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Healthy Poultry Recipes to Keep Your Diet on Track

January 30, 2015 by

Poultry is such a versatile meat, you could eat it every day of the week and never have the same dish twice. If you’re looking for new and exciting ways to prepare chicken or turkey, here are some delightful recipes from the National Institutes of Health:

"Fried" Rice and Chicken
Okay, so fried rice isn’t the healthiest food in the world. But in this recipe, it takes on a much healthier role with the addition of brown rice, light soy sauce, and a few assorted vegetables. By using boneless, skinless chicken breast and a low-calorie Hawaiian sauce, this dish becomes a healthy replacement for your favorite takeout food.

Crunchy Chicken Fingers With Tangy Dipping Sauce
A healthier take on the beloved children’s food, this chicken fingers recipe uses whole-wheat flour and corn cereal to achieve the same delicious crunch as the more fattening original. Make a tangy dipping sauce out of ketchup, orange juice, and a few other zesty ingredients for a light lunch that even the kids will love.

Make-Your-Own Turkey Burger
Turkey burgers are becoming increasingly popular alternatives to high-fat beef burgers, and it’s just as easy to make your own at home. This simple recipe uses 99 percent lean ground turkey and a few common spices to create a juicy burger with a whole 33 grams of protein.

For more healthy chicken, turkey and other poultry recipes, visit the NIH website here.

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Avoid Portion Size Pitfalls with These Helpful Tips

January 31, 2014 by

You can eat what you want and still lose weight by simply changing your ideas about what equals a portion. Exercising portion control is easy if you understand how much of each food group you should consume per day, and these tips from the CDC can help you.

The guide first notes that serving sizes at restaurants have gotten significantly larger over the years. It suggests splitting one large meal with a friend, or immediately asking for a to-go box and dividing the meal into healthy portions, leaving some for later.

At home, serving food from individual plates rather than large serving platters helps to limit overeating. Eating a healthy snack before a large dinner also helps you to eat less of fattening foods, and dividing nighttime snacks into smaller bowls is another way to practice portion control. Check out the guide for some other great ideas for limiting food portions!

How to Avoid Portion Size Pitfalls to Help Manage Your Weight [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention]

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Find a Delicious Recipe Using Ingredients You Have at Home

November 19, 2013 by

You know the feeling: it’s dinner time, you’re rummaging through your kitchen cabinets trying to find something to make, and you come up empty handed. These helpful websites are made for days when you just don’t have time to get to the grocery store. They’ll help you to combine the things you already have to make a tasty and filling meal, and you might even find a new favorite recipe along the way:

Super Cook
Super Cook offers a simple layout and easy-to-use search bar that allows you to type in the ingredients you have and browse recipes using only those ingredients. The site searches other places around the web to give you a variety of recipes to choose from, and it even allows you to save the ones you’ve tried and loved or plan on trying in the future. Super Cook also has search filters for dietary restrictions, omitting things like dairy, gluten, meat or shellfish.

Recipe Matcher
Another great website for combining mismatched ingredients into delicious, wholesome meals, Recipe Matcher operates off of user-submitted recipes that are constantly updated. If you have a recipe that you’d like to share, Recipe Matcher also has a submissions page to allow you to help others become less wasteful and save a bit of grocery money along the way.

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Find Local Food in Season Near You

November 15, 2013 by

Finding fresh, healthy foods nearby can extend beyond the produce counter at your neighborhood grocery store. If you want find food grown in your region, these three websites can help guide you:

Local Harvest
The CSA page of the Local Harvest website gives you complete information about signing up for a CSA, and where to find one in your area. CSA stands for “Community Supported Agriculture”, and it generally operates like a subscription to your local farmers market. If you want a constant supply of fresh, local produce, Local Harvest is worth a read.

FarmersMarket.com
FarmersMarket.com is an entire website devoted to, you guessed it, farmer’s markets. Type in your zip code and you’ll instantly receive information about all of the farmer’s markets in your area, giving you quick and easy access to information about local and organic products. FarmersMarket.com also has an informative blog with tips and recipes for using your market purchases in healthy and delicious ways.

Epicurious
This self-described website “for people who love to eat” features information about farm-to-table meats and produce and where to find them in your area, including an interactive ingredient map. Epicurious also employs healthy, seasonal recipes, a tight-knit online community, and articles from chefs and other experts to keep you informed about local foods.

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Spring Produce: Seasonal Fruit and Veggie Highlights to Add to Your Menu

April 26, 2013 by

As spring begins, gardens are alive with new shoots. The spring fruit and vegetable season adds tons of exciting new options to your cooking. Here are some of the best fresh fruits and vegetables to consider cooking with this season.

Asparagus is one of the most eagerly anticipated new crops every spring. When picked fresh, it’s fragrant and delicious. Cooking it is incredibly simple – steam it, roast it or grill it. All it needs is a little salt, pepper and olive oil for its natural flavor to shine.

