Low Fat Cooking Skills
Fat is a very concentrated form of energy. Ounce-for-ounce or gram-for-gram, fat supplies 2.25 times as many calories as carbohydrates or protein. Learning ways to limit your fat intake from foods you purchase and in the foods you cook for yourself can significantly improve your ability to manage your weight.
Advances in cookware technology, food science, and processing techniques and improved reduced-calorie recipes make it easier than ever to prepare tasty, fat-reduced foods.
Ingredient Selection
- Purchase high quality, low-fat ingredients like seafood and lean cuts of meat and poultry, seasonal fruits and vegetables, herbs, seasonal vinegars, and reduced fat marinades.
- The acronym FiRST (Filet and Flank, Round, Sirloin, Tenderloin) can help you remember which cuts of meat are lowest in fat.
- When buying ground beef or pork, ask for the superlean grind. It has only 10% fat by weight.
- When buying poultry, chose only white meat and/or remove the skin from dark meat. Keep in mind that certain cuts, like the legs, are higher in fat. Skinless chicken and turkey breast, whole or ground, is naturally low in fat.
Cooking Methods
Use traditional low-fat cooking methods like roasting, broiling, grilling, and steaming, and depending on the recipe, baking that require no additional fat. Grilling and broiling have the added advantage of causing some of the fat present in the meat to melt off the food.
Adapt your Cooking Style
Adapt higher fat cooking methods by changing ingredients and using nonstick cookware. Cooking techniques like frying, sautéing, or stewing high fat meats, baking in cream or cheese sauces, and even stir-frying add a considerable amount of calories and fat to the meal. Except for frying, there are ways to adapt the other cooking techniques so they add less fat and fewer calories
Invest in Quality Nonstick Cookware
Nonstick cookware can help you create your favorite dishes with much less fat. In the past decade, cookware manufactures have developed several new non-stick coatings for pots, pans and bakeware that are both more durable and safer than the original Teflon coating. These new coatings can withstand higher temperatures (350-500 0F) so they are ideal for low-fat cooking techniques like searing. They are also much less likely to chip and peel, thereby reducing the likelihood that you will inadvertently ingest some of the coating with your meal. In the past three years, silicon utensils and bakeware have reshaped the American kitchen. Silicon's slick surface results in bakeware that requires no additional fats or oils, and when used to make basting brushes or other utensils, it makes spreading light layers of oils a breeze.
Marinating meats in fruit juice- and /or vinegar-based marinades can make them tender and tasty.
Learn Ingredient Substitution Techniques
Knowing how and when to replace high fat ingredients in favorite recipes with lower-fat alternatives can cut a significant number of calories from your diet while still allowing you to eat many of your favorite foods.
Find Tasty Low-fat Recipes
There are a number of excellent low-fat cookbooks and magazines, like Cooking Light, on the market today. You can also use a web-based recipe library such as the one maintained by Canyon Ranch.
Downsize your serving
If a recipe can't be successfully "slimmed down," downsize your serving size and the frequency of that meal.
A Cooking Tip from the Chefs at Canyon Ranch Health Spa
Succulent meat, fish, and poultry satisfy your appetite while the protein it contains tames your hunger. To retain moisture without adding fat, make sure meat, fish or poultry are no more than ½ inch thick. Use a meat mallet to pound meat and poultry to an even thickness, or ask your butcher to do it for you. Spread a very small amount of canola cooking oil (1/4 teaspoon for each ounce serving of meat, fish or poultry you are cooking) evenly over the surface of a heavy gage, oven-proof pan. Heat oil, then add the meat, fish, or poultry and sear one-one minute on each side. Transfer pan to a preheated 4000F oven and cook for 8-10 minutes the meat is just cooked.
Nonstick Cookware Basic
Nonstick cookware coated with Teflon was introduced about 30 years ago. It quickly became a favorite with busy cooks and the calorie conscious because it was easy to clean and required little fat to prevent sticking. However, the coating was easily damaged by high-temperature cooking methods, and it tended to flake off. Public health officials and some consumers became concerned that ingesting the coating could lead to serious health problems. Safer and more durable nonstick surfaces, some of which are described below, have been developed in response to these concerns.
Today's Common Nonstick Coatings
Teflon II, unlike its predecessor, is scratch resistant and can be used with smooth-edged metal kitchen tools; Teflon II can be found on all kinds of range-top cookware, some small appliances, and bakeware.
DuPont's SilverStone is a nonstick finish developed for heavy-gauge aluminum cookware. It is applied in a three-coat system and baked on at 800° F. SilverStone coating creates a smoother cooking surface than Teflon and is more resistant to scratching, peeling, and chipping. Cookware coated with SilverStone can be used in ovens with temperatures up to 350° F. The temperature limit is in place to protect the handles.
Cusinart Quantanium® Non-Stick Cookware Surface uses titanium and also provides a high quality, non-stick coating.
Choosing Quality Nonstick Cookware
Price and surface texture can help you decide how good the non-stick surface of a pan really is. Rub your fingers back and forth along the interior surface of the cookware. If you feel tiny ridges, put it back on the shelf. The presence of ridges indicates that the nonstick surface was probably rolled on. Thus, it is probably only 1 layer deep and will be prone to peeling. A good nonstick finish will be very smooth, because it's been applied and cured by heating during a several-step manufacturing process.
