Eating more vegetables is very important for health, but the way they are cooked affects both their taste and nutritional value. Stir-frying vegetables with oil is delicious, but excessive oil intake is not good for your health, and it's not as easy to make it tasty as you might think. So, how can you cook vegetables to be both healthy and delicious?
Fan Zhi, an associate professor in the Department of Nutrition and Food Safety at the College of Food Science and Nutritional Engineering at China Agricultural University, introduces a simple, low-oil, and delicious method for cooking vegetables. Everyone should learn this method.
Boiling vegetables in oil is simple, delicious, and healthy.
Method: First, boil a small bowl of water (200-250g). Add a spoonful of sesame oil (8g), then put the leafy green vegetables (300g) in and cook for two to three minutes. There isn't much water, so it won't cover the vegetables, but the vegetables will cook evenly as long as you toss them a couple of times, as they also release their own water. After cooking, just add seasonings according to your preference.
To enhance the flavor, you can add ingredients like shiitake mushrooms, other types of mushrooms, dried small shrimp, or dried shrimp to the water while cooking. You can also add slices of meat, meatballs, shrimp balls, or ham to help boost the umami flavor.
The advantage of this method is that you don't need to heat up a wok with oil. The leafy greens absorb a little oil, making them tender, fragrant, and glossy. By eating both the soup and the vegetables, you don't waste the nutrients that have dissolved into the soup, such as potassium, magnesium, vitamin C, vitamin B2, and flavonoids.
Have you learned this simple, convenient, delicious, and healthy method of cooking vegetables?