Turn over a new (lettuce) leaf this year with a few easy cooking tweaks! Here, James Duigan, author of the mega popular Clean & Lean series, reveals the secret clean living ways to cook to help retain nutrients, goodness and flavour….
- Baking
This simply involves cooking food in your oven in a dry heat. If you add water and stock and lots of clean flavour (like lemons, garlic, herbs and spices) and cook for a long period of time, your meat will be incredibly tender and full of flavour from the foods surrounding it. Delicious.
- Blanching
This keeps vegetables crisp and nutritious. Boil them for a minute or two, then remove from the water, drain, and plunge in a bowl of icy water. Then quickly boil them again for a minute just before serving. Blanche is also a lovely name for a lady.
- Frying
This has a bad reputation, but frying can be a lovely way to cook Clean and Lean foods. Simply heat a little coconut oil and throw in all your food (like chicken and vegetables). The same goes for an omelette. The key to keeping frying Clean and Lean is to use the right oil and to not over-fry. You want the meat or fish just cooked through.
- Grilling
This is a lovely, quick and healthy way to cook meat, fish and vegetables that retains a lot of goodness but also enhances the flavour. This is a personal favourite of mine.
- Steaming
This way of cooking retains the most nutrients, goodness and flavour in your fish, meat, fruits or vegetables. You can either buy a steamer (don’t buy a microwave one – in my opinion, microwaves cook food in a way that destroys much of the goodness – hi microwave people, I look forward to your annual threatening letter!) or put the food in a sieve over a pan of boiling water with a lid on top.
