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Cook Leaner and Healthier

Learn to cook the healthy way is essential to achieve healthy eating. But when you hear about "healthy cooking", do the words "tasteless" and "boring" come into your mind? Many people think that healthy cooking is simply just eliminating oil, sugar and salt from the cooking equation, which definitely makes food tastes terrible. But, if you learn the following easy cooking tips, you can create mouth-watering dishes, and at the same time, be leaner and healthier.

1.	Use the right cooking methods. Steam, braise, poach, saute, grill, and roast instead of deep-frying.
2.	Be well equipped with low fat cooking utensils.

Utensils	Functions
Non-stick skillet	Assists you to use less oil to sautˆm or pan-fried.
Fat separating pitcher	Separates oil from home-made soups.
Egg separator	Helps you to easily separate the egg yolks from the whites to reduce your cholesterol intake.
Electric steamer	Steams vegetables or meat in a low fat way without losing nutrients.
Small oven	Meat fats can be dripped off when grilling on an oven rack.

3. Substitute low fat ingredients to cut fats and cholesterol.

Original Ingredients	Low Fat Substitutes
Evaporated milk	Low fat evaporated milk
Whole milk	Skim milk
Coconut milk	Low fat evaporated milk with coconut essence
Ground beef	Ground chicken or turkey
Pork bones for soup	Pork loin, lean pork, beef loin, fish, tofu
Bacon	Lean ham
Butter, Lard	Low fat margarine, olive oil, canola oil
Cream sauce	Tomato sauce
Mayonnaise	Plain low fat yogurt
Ice-cream	Sorbet, gelato, low fat frozen yoghurt
Commercial salad dressings	Balsamic vinegar, lemon juice or low fat yoghurt.
Baking chocolate	Cocoa Powder

4.	Always remove skin from poultry and trim visible fat from meat before cooking.
5.	When stir-frying, grease your pan using vegetable oil cooking spray or coat oil with a brush to avoid excessive use of oil.

6.	Use low fat crispy baking instead of deep-frying - Dip the meat or fish into egg whites, then coat with crushed corn flakes or seasoned bread crumbs. Then, oven-bake using a non-stick pan. This cooking method can create a crispy effect similar to deep frying, without adding too much fat into the dish.
7.	Refrigerate soups or stews before serving. Chilling can solidify the fats and make it easier to be removed.
8.	Instead of cooking vegetables with oil, cook them in chicken broth.
9.	Use low fat condiments such as soy sauce, vinegar, mustard or wasabi, wine, teriyaki sauce, ketchup, worcestershire sauce, fish sauce etc.
10.	Use fat-free ingredients such as ginger, green onions, garlic, coriander, black pepper, lemon juice, onions, leeks, cumin, chili powder, clove and star anise etc. instead of adding fats to enrich the dish.