Make Your Dishes Healthier

Safefood

Do you want to cook healthier versions of your favourite recipes without losing the taste?

Here are a few tips that will help you adapt your favourite recipes to reduce fat, sugar, salt, calories and increase fibre without changing your normal diet radically.

1. Cut down on fats

  • If frying, use a good non-stick pan and dry fry if you can – minced meat dry fries very well. Otherwise, just use a little cooking spray.
  • If your food is drying out, don’t add more oil, add a little water.
  • Use fats and oils that are high in good fats (poly- and mono-unsaturated fats), such as olive oil and try using less than the recipe suggests.

2. Cut down on salt

  • Most recipes say that you need to add salt. Try replacing salt with alternative seasonings such as pepper, herbs, spices, lemon juice, vinegar or mustard.
  • Allow people to season their own food after tasting it - they are likely to add less.

3. Cut down on sugar

  • Experiment by using less sugar when you bake – most cakes will work even if you halve the amount of sugar in the recipe.
  • Fruit cakes, fruit scones and tea breads can be made without adding sugar as the dried fruit will provide sweetness.

4. Increase fibre

  • Use brown alternatives of rice, pasta and bread to increase the fibre content of recipes. This will help you feel fuller for longer
  • Instead of using all plain white flour in recipes, use a mix of wholemeal and plain flour when baking, e.g. when making apple crumble. You can also add porridge oats to make the top crunchy and add more fibre
  • Use mashed potatoes instead of pastry on top of pies

5. Soups and stews

  • Allow your broth, stew or soup to cool and skim off the fat that gathers on top of the liquid.
  • Replacing some of the traditional fatty meats in stews with pulses like peas, beans and lentils can save calories and fat, as well as adding fibre.

6. Sauces and dips

  • Replace cream, whole milk and sour cream with semi-skimmed and skimmed milk, or low-fat yoghurt.
  • Low-fat yoghurt and fromage frais can be used on hot or cold puddings and in dips instead of cream, double cream or Greek yoghurt.
  • Fromage frais is fresh, skimmed cow’s milk cheese but is more like natural yoghurt. It is not suitable for use in cooking.

7. Cheese

  • Use strongly flavoured cheeses like mature cheddar or blue cheese in savoury dishes. You can use less and still get all the flavour.
  • If you don’t like the strong taste of such cheeses simply use low-fat alternatives of your favourites.
  • Grate cheese instead of slicing as it will spread across a dish more easily and you can use less.
  • Replace cream cheese with low-fat cream cheese.

8. Mayonnaise

  • Replace mayonnaise in salads with natural yoghurt or low-fat fromage frais.
  • Better still, try using vinaigrette dressings and serving them on the side.
  • When making sandwiches, choose mayonnaise or butter, not both.

9. Vegetables

  • Flavour cooked vegetables with herbs instead of butter or oil.
  • Replace some meat in dishes such as shepherd’s pie, casseroles and lasagne, with vegetables and pulses (peas, beans and lentils). It is a great way to disguise vegetables for those fussy eaters.

10. Meat

  • Trim the fat from meat and remove the skin from poultry before cooking.
  • Then bake, grill, microwave, roast or poach instead of frying it.
  • When roasting, place the meat on a grill rack – this allows the fat to drip away.
  • If you are cooking minced meat, brown it and drain away the fat before adding other ingredients.

Useful resources

Use this calculator to check your body mass index (BMI) and find out if you are a healthy weight. Or, use it to check your child's BMI centile.