How many cookbooks do you own? I counted over 50 for myself and that doesn’t include the hundreds of cooking magazines I’ve received over the years.
To top that, I’ve even had recipe cards and torn out magazine pages taking residence in random drawers and cupboards in my kitchen. Getting all your favorite recipes together can be empowering and rewarding since it can get you back in the kitchen cooking those healthy meals again. Learning how to modify your recipes to make them healthier can also be satisfying and fun. Here are a few ideas to achieve both.
Organizing your favorite recipes in one place can be very simple. It can be as easy as compiling your favorite recipes into a 3 ring binder that you can place at your fingertips in the kitchen. You can get creative with how you organize it and include a section for Salads, Soups, Veggies, Fish, Sauces, Breakfast, or others. Use plastic protectors so you can take the recipes out of the binder and place it right where the action is. Just don’t get it too close to the heat.
There are computer software programs or apps to assist you with organizing and storing your recipes. A few I found on line are “My Recipe Book” and “Evernote Scannable”. Another idea is to scan them into your computer and create files that are easily accessible.
However you decide to organize and store your recipes, just get started! You will be happy you did along with your family and friends since they’ll be the ones to also enjoy the good healthy food.
Now that you’ve got a good start on organizing your recipes, take a close look at each one to see how you can make them healthier. You can use 3 simple recipe modification techniques; reduce, substitute or eliminate, and apply it to your ingredients to make the overall recipe healthier.
Before implementing any of these techniques, make sure you understand the purpose of each ingredient in the overall recipe. You may find that reducing, substituting or eliminating an ingredient could result in a bad outcome.
Ingredients that are typically reduced, substituted or eliminated are sugar, salt and fat. When a recipe calls for 3 cups of sugar you can immediately implement the “reduce” technique and cut that amount to half. Taste it and determine if the sweetness is to your satisfaction. If it’s not, you can add some healthier “substitutes” back in like real fruit. Try blueberries, applesauce or banana to not only provide some sweetness but to provide some added nutrition benefit like fiber, antioxidants, vitamins and minerals.
When you find unsatisfactory ingredients like margarines that are high in trans-fat, you can substitute it with a healthy spread like “Earth Balance” or “Smart Balance”. You can determine the role fat is playing in the recipe and see if you can substitute it with oil like Olive or Avocado oil. Be careful with oils since they can make your recipe taste “gritty” or burn since olive oil has a very low smoke point.
When eliminating an ingredient, make sure you understand that this could dramatically change the outcome. However, with that said, this may be the result you want. Examples of ingredients typically eliminated (or added) are herbs and spices. When a recipe calls for the ingredient “cayenne pepper”, which is hot and spicy, I usually leave it out since my son does not eat spicy foods. Although, when I do that, in my opinion, the recipe suffers since I like that little kick to pep up my dish. My son on the other hand loves it.
Experiment with your recipes and take notes on what worked or not. Very soon, with practice, you will be a master at these techniques and on your way to healthy tasty meals.
Modifying recipes using the 3 simple techniques; reduce, substitute or eliminate, and organizing them in one place so they are accessible to you at any time, to use or share, can be very rewarding, empowering and assist you on your journey to eat healthy.
By Vincent Alvarez, RDN, NSCA-CPT