I bet you're saying, "Did I here you correctly in saying that healthy foods can come from a soul food cooks kitchen?". Yes, you heard me loud and clear.
The truth be told, African American cooks have always used healthy ingredients to cook up some of the all time favorites. But, the health benefits of even the healthiest of foods can be rendered useless when you use unhealthy additives and fry foods rather than grill, bake, steam or broil. I know you must know realize that your traditional way of creating black soul food cuisine is not considered healthy.
But why you ask?
Good question. You're probably thinking "If it taste so good then it must be good for you".
To be honest, problems with soul food arise when you routinely (many times per week) pull away from the table after eating a heaping helping of chicken smothered in gravy, collard greens with ham hock, lima beans and rice, candied yams, corn bread, sweet tea and your favorite dessert. The food taste so great we tend to overindulge.
The same problems arise from eating that country breakfast as well. Do you remember eating breakfast like country ham or fried fish, buttered and cheese grits, homemade biscuits with syrup, scrambled eggs and the like? I sure do. But now I realize I can't eat these foods everyday.
Still can't relate to the foods I just talked about. Well you can easily replace the foods in the before mention scenarios with any of your favorite foods and still understand my point in more ways than one.
If you eat in moderation, once or twice per week (but not every night) you'll will likely be okay, but when you overindulge expect something unwanted to happen. You get into a bad situation when your basic diet consist mostly of soul foods created in the traditional way. Read on to see which foods to eat in order to help yourself get out of trouble.
So what healthy dishes am I talking about?
Healthy beans, grains, and vegetables like black eyed peas, lima beans, pinto beans, rice, collard greens, mustard greens, and cabbage provide great nutritional value. But when these great nutritional foods are combined with excessive salts, fats, and sugars the nutritional value diminishes immensely. Furthermore, we make our healthy foods unhealthy by cooking them too long and frying them instead of using other cooking methods.
Becoming educated is your key to creating soul food masterpieces without losing nutritional value of the healthy foods you cook. Let's start with two sure fire cooking methods that will assist you in retaining the nutritional value of the foods you cook.
1. Instead of boiling vegetables like cabbage to death, steam or stir fry.
2. You can bake your beef, chicken, pork, or fish instead of frying the meats in lard.
Next you can take these actions to remove sugar, salt, and fat from your meals. Believe me your foods will still taste great after removing them, all of which add unnecessary calories to your foods.
Here are OVER 8 ways to make your traditional soul food recipes healther.
