SIMPLE COOKING

Most of us are busy working long hours and feel having little time to go grocery shopping, prepare and cook our meals, so we choose to eat out to feel like we’re saving time. However, if we plan like preparing food in advance and cooking dishes in large quantities to use gradually, then cooking will become lighter and more comfortable. We should choose to cook simple dishes, with few ingredients, and less time, so that after cooking, we still have mood to enjoy the food we cook.

Cooking at home helps us control the quality, ingredients and portion sizes of the food we eat. The food we eat in the mouth is digested in the stomach and assimilated into the bloodstream then the nutrients to create or nurture our cells, our tissues, our organs, our brain, skin, hair,… so the quality of the food determines our health. Let’s try to cook most of our meals at home so we can better control our health.

Basic cooking skills are essential for everyone, because everyone has to eat every day, I know how to cook, I can prepare a quick simple meal for myself when I’m hungry without having to wait or I have to go to a restaurant, or when I go to a certain place, the food there I eat is not my taste, I can cook for myself a meal that I love. When I master the basics of cooking, I can cook many different dishes depending on my creativity. Cooking at home also saves me time and money.

Here are some tips to simplify cooking:

Normally, it takes me about 15-60 minutes to cook depending on the dish, when I have time, I choose to cook a dish that takes about 50-60 minutes, and on a busy day, I choose to cook a dish that takes about 15-20 minutes. The dishes take a long time to cook, I usually cook once and eat 3 times. I take 1 portion, and the remaining 2 I leave to cool and then put them in 2 glass food containers and then I put them in the fridge, when I eat, take out 1 portion to steam or reheat, it takes about 10 minutes for me to have a meal.

The meal I cook usually has a dish with meat or fish, fat and vegetables and eaten with cooked rice or bread or boiled rice vermicelli. I don’t have to cook full dishes such as stew, soup, stir-fried vegetables or boiled vegetables according to a traditional Vietnamese meal. A light meal with few ingredients will help us digest food more easily and our body also takes less energy to digest food. We eat a large meal, our body also takes more energy to digest the food, have you noticed the meals when we eat a lot of different dishes and eat a lot, after that our body feeling sluggish, tired because the body has to use a lot of energy to digest food. We think we eat a lot to have more energy, but the reality is that we also have to expend a lot of energy to digest the food we eat.

I cook rice once for 3 days. After cooking the rice, I let it cool, then put the cooked rice in the refrigerator, and when the meal come, I take out a portion and steam it for about 8 minutes to have steamed rice to eat. Cooked rice left in the refrigerator overnight or for several days can increase resistant starch, which leads to lower post-meal blood sugar and other health benefits (1). Sometimes when a meal requires steamed vegetables, I combine steaming rice, steaming the main dish and vegetables at the same time, it takes about 10-12 minutes for me to have a delicious meal.

Vegetables, I usually select fresh one and clean them right away, then drain the water, after that I put them in the food storage containers. This way of preserving vegetables helps to keep vegetables fresh for longer, there are many vegetables that I can keep for a week or more. When it comes to a meal that needs steamed vegetables, soup or salad, I have clean vegetables available and I take them out to cook or make salads. Note that vegetables I only make enough for 1 meal or eat during the day, dishes with vegetables are not left overnight.

Meat, fish, shrimp,… are also cleaned and cut, then divided the portion enough once to cook in each food storage container and then I put them in the freezer, when I needed to cook, I took out one portion to cook, without washing it again or defrost. Doing so, preserves the freshness of the fish, shrimp and meat.

Legumes like chickpeas, kidney beans or black beans,… I also boil or steam them, let them cool, then I divide them into the food containers and after that I put them in the freezer, when I need to cook soup or make salads, I take them out to cook or just steam it and put it in the salad.

I also make some pickled vegetables and keep them in the fridge, when I have a meal, I get some picked vegetables to eat to get more fiber and good bacteria for gut health.

For dipping sauce, I often eat chili garlic fish sauce, I make 1 jar that can be kept in the refrigerator for a week. Every time I eat something that needs garlic and chili sauce, I just take out a little and eat it.

Cooking dishes by steaming or reheating dishes in a steamer pot is healthy and limits the loss of food nutrients. Cooking dishes by steaming is very simple, I just put all the ingredients cooked on a plate, then put the plate in the steamer pot and I set the temperature and time to steam the food, when it’s done, the stove automatically turns off, I don’t need to do anything else and I don’t have to spend time washing the steamer pots, because when steaming, the steamer pot doesn’t stick to the food, the food is already laid out on a plate and put it in the steamer pot, when it was done I took the plate out and I ate it on that plate too. I love the fact that there are a few dirty dishes to wash after each meal and the dish washing is easier.

 

Source: (1) https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/cooling-resistant-starch