Garlic shoots are an unusual but remarkable spring harvest. Before the white garlic bulb that you are familiar with forms, the plant grows a large, green shoot, also called a “scape.” This has a flavor similar to the bulb but milder. It’s great for soups.

Spring is also the best time to harvest new potatoes. Although potatoes can stay in the ground through the summer and into the late fall, harvesting them early keeps the skin from setting, making for sweet, tender spuds that cook quickly and burst with flavor.

In terms of fruit, one of the best bounties every spring is the cherry harvest. Cherry fruit starts growing in the middle of the season, and should be eaten quickly after harvesting for the best flavor.

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Sushi Guide

January 16, 2013 by

Sushi is now a mainstream staple of many American diets. If you're new to sushi, it can still be a little intimidating, since it’s a complicated food with a great deal of cultural tradition behind it. Here’s a simple field guide:

1. Sushi does not mean "raw fish." Sushi is the product of combining a protein or vegetable with a special kind of rice, prepared with vinegar and sugar. Sticky, sushi rice is the real core of the meal, and it needs to be made fresh.

2. Nigiri is the most “pure” form of the food – a cut of the main ingredient – typically fish – on top of a small dollop of sushi rice. Nigiri is designed to communicate the essential flavors of the fish without any other tastes masking them, and is the best way to evaluate the freshness of a sushi bar.

3. Maki, also known as rolls, have become the most popular form of sushi from Americanized restaurants. Ingredients are wrapped in a layer of sushi rice, rolled into a cylinder and sliced. A number of other things can be added – traditionally, a sheet of seaweed is used to hold the roll together, but restaurants use tofu skin as well. Rice on the outside is called an “inside-out” roll. These rolls are often topped with sauces or other fish.

4. You don't have to eat raw fish to enjoy sushi. If eating raw fish isn't appealing to you, there are several cooked options such as crab, shrimp, or lobster. Or, you can always enjoy vegetarian rolls such as avocado and cucumber.

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Make These Easy Pasta Salad Recipes Tonight!

January 3, 2013 by

If the words "pasta salad" conjure up images of mayonnaise and barbecues, you're not alone. But, there are actually a variety of ways to make delicious, savory pasta dishes that won't make you feel like you're picnicking. Below are five pasta salad ideas that break from tradition to provide outstanding flavor!

Caprese Salad — Draw inspiration from the Italian caprese salad, and season your pasta, such as hearty rigatoni, with fresh basil, good olive oil, vine-ripened tomatoes, and chunks of mozzarella. Add a bit of salt and pepper to taste, and you're all set!

Greek Pasta — Taking your cue from Greek Salad, add a mix of cherry tomatoes, sliced cucumber, tangy feta cheese, and robust olives to the pasta. Try using mostaccioli, the small, curved pasta named after the mustache, as the base of the salad so all the elements are comparable in size. Complete it a dressing of olive oil, vinegar, and lemon juice.

Asian Flavor – Prepare a pasta salad an Asian feel by using soba noodles, which are made from earthy buckwheat flour. Season the noodles with soy sauce and sesame oil, and top it with slivers of carrots and diced scallions for a delicious, simple dish that offers take-notice flavors.

Middle Eastern Side — For an alternative to pasta salad, make tabbouleh instead. This side makes use of kernels of bulgur wheat instead of pasta, and seasons them with a combo of finely-diced mint and parsley. It’s a wonderful option if you're tired of noodles!

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Bird Is The Word: Five Quick Chicken Dinners

September 25, 2012 by

Chicken is one of the most versatile proteins available to the home cook, and it can be prepared in so many different, delectable ways. In this article, we’ll share five of our favorite recipes that come out of the kitchen in a hurry without skimping on flavor.

Stuff a chicken breast with onions caramelized in a pan until they are golden brown and soft Fontina cheese. Bake in an pan until the meat is cooked through and deglaze the pan with white wine and rosemary to make a sauce. Serve over rice pilaf or quinoa.

Lemon chicken is a classic dish that never fails to impress. Marinate chunks of chicken in soy sauce for a little bit, then dredge it in a batter made from egg yolk and cornstarch. Quickly fry in a skillet and mix with a simple sauce created from lemon juice, water, sugar and a little more cornstarch. Serve over white rice.

Cut a chicken breast into rectangles and bread them with panko, the Japanese-style bread crumbs. Cover with Romano cheese and quickly fry them until the outside is crispy, then serve with a tangy marinara sauce for an upscale take on chicken fingers.

For a simple, hearty meal that will make you think of campfire days, make tinfoil “hobo bundles” with chicken and sturdy vegetables that roast well – try small tomatoes, green beans, and sliced potatoes. Put a little butter or olive oil inside, some fragrant herbs, seal them up and put them in the oven until everything cooks. Unwrap and serve.

For a light, healthy chicken dish, batter chicken cutlets in flour and quickly fry but do not cook through. Then sautee chunks of onion and ginger in the pan drippings. Add chicken broth and bring it to a simmer, then add the chicken and slices of pear for a unique and tasty meal.

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