Cooking Vegetables for Health

Vegetables are necessary to the human diet. The latest recommendation from dieticians is a minimum of five serves of vegetables per day. The truth is we can get the majority of our daily vitamin and mineral content from vegetables.

We need to ensure that how we prepare them does not wash away vitamin contents and benefits of consumption.

Cooking vegetables can be complicated. Over cooking can make vegetables tasteless and mushy. My belief is that vegetables should not be boiled. Boiling not only robs us of vitamin content, it is the main culprit in turning vegetables to a lifeless, tasteless form.

If we cannot boil, what are the options?

Steaming vegetables is always a good choice. This will leave vegetables full of life and colour. They will be crisp and colorful. It will also not deplete the vegetables of their vitamin content.

It is a speedy way of cooking too. By rule of thumb, vegetables will only need a few minutes in the steam. In some cases you may be able to steam your vegetables on the table and immediately serve them up.

For those who do not have official vegetable steamers, an easy steamer can be fashioned out a of pot, a metal colander, and a pot lid.

Place a small amount of water in the bottom of a given pot. Fit the metal colander into the pot. Start to boil the water. You will begin the see the steam rise. Place your vegetables into the metal colander and place the pot lid over the metal colander and pot. This collection of kitchen items will allow you to steam vegetables as good as any fancy store bought steamer.

Another good option is to cook your vegetables in a wok. The secret to the wok is that it cooks quickly at a very high temperature. Vegetables retain their flavors, textures, and colors with very small amount of vitamin loss.

My favorite wok recipe for vegetables is to cook broccoli, carrots, bok choy, and snow peas in a very light garlic sauce. The vegetables remain crisp and the garlic adds just the right amount of flavoring. This combination can be served with any cut of meat including chicken, beef, pork, lamb or fish.

I hope you will see that secret to cooking vegetables is not to over cook. Vegetables need to remain crisp and retain their texture. As you learn different tricks to bringing your vegetables to life, these will become the most requested dishes on your dinner table.

Looking for a food safety supervisor course? A food safety course is available through Southbank Institute of Technology. Search for food safety online on the SBIT web site.