10 Heart Healthy Cooking Tips

When you want your family to have healthy hearts, aside from encouraging them to exercise, it is critical to help them have a good diet. As a mom of 5, it is my duty to use the proper cooking techniques that can help in reducing the fat and cholesterol in the food I serve to my family. When cooking healthy meals for the whole family, you’ll lower everyone’s risk of heart disease.

Let me share in this post 10 heart healthy cooking tips that you can easily implement whenever you cook at home.

1. Use healthy oils

Using healthy oils in cooking is a great first step in improving your cooking. Olive oil and canola oil are the best oils because they’re monounsaturated. I use canola oil since it is cheaper.

Monounsaturated fat actually helps to lower cholesterol and make your heart and blood vessels work more efficiently. Anytime you need to cook in oil, you should use this type.

2. Use healthy cooking methods

By Ginny - ginger chicken Uploaded by Partyzan_XXI, CC BY-SA 2.0, 

Frying foods all the time? Although it is probably one of the easiest cooking methods, as often as possible, you should try methods of cooking besides frying. There are many healthy options such as steaming, baking, broiling, stir frying and grilling. They are healthier for the body and make great flavored foods.

3. Add more vegetables and fruits

 As often as possible, add vegetables and fruits to your recipes. For example, when making an omelet, add tomatoes or peppers to it. This will increase the fiber content and the nutrition you get from your food. When preparing lumpiang shanghai or even spaghetti sauce, add shredded carrot or perhaps dried malunggay leaves (crushed like herbs).

In the video below, you can find some more ideas on how to get your kids to eat more veggies.

4. Double your recipes

People in today’s world are on the go all the time. It’s hard to fit cooking into your schedule. But cooking at home almost always is healthier for you than eating out. Doubling your recipes is one way of making sure that you eat as many meals at home as possible.

With this tip, you serve one part of the recipe for the current meal and freeze the other part to be served another day. Make sure that you pack the food in amounts that are good for one meal and put them in a freezer-safe container. When you get home after a long day’s work and don’t feel like cooking, you can just take some pre-cooked frozen meal and heat it up before serving. Be sure that it is steaming hot and not just warm to be safe for consumption.

5. Use lean meat

Buying and using lean meats for your recipes is also an important technique for lowering your saturated fat. When you need to use beef, choose cuts that are “round” or “loin” to keep the fat low.

Whenever possible, get low-fat ground beef for cooking.  It’s a bit more expensive, but it is healthier. If you can substitute lean chicken and turkey for red meat in your recipes, that’s more sensible for your heart health.

Watch the videos below for more tips on how to cut fat from meat before you cook them.

6. Use herbs and spices

Many people make the mistake of eating bland food when they’re trying to eat healthier. But you need to make sure that the food you cook is still delicious and appealing or you and your family won’t be able to stick to eating healthy. So make use of your spice cabinet and find flavorful recipes that you look forward to eating.

7. Invest in heart-healthy cookware

Very handy stove-top grill that helps in low-fat cooking

cast iron reversible grill griddle

If you’re frying foods often, it would be good to invest in a cookware that promotes low-fat cooking. There are non-stick pans and ceramic pans that are being advertised on TV shopping shows and online shops that require the use of little to no oil when cooking.

Then, there are stove-top grills which make cooking barbecues and pancakes easy minus the fat. I use this type of grill at home and my kids love the aroma in the kitchen every time I cook chicken barbecue. All the barbecues will be gone as soon as they are served.

8. Lessen or substitute fats in recipes

As much as possible, I lessen the amount of oil I use when cooking even if I am already using canola oil, which is a healthy oil. This is what I do when sauteing.

Sometimes, when I cook pork or beef, such as longganisa and tocino, instead of frying, I let it boil in a little water over medium heat, then let the water evaporate until the oil is extracted from the meat or until cooked. By doing this, I get rid of a lot of fat from the food. Sometimes, we just can’t resist eating Ilocos longganisa.

If you’re into baking, you can lessen the fat in different ways. You can cut the oil or butter used by 1/4 or 1/3. You can use egg whites only. You can also substitute prune butter or apple sauce for the butter. It would require testing the recipe though for flavor acceptability. Or you can just look up low-fat baking recipes.

9. Add less sodium in your food

By using less sodium, I mean not just using less table salt, but also less soy sauce, fish sauce and other seasonings with sodium or MSG. Having too much salt from food can cause high blood pressure and other related health problems like kidney disease.

I admit that sometimes the dishes I cook are a little bland. But I guess that is better than having dishes that are too salty. Some of my kids have become used to eating food that is a little bland, so I guess it’s a plus for their health.

10. Remove excess fat from cooked food

There are simple ways to remove excess fat from cooked food. For example, when frying, be sure to maintain proper oil temperature to avoid the absorption of excess oil. Also, drain the oil from fried food by letting it sit on paper towels for  a minute or two.

If you want to remove the excess fat from stews like beef stew or nilagang baka, you may want to take the extra step of letting the boiled meat cool in the refrigerator for some time. You will notice the fat separating as a white solid on top, which you can easily remove. Then, you can reheat, add your vegetables and other spices and finish cooking.

I hope that through the tips shared in this blog post, you can cook more heart-healthy meals at home. I’d be glad to hear more of your heart-healthy cooking tips in the comments below.