Knowing how to create tasty, healthful meals for yourself and your family is key to losing weight and keeping it off. After all, if the food doesn’t taste good, you’re not going to enjoy eating it. And if you don’t enjoy eating it, your weight loss efforts will be seriously compromised.
To make it easier for you to cook delicious and healthy meals at home, invest in the following inexpensive and easy to use kitchen tools. With the following kitchen tools on hand, it’ll be easier than ever to control portion sizes, reduce your fat and sodium intake and infuse flavor into your culinary creations.
Who says healthy meals can’t be delicious?
1. Food Scale
Chances are that even your best efforts to estimate portion sizes are not quite on target. With a digital or manual food scale, however, you can measure out meals accurately and avoid eating more than you should. Food scales come with varying features, and range from simple manual scales to high-tech digital models that provide nutritional information for the foods you eat. Nutritional info may include the number of calories, the amount of protein and the amount of carbohydrates in the meal.
When it comes to measuring out food, you don’t want to forget about measuring cups and spoons, either. These essential kitchen tools are great for measuring out perfect portions of oil, peanut butter, cereal and other foods.
2. Hand Blender
A hand blender is a wonderful and easy-to-use tool for making creamy soups without the fat-laden creams. When pureeing soups with a hand blender, you can choose to puree the entire soup or part of the soup – whichever consistency you prefer more. Making your own vegetable soups is a great way to increase your intake of nutrient-rich vegetables. And when eaten before meals, these hearty, satisfying soups will fill you up faster and lessen your chances of overeating at meal time.
Hand blenders are also great for making a quick and healthy morning smoothie. Simply add your fruits (or vegetables) to a large plastic cup, add water, juice or milk and blend until smooth.
3. Oil Mister
Instead of pouring oil directly onto your salad or into a cooking pan, spritz it on using an oil mister. Misting oil onto food when eating or cooking will drastically reduce the amount of fat and calories you consume, making it easier to create light, healthful meals. You can also use an oil mister for your homemade oil-based salad dressings to add flavor to salads without drenching them in fat.
4. Herb Mill
An herb mill chops fresh herbs so quickly and easily that you’ll have no excuse not to use one regularly when preparing homemade meals. Fresh herbs are fragrant, delicious and perfect for creating flavorful meals without salt and fats. But, because fresh herbs can also be messy to work with, many people opt for dried herbs instead – a convenient alternative that lacks much of the flavor, freshness and nutrients of the fresh varieties.
5. Steamer
The process of steaming food not only preserves foods’ color, texture and nutrients better than other cooking methods, but it also doesn’t require any added fats. Food steamers come in multiple varieties, depending on budget and how much food you plan on steaming. For example, multiple-tiered electric food steamers are ideal for steaming different types of food at one time, while simple basket steamers are used on the stove. Basket steamers are very effective and are the most cost-effective option for food steaming.
To infuse flavor into your steamed food, you can try adding herbs or spices to the cooking water. Good choices include ginger, cinnamon sticks, rosemary and lemongrass stalks.
Knowing how to create tasty, healthful meals for yourself and your family is key to losing weight and keeping it off. After all, if the food doesn’t taste good, you’re not going to enjoy eating it. And if you don’t enjoy eating it, your weight loss efforts will be seriously compromised.
To make it easier for you to cook delicious and healthy meals at home, invest in the following inexpensive and easy to use kitchen tools. With the following kitchen tools on hand, it’ll be easier than ever to control portion sizes, reduce your fat and sodium intake and infuse flavor into your culinary creations.
Who says healthy meals can’t be delicious?
1. Food Scale
Chances are that even your best efforts to estimate portion sizes are not quite on target. With a digital or manual food scale, however, you can measure out meals accurately and avoid eating more than you should. Food scales come with varying features, and range from simple manual scales to high-tech digital models that provide nutritional information for the foods you eat. Nutritional info may include the number of calories, the amount of protein and the amount of carbohydrates in the meal.
When it comes to measuring out food, you don’t want to forget about measuring cups and spoons, either. These essential kitchen tools are great for measuring out perfect portions of oil, peanut butter, cereal and other foods.
2. Hand Blender
A hand blender is a wonderful and easy-to-use tool for making creamy soups without the fat-laden creams. When pureeing soups with a hand blender, you can choose to puree the entire soup or part of the soup – whichever consistency you prefer more. Making your own vegetable soups is a great way to increase your intake of nutrient-rich vegetables. And when eaten before meals, these hearty, satisfying soups will fill you up faster and lessen your chances of overeating at meal time.
Hand blenders are also great for making a quick and healthy morning smoothie. Simply add your fruits (or vegetables) to a large plastic cup, add water, juice or milk and blend until smooth.
3. Oil Mister
Instead of pouring oil directly onto your salad or into a cooking pan, spritz it on using an oil mister. Misting oil onto food when eating or cooking will drastically reduce the amount of fat and calories you consume, making it easier to create light, healthful meals. You can also use an oil mister for your homemade oil-based salad dressings to add flavor to salads without drenching them in fat.
4. Herb Mill
An herb mill chops fresh herbs so quickly and easily that you’ll have no excuse not to use one regularly when preparing homemade meals. Fresh herbs are fragrant, delicious and perfect for creating flavorful meals without salt and fats. But, because fresh herbs can also be messy to work with, many people opt for dried herbs instead – a convenient alternative that lacks much of the flavor, freshness and nutrients of the fresh varieties.
5. Steamer
The process of steaming food not only preserves foods’ color, texture and nutrients better than other cooking methods, but it also doesn’t require any added fats. Food steamers come in multiple varieties, depending on budget and how much food you plan on steaming. For example, multiple-tiered electric food steamers are ideal for steaming different types of food at one time, while simple basket steamers are used on the stove. Basket steamers are very effective and are the most cost-effective option for food steaming.
To infuse flavor into your steamed food, you can try adding herbs or spices to the cooking water. Good choices include ginger, cinnamon sticks, rosemary and lemongrass stalks.