For the sake of deliciousness and health, how can we act smartly to escort the nutrients in the food to the body to play a healthy role? Small tricks, big effects, see how smart you are?
1. Clean and reduce soaking time. Washing food can help remove dirt and pesticide residues. However, on the premise of ensuring that the ingredients are cleaned, the cleaning and soaking time should be minimized, and rinsing with running water and vigorous rubbing should be avoided. For example, if green leafy vegetables are over-soaked, a lot of water-soluble vitamins will be lost. Washing rice too many times or scrubbing it too hard will cause the loss of rice germ and B vitamins… In addition, vegetables must be washed first. Cutting is also a technique to minimize the loss of nutrients.
2. When cutting vegetables, do not chop them too much. Chopping ingredients too finely will result in loss of vitamins. Because during the process of chopping vegetables, a large number of cell membranes are damaged, and direct contact with air accelerates the oxidation of vitamins. Taking Chinese cabbage as an example, 52% of vitamins are lost when cut into shreds, while only 30% are lost when cut into chunks. In addition, the time you stay after cutting vegetables should be minimized, and they should be cooked immediately after cutting.
3. Choose the appropriate cooking method. There are many cooking methods, and steaming can retain the nutrients of ingredients better than other methods. Boiling: Although it does not have much effect on fat, it can promote the dissolution of water-soluble vitamins; steaming: is a method to retain as many nutrients as possible; brine: allows some nutrients in the ingredients to dissolve into the marinade, The lost part is not much. Braised meat will only lose some fat and will not have much impact on nutrition; pickling, smoking, frying, and roasting will cause more nutrients to be lost and may also produce carcinogens, which will have an impact on health. .
4. Master the heating time and temperature. High temperature may reduce the nutritional value of food. Vitamins in vegetables, especially vitamin C, have poor thermal stability. Excessive high temperature will deplete vitamin C. Vitamin B and vitamin E are also lost by up to 50% at high temperatures. However, some fat-soluble vitamins are not very sensitive to high temperatures, such as vitamins A and D. They can be processed with fatty foods, such as stewed meat, fried in oil, etc., to help the absorption of fat-soluble vitamins.
In addition to its own properties, the nutrition in food ingredients is also related to the cooking method. Combining a variety of ingredients and choosing scientific and reasonable cooking methods can retain more nutrients in the ingredients. Let\’s cook scientifically together.
