Eat healthy food. That’s one of the most common pieces of health advice that you’ll ever hear. It has always been said that “food is medicine”. While food doesn’t quite have the same impact as medication, it can play a large role in your health and risk of disease. In fact, a balanced diet can improve your health in countless ways.
Yet, eating well is much more difficult than we like to admit.
- Some of us work long hours, while also needing to juggle other goals, like family and housework.
- Others are caregivers, with someone else’s health goals to meet.
- Seniors may face their own challenges, including a decreased appetite and the need to rely on soft food.
- People who live on their own often find cooking frustrating. The whole process can just feel like too much effort.
- Physical or mental challenges (like depression) can also hinder people’s ability to prepare food.
In truth, when we get to the end of the day, many of us don’t have the energy to make a healthy meal, much less eat it and clean up afterwards. Prepared meal services can be one solution (like Silver Cuisine), but these get expensive quickly.
Healthy Meals in a Flash
There doesn’t need to be a trade off between time and health. Many healthy meals don’t require much time or effort at all.
This doesn’t mean that you need to sort through a large number of recipes either. Instead, there are some specific types of recipes that are perfect for fast dinners.
Once you have a handle on the style, you can easily substitute ingredients to make entirely different dishes.
Stir Fries
Stir fries are a very easy meal, especially if you’re relying on frozen veggies or ones that are already prepped. Most stir fry recipes can be prepared in half an hour or so.
You can make things even faster by using meat that is already cooked and/or frozen vegetables. The great thing about stir fries is that you can easily change ingredients to create an entirely different flavor profile.
One Pot Pasta
One pot (or pan) pasta is an easy meal that has many variations. As the name suggests, you’re preparing the entire meal in a single dish.
Some one pot pastas are basically comfort food, so they’re not the healthiest choice. Even so, this can be okay some of the time. Other meals, like pasta primavera, are loaded with vegetables and are much healthier.
Baked Dinners/Casseroles
Baked dinners are another style that you can follow. This type of meal does often take a while to cook, but the prep work tends to be minimal.
Look for bakes that don’t require much, if any, prep work. You’re not going to save much time if the bake requires half an hour of prep before you even get it in the oven.
Sheet Pan Dinner
Sheet pan dinners are literally an entire meal that is cooked on a flat pan in the oven. The style can sound boring and might suggest that your food will be dry and flavorless – but that’s not the case at all.
There are many stunning sheet pan dinner recipes out there. I found a compilation of these at The Girl on Bloor. That list is a perfect place to get started (check it out here!).
The link doesn’t just provide recipes either. It also offers details about general rules for making a sheet pan meal. You can follow the suggested approaches to make your own delicious recipes.
Slow Cooker Recipes
While slow cookers take a long time to cook (hence the name), they’re still a good way to save time. Most slow cooker meals require barely any prep work. Plus, you’re often prepping in the morning, which may be easier than trying to cook in the evening.
You’re not just stuck with soups and stews either. There are many good slow cooker recipes out there.
For example, you could use the slow cooker to make pulled pork or pulled chicken. That meat could then be combined with fresh ingredients to create delicious tacos or something similar.
Instant Pot Recipes
Slow cookers are fantastic, but only if you plan ahead. They’re no good if you don’t realize that you need a fast dinner until that evening. An Instant Pot, on the other hand, is perfect.
I know, an Instant Pot is a significant investment. It can be hard to justify, especially as a second-hand slow cooker might cost $10 or less. But, if you want a single tool that makes cooking easier – this is the one.
An Instant Pot is basically a multi-cooker. It functions as a slow cooker, along with a pressure cooker, food warmer, steamer and rice cooker (and more besides).
The pressure cooker aspect is particularly powerful. This allows you to make meals much faster. For example, it takes much less than an hour to cook a full roast chicken in a slow cooker. Cooking chicken breast can take 10 minutes or less.
Some Instant Pot recipes can even be made with frozen meat – giving you extra convenience.
More Tips for Making Dinner Simple
Sometimes the biggest difference to your meal doesn’t come from the recipe that you’re following, but from little tips and tricks. Such approaches are perfect for nights where your time is unexpectedly cut short.
Use Frozen Veggies
Frozen vegetables get a bad rap. It’s easy to assume that they’re less healthy than their fresh counterparts. That’s not the case. Frozen veggies are at least as healthy as fresh veggies.
One recent study showed this – finding no significant differences in nutritional value between fresh and frozen vegetables.
The outcome isn’t too surprising. Frozen vegetables are frozen shortly after being picked, which helps to preserve their nutrients. In contrast, fresh vegetables are often sitting for days before you eat them, especially if they come from another part of the country.
They tend to be less expensive than fresh too, while providing you with a wider variety of vegetables. This means you can consume more types of nutrients. So, there’s no need to feel guilty about using frozen vegetables.
This is great news – as frozen vegetables are very practical.
You don’t need to worry about cleaning or chopping anything. That cuts down your meal prep work dramatically. In fact, you can often just dump half a bag of frozen vegetables into your meal.
When they’re cooked well, frozen vegetables even taste just as good as fresh ones, so you’re really not missing out on anything.
Try Your Hand at Meal Prep
Meal prep is a great way to eat well without stress. The idea is that you do most (or all) of your cooking for a week at one time, so that your meals are good to go.
There are many great meal prep recipes out there, along with guides for how you can meal prep well. The video below is one example (it comes from the site Downshiftology).
Meal prepping doesn’t mean that you eat the same meal every night (unless you want to). Instead, you can end up with a variety of prepared components that can be mixed and matched.
Use Prepared Sauces
Store-bought sauces aren’t always the greatest for health. Many contain processed ingredients and extra sugar. Even so, they can be a way to save time with cooking.
The trick is to pay close attention to the ingredients lists. Once you find a few healthy and reliable brands, you make stir fries and other simple meals with minimal effort.
If you don’t want to buy sauce, you could make your own. Some sauce recipes can be prepared ahead of time, which means less effort on the night that you’re making dinner.
Skip the Browning Step
Slow cooker and Instant Pot meals often suggest that you brown the meat first. Doing so can add to the flavor, but makes the whole process take longer too.
Skipping the browning allows you to prepare your meal with minimal effort. You often just need to throw the ingredients in your slow cooker/Instant Pot and then let it do all of the work.
How’s that for simple?
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