I need to eat more veggies, so I’m need to know how to cook them.
Here is my VSDR. Open can of niblet corn and pour into small pot. Add a pat of butter and heat.
Come to think of it you may want to add how to purchase the said veggies in your recipe as I’m that is an important step. (unless you can just use canned stuff)
Thanks
Well, if you’re wanting to eat more veggies for the health & weight loss benefits, your first thing is to lose the butter!
Secondly, it’s not always the selection of vegetables but the way you do them can also add variety. Boiled, raw, steamed, slightly steamed, stir-fried, mashed, etc.
Usually, I just steam or stir-fry. You can also grill some of the more durable sorts like Asparagus.
Well, if you’re wanting to eat more veggies for the health & weight loss benefits, your first thing is to lose the butter!
Secondly, it’s not always the selection of vegetables but the way you do them can also add variety. Boiled, raw, steamed, slightly steamed, stir-fried, mashed, etc.
Usually, I just steam or stir-fry. You can also grill some of the more durable sorts like Asparagus.
Play around with seasonings. Look in the seasonings section of the supermarket for some pre-made kinds (but stay away from the sugary or MSG-filled stuff). Then begin trying it yourself. Get a veggie steamer with a “flavor chamber”, or some such and put various spices in there as an experiment.
I’m going to take a wild guess here. You don’t much like vegetables. Cooking …what’s that?
Mix the corn with mashed potatoes, an egg and make patties to fry in the pan.
Get a pot. Splash of oil. Dice onion. In. Chop up tomato. In. Chili (fresh or powder). In. Leftover cooked vegetables diced. In. Tin (or 2 ) baked beans (whatever you like). In. Before toast is done add handful grated cheese.
Lazy bastards gnocci. Gnocci is mashed potato mixed with flower and shaped cutely. Why bother. Use potatoes. Buy ready made pasta sauce of choice (Bolegnaisse with meatr for me).Cook smallish potatoes in microwave until done. Cut up and toss in butter while heating sauce. Pour over sauce. Yeah , OK eat.
Salad - buy crappy prepackaged salad at supermarket. Buy jar of antipasto in oil. Pour out some oil add some chili/pepper and lemon jiuce/good vinegar. Chuck on salad and toss.
Pasta - only for the stupid. Made up from things you probably shouldn’t eat. It’s pastry. Who would serve a dish of pastry and sauce? No…me either. Cut up long vegetables into strips - zuchinnis, eggplant, pumpkins, potato, cabbage… whatever, Served topped with any pasta sauce.
This last tip is the best one. Just steam vegetables and add whatever sauce you had in mind. Most things we have sauces on (pasta,noodles) are tasteless and pointless. They only provide calories.
Roma tomatoes. Buy heaps. Cut in half lengthways. Throw over herbs spices (doesn’t matter what). Sprinkle some cheese (whatever). Cook at 250 until you like the look of them. Serve on toast.
Spiced vegetables. Get a pile of vegeatbles (whatever - zuchini, broccoli, cauliflower, tomatoes, potato,pumpkin…anything) and cut up small. Fry in a very hot lightly oiled frypan. Add a good sauce at the end - satay, a good hot salsa, peri peri sauce…whatever you like. Crumbled hard boiled eggs and crispybacon go well on this. Toast is popular too.
Some of my favourite recipes, simple and tasty - I often avoid veg, as it’s quite bland, so these are all really strongly flavoured with nice textures:
Moroccan Carrots
Julienne and steam/boil carrots until softening. Meanwhile melt a fair amount of butter in a pan. Into the butter stir in a spoon of brown sugar, nutmeg, chilli powder, and cinnamon. Toss the carrots in the butter mixture, and season with salt.
jjimm’s broccoli
Steam a chopped head of broccoli, while toasting flaked almonds in a dry skillet. Remove when they’re brown at the edges. Mix up equal parts of Chinese oyster sauce and dark soy, and toss the broccoli with this and the almonds.
Roast parsnips
Heat oven to 220C (430°F). Pour two large tablespoons of olive oil into an open oven dish, and place into oven. Peel and julienne parsnips. Put choppings into a plastic bag, pour in a good bit of olive oil, a pinch of sea salt and cracked black pepper. Scrunch parsnips around in the bag until they’re covered in the oil and herbs. Remove dish from the oven, pour in parsnips making sure they’re evenly distributed. Leave for 30 minutes, then turn them. After a further 15 minutes the ends of the parsnips should be brown and crunchy, and the centers sweet and soft. Mmm.
Purchasing of vegetables can be accomplished with relative ease at any local supermarket, look for the area that seems greener than the rest of the building.
1 option out of the millions. Labour required but results are very tasty.
Stir Fried, French Cut Green beans.
A bunch of green beans (a good handful per eater)
A couple of cloves of garlic (minced)
A decent piece of Ginger; call it the size of a 35mm film canister (Fresh)
Cooking oil
Soy Sauce
White Wine
French cut your green beans (My version of french cutting beans is lengthwise, twice so you get 4 long threads of bean). A fair bit of work but frankly the payoff in texture and cookability is truly worthy. If you’re a super lazy SOB you can by a ‘french cutting’ gizmo…come to think of it you might have to look for a ‘Freedom’ cutter depending on how uber-patriotic your retailer is. Peel the skin off your ginger root and cut into thin slices (as thin as you can get em) then stack the ovoid slices and chop into thin spears.
Using a wok or large frying pan toss in a couple of dashes of vegetable oil (you can opt for peanut oil or sesame oil but personally I’d only use them as an extra dash for flavouring with regular oil). Heat: generally you want the oil to be hot so your cooking has to be fast (warning…do not wait until the oil is smoking…this is usually too hot). You can test oil temperature by dropping in a couple of small bits of minced garlic to see if they ‘sizzle’). Add minced garlic and swirl around in oil for a few seconds (don’t let them brown). Dump in the green beans and begin stirring them around in the pan/wok. After about a minute of stir frying (get it?) sprinkle in the ginger. Stir Fry for another minute. Splash in a coupla/three tablespoons of white wine and a wee dash of Soy Sauce (to taste). Toss vigorously then slap a lid of the pan/wok and let steam for another couple of minutes.
Don’t let those guys sit for too long as they will go limp with too much cooking (like virtually all veggies abused thusly).
The beans should become much more intensely green and yet still be somewhat crunchy for optimal yumminess. As you serve them out give them a quick toss again to get as much of the flavourful ‘sauce’ from the pan onto the beans. Serve as a side dish with a whole slew of other foods and enjoy.
First: stay away from those cans. Outside of “baked beans” most every veggie in a can is already over-cooked.
If you don’t want to buy fresh, or it’s just too much work, at