Did you know that different cooking methods can impact the nutritional content of food?
There are 3 main types of cooking methods:
- Dry heat: oven, grill
- Wet heat: boiling, steam
- With hot fat: stir fry, fry
The 3 best cooking methods to preserve the nutritional content of your food are:
- Steam & Foil - A quick and reliable way to preserve the nutritional content of your food.
- Stew - By stewing your food really slowly over low temperature and adding hot liquid progressively, you’ll preserve the dispersion of nutrients, especially vitamin C.
- Low temperature cooking - Keeping the temperature lower than 180°C limits the loss of vitamins and mineral salts.
Here’s how to cook using other methods while still preserving the nutritional content:
- Oven: keep temperature lower than 180°C to limit the loss of vitamins and mineral salts.
- Grill: Use a vertical orientation to avoid the fat from meat or fish fat dripping onto ashes and creating carcinogenic gas. Combine meat or fish with raw vegetables to counterbalance the carcinogenic effect.
- Boiling: Boiling tends to draw out the nutrients (minerals and vitamins) in the cooking water. Try to reuse the cooking water to keep the nutrients.
- Pressure cooker: An internal temperature around 115°C could reduce the amount of vitamins like C and B9. This method is ok for cooking dried vegetables as high temperature helps remove non easily digested nutrients present in dried vegetables.
- Frying: Use olive oil or nuts oil as they have a higher smoke point. Combine any fried food with different coloured raw vegetables.
- Stir Fry: If cooked for 10mins or less, this method still preserves the nutritional content. Make sure to use a non-stick pan, cook under 100°C and avoid any burning to prevent the production of carcinogenic substances.
