3 tips for health-oriented cooking

Can cooked food be healthier, so our daily delicious, preparations give us more nutrition too.  
Here are 3 lessons from experiential learning , being shared below, as tips: 

Cooking healthy: tip 1.

Use authentic recipe & follow completely-

Often we tend to pick up recipes from internet - give some time here to search & choose authentic, age-old and commonly-used recipe.

A well-researched & possibly Ayurvedic instruction of making a dish, takes health factor into account, generally and must be preferred.

Pick up a recipe, with small number of steps, which you can easily make and avoid any short cuts to these instructions.

Often, we try to apply our intelligence and replace given steps in a recipe with our own ideas, this is better avoided, in most cases.

For example: if some food grain needs to be soaked overnight, just do the same - instead of soaking for 2 hours and then cooking for longer time, because nutritious elements might be lost, with this over-heating.

If grating is suggested, do not use mixer here to grind - manual grating is lesser processing and required effort needs to be put, for healthier dish.

Plan your cooking procedure as per the recipe, in advance and then follow the same, as best possible. This shall help in getting maximum health benefit, from your preparation.

Cooking healthy tip 2:

Use all ingredients as pure & natural as possible-

A preparation may need grains, oil, vegetables and spices etc. for example.

All of these are important part of the dish and must be bought carefully.

Where possible using whole grains works better instead of their refined forms. These are purer and contain full nutrition as made by nature, rather than processed foods.

No-pesticide, No-preservative organic products are supposedly chemical-free and hence without side effects.

Choice of less processed, more natural variety of sugar, salt is also important.

For example: Use of Himalyan pink rocksalt rather than commercial variety of common white salt or iodised salt gives more necessary minerals to body, this can be preferred.

Using organic jaggery, palm or coconut sugar, brown organic sugar is better than white, refined sugar, which is harmful for health in certain ways & must be avoided whenever possible. Read more about replacing sugar in this blog post: https://inaweofnature.blogspot.com/.../the-sweet-tooth.html

Use of pure deshi cow milk ghee is wonderful for overall health and nourishment of bones & muscles along with joint & skin lubrication etc. This is a great choice as compared to buffalo milk ghee.

Similarly, pure, unfiltered oils are healthier than the refined or processed refined oils, treated in factories.

As we change our ingredients, valuing health they bring - and replace less good ones, over a period of time, as best possible - the quality and taste of our dishes becomes better and better.

Cooking healthy tip 3:

Avoid stress while cooking-

Many people do not consider cooking as an important task to do which needs dedicated time, effort and mind. They try to do multi-tasking with cooking like attending phone calls, listening to some audio/video or doing multiple tasks, simultaneously, along with cooking etc.

This might complicates and confuse things many-a-times....

Cooking needs to be focused, and simplified giving proper time & attention, for extracting the best energy out of food. A tense or disturbed person cannot cook healthy food, and mistakes are easily possible - some over burning, extra spice or improperly made 'aata' cannot make the most nutritious cooked dish, though it might taste fine.

If work is more than one can handle, it is better to take help of a family member, a cook or some local vendor to get fresh preparation or side-dish done, if required. This is a much better choice rather than buying packaged or ready to cook branded food,, which usually contains chemicals. For example fresh chutney cannot be replaced by packaged sauce, when considering health as the most important factor & similarly ready to cook chapatis are no good.

Cooking is an essential part of our life, this work brings health & wellness for our family. We work whole day to earn a meal , the preparation of a good meal needs equal importance as well.

Cooking food like a professional task, in a quiet, working environment, paying full attention, affects the quality of preparation positively. Unless urgent, no other office or household work, can be allowed to take away the focus from kitchen, during this time.

This time can also be considered as calming, meditative in worship mood-as grannies used to serve with dedicated love. When cooking is given its due respect , food is not only cooked very well but retains more health & possibly 'satvic' qualities too.

Take Charge of your Cooking!

Would like to hear your thoughts on this post & any tips that you follow for healthy cooking. Please feel free to interact in the comments below!

Swaadhin Healthcare Org

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