Give your favorites a healthy makeover.
When it comes to cooking, it can sometimes be a challenge to balance between flavor, nutrition, emotional connection or nostalgia, individual health considerations, and other factors.
Luckily, there are many ways to create delicious and healthy meals that you already love! By using recipe ideas to make meals more nutritious, you only need to make some simple swaps or additions.
Here are seven recipe ideas to make meals more nutritious:
- Put extra veggies in tomato sauce
- Use substitutes for oil or butter
- Add avocado to salads, tacos, etc.
- Incorporate more plant-based proteins
- Green up your recipes
- Blend cauliflower into potatoes or sauces
- Try different kinds of grains
Let’s dig into these recipe swaps!
Put extra veggies in tomato sauce
Tomato sauce for pizza or pasta is one of the easiest places to sneakily fit more veggies into your and your family’s diets. For instance, try this veggie-packed tomato sauce full of peppers, onions, carrots, celery, garlic, herbs, and more. To hide the veggies even more, try a blended sauce recipe!
Use substitutes for oil or butter
There are a lot of recipes where you can decrease the amount of oil or butter in favor of a healthier substitute! Fruit puree like applesauce, pumpkin, or mashed banana can make excellent and healthy swaps in baked goods.
Add avocado to salads, tacos, etc.
Avocados are an excellent source of healthy fat that can make you feel more satiated, and they’re also a heart-healthy food! Try using avocado spread on sandwiches instead of mayo, adding cubed avocado to your salads or Mexican dishes, or snacking on chips or veggies with guacamole dip instead of ranch.
Incorporate more plant-based proteins
Plant-based is all the rage these days, and you can start taking advantage of the health benefits just by making simple half-and-half swaps. For example, add black beans to ground beef, chickpeas to chicken dishes, or experiment with tofu or lentil dishes. Check out these easy meatless dishes!
Green up your recipes
Leafy greens like spinach and kale are wonderful options to amp up the health of almost any recipe! Here are eight ways to add more greens to your meals, including ideas like making pesto, snacking on kale chips, chopping them up into soups, baking them into pasta dishes, and more.
Blend cauliflower into potatoes or sauces
If you’ve never tried cauliflower mashed potatoes, you’re missing out! All you have to do is follow your regular mashed potato recipe, but throw in some steamed or roasted cauliflower too. It blends in perfectly, adds nutrients, and you can barely tell it’s in there.
Try different kinds of grains
In the United States, we’re accustomed to certain kinds of basic grains like wheat, oats, rice, and corn. But there are so many more healthy grains out there! Some of the healthiest grains include rye, buckwheat, bulgur, millet, barley, spelt, and quinoa. Hunt down a few in your grocery store and start swapping them into recipes instead of white rice or white flour.
Excited about getting creative in the kitchen? Check out these healthy soup recipes and grilled recipes too!
