fat.

All other meats... sausages, bacon, etc cooked in the oven, no oils ever added.

Any veg roasting use sunflower spray.

When i make bolognese or chilli I grate loads of veg into it, carrots, courgettes, mushrooms etc.

Although i once did this with parsnips and the bolognese tasted really weird, so don't do that!!

I tend to add more veg (so my cottage pie is pretty much bulked out with carrot and sweede). I add frozen cauli and lentils to a fair few curries. I tend to make meat portions smaller than 'normal', I tend to buy decent butchers sausages which tend to go further in a sausage hot pot.
We don't (to my shame) eat enough fresh fruit but I'm getting better with tinned and frozen fruit as there's less waste (our fruit bowl is currently empty as it just goes bad) but we do eat a fair old amount of veg and salad (3 veg with each meal is the norm here).
In fact Nigella's choc pudding with tinned pears is on the menu for this Sunday's pudding.
I'm also going to start doing some homemade autumn soups for me and DP for work (lentil and smoked bacon is a fave here).

I eat a ton of veg.
I never buy low fat anything.

Make fat less cakes and cutting down the sugar content. I use ground almond to give them a bit of substance. In place of pastry for a fruit pie, I use 200grms of ground almond, five or even six eggs which are separated yolks from whites, about three ounces of castor sugar. Just beat eggs,sugar and ground almond up, then fold in the beaten egg whites, spoon onto the fruit and sprinkle flaked almonds liberally all over. It's quick and really nice.

Home made soup once a week

Puree steamed veg trimmings/leftovers and freeze in ice cube trays then you can chuck a few extra cubes in loads of different things, cauli puree in curry, squash puree in pancakes, pepper puree in chilli etc. This is also great for saving on waste!

I swapped to chickpea flour great for pancakes, pastry and dumplings, I have even used it to make pasta and a crumble topping! - easy to get in the asian section of big supermarkets, counts as one of your 10 a day, is high in protein and has a nice nutty flavour.

I use white beans (haricot/butter beans/cannellini) in place of mash spuds for most things, fishcakes, and pie toppings. Originally did this as a time saver as it is quicker to open a tin of beans than boil potatoes!

Eggs for dinner at least once a week.

I use reduced salt stock cubes and gravy granules where possible. Seems they only do reduced salt varieties in beef and chicken and occasionally vegetable stock at the moment.

I buy lean 5% fat mince.

Grate things like carrot into most mince based dishes.

Used to make a big batch of veg soup once a week to have for lunch etc, need to get back into that.

Gerbo family go to veggie faves include wraps, oven roasted veg (could be onions, peppers, carrots, sweet potato, parsnip, courgette, aubergine), humus and cheese (feta is popular). For some reason DH introduced sweet chilli sauce which is a mash up of cuisines. If you want to be controversial you could fry-light the oven roast veg.

Also - pasta with tinned tomatoes and mozzarella. I fry some garlic very briefly, add some balsamic vinegar, let it reduce for a min, then tinned tomatoes, tomato puree and half a veg stock cube. Chopped up sun dried toms if you have them and can be arsed. Let tinned toms reduce. Right at the end add some basil (we use the frozen basil) and chopped up mozzarella and serve with pasta. One tin toms and one ball mozzarella does me and an 8 year old, would need more if two adults around. Could use any cheese really.

Also make "meatballs" from Linda McCartney frozen sausages defrosted and re-shaped into balls. Eat with reduced tinned toms and pasta/rice, or passata to save time. Add dried apricots and cinnamon and serve with cous cous for Moroccan version.

We use several of the bean based recipes from "A girl called Jack". I never liked beans as a child so it's "bean" a revelation.

Also a few things from the Slimming World veggie recipe book, I've just checked and it's currently unavailable on Amazon, unless you want to pay £300! Crackers. The only ones I could describe off the top of my head are further variations on pasta, tinned toms and cheese, only finished under the grill and with spinach and capers mixed through. There is more variety in the book, just can't think right now.

There have been some interesting frittata type things that have sadly fallen by the way side as DS, while not normally a fussy eater, draws the lines at eggs and it's just not worth the grief.

I add ground flaxseed and ground chia seed to anything with a sauce, so bolognese/curry/cottage pie/lasagne. Neither DS nor DH have copped. Also add them to pancake batter/breadcrumbs/porridge all sorts! Any sauce type meals have loads of veg and little to no meat and fewer carbs.

A drop of vanilla extract makes things seem a lot sweeter without the sugar.

Sometimes, I heat up the leftover MaccyD's and pizza using the microwave rather than the deep fat fryer. I feel amazing.

Absolutely nothing. I prefer to enjoy what I eat.

Full fat versions of everything

Avoid mixing carbs with other items for serving (that way if you are still a bit peckish you can eat a bit of extra veg without having a load of rice/pasta mixed in)

Limit the amount of sweet stuff and no fizzy drinks (just beer/wine and tea)

try to avoid processed meat and processed cereals (well I still eat them but eg. am now aware that breakfast cereal is unhealthy so don't eat it instead of a meal - instead would eat eg. a large piece of cheese and an apple or a generously cheesy bit of toast)

cook plenty of veg or make a big salad