Many women are careful with their figure, go on diets or try to cook low-calorie meals. If you want to use less oil or replace oil when you cook, we offer you the simplest and cheapest solutions.
Oil seems indispensable in many recipes. You may think that you can’t cook stew, roast or steak without oil. The fact is, however, that this is possible. If you want to replace oil when you cook, but enjoy the same tasty food, it’s not complicated at all. Try our tips below.
1. Vegetable or poultry soup
If you’ve boiled some vegetables for a creamy soup, save the flavor-rich water and use it to cook other delicious dishes. For example, you can replace oil with vegetable or chicken stock to sauté potatoes and root vegetables for a pot that you will bake in the oven later.
You can also use vegetable or chicken soup for pilaf, puree or borscht, without adding fat. The clean, well-strained juice that remains after you have cooked chicken is very tasty and is an excellent substitute for oil.
2. Tomato juice
Just use tomato juice and water to sauté onions, carrots, and bell peppers for vegetable-based recipes. Afterwards, you can add zucchini, potatoes or eggplants and gradually as much water as needed.
Chicken turns out very tender if you roast it in the oven in tomato juice and water or in vegetable soup. Also, using only tomato juice and water, you can bake many other vegetables in the oven, for a low-calorie and healthy side dish.
3. Duck or goose fat
Whenever you cook a fatter bird, try to carefully scrape off the yellow belly fat. You can melt it, like our grandmothers used to do, over low heat and use it later in different dishes.
Poultry fat, even chicken or rooster fat, is much tastier than sunflower oil. In winter, you can cook with lard in small quantities, just enough to flavor your dishes. Natural duck or pork fat is much easier for the body to process, compared to hydrogenated oils that are difficult to break down and tend to accumulate in the tissues.