Lifestyle
10 Kitchen Tips To Keep You Slim
It’s not difficult to make slimming, mouth-watering fare. Here are our best tips for better cooking, easier meal prep, less weight gain, and more fun than you knew you could have while in the kitchen.
These genius insights can change your kitchen game and empower your slim-down efforts!
1. Smash that garlic
For the quickest clove peeling process ever: Place the clove onto a cutting board and then smash it using the side of a chef’s knife and your fist. It’s fun to do and saves you time!
2. Don’t slice your strawberries
Instead of being efficient and slicing your strawberries all at once to easily enjoy later, you’ll want to keep them whole until you’re just minutes away from eating them. Vitamin C is sensitive to light and oxygen and loses some of its antioxidant powers once it’s been exposed. The same is true for oranges, which have a little less Vitamin C than a cup of strawberries.
3. Know when to cool your avocados
The easiest kitchen hack ever? Keep your avocados out on the counter to let them ripen faster, and put them in the fridge when they’re ripe so they’ll last longer. A surefire sign that an avo is well on its way to being ripe is when you can easily pop the “button” off the top of it.
4. Eat your pasta cold
Similar to how oil can make rice better for you, pasta that has been chilled overnight (it’s okay to reheat it!) will also keep you fuller for longer than if you had just cooked the noodles and served them right away. Keeping your pasta cold is one of the 40 Ultimate Pasta Tips to Stay Skinny!
5. Add oil to rice
No, this is not an excuse to get all fried-rice-crazy on us. But if you drop a teaspoon of coconut oil into your boiling pot of water before cooking your non-fortified rice, researchers from the College of Chemical Sciences in Sri Lanka say that the rice will have 10 times the resistant starch (a good thing; it slows down rapid digestion) and stay this way even as a leftover.
6. Poach your eggs
Up to 50% more nutrients are absorbed from a runny yolk than from a hard-boiled or over-hard egg. No idea how to poach eggs? All you do is crack open an egg into a pot of simmering water.
7. Cook tomatoes when you can
Cooking and roasting tomatoes will increase their levels of lycopene, powerful compounds that fight free radicals and help to decrease cancer and heart disease risks. A study from Ohio State University showed that people who ate tomato sauce that cooked for 40 minutes had 55% more lycopene in their blood than those who had uncooked tomato sauce.
8. Flip your meat more than once
Research shows that near-constant flipping of steak, chicken, chops, and burgers not only allows your food to cook faster, but also more evenly. Aim for one flip per minute.
9. Shop with the seasons
Sure, sometimes you just need a tomato, but there are three great reasons to shop in season: It’s cheaper, it tastes better, and it’s better for you (and the planet).
10. Don’t scorch the nonstick
Teflon can deteriorate over high heat, so save your nonstick pans for gentler tasks like cooking omelets and fish. Yes, nonstick pans serve the same purpose, but they can release potentially cancer-causing toxins into your food. While the Environmental Protection Agency doesn’t suggest forgoing nonstick cookware altogether, they also don’t yet know the long-term health effects of nonstick chemicals, so it’s better to err on the side of caution and stick with cast iron. Pick up a variety of different pieces so you’re prepared for any culinary adventure that lies ahead.
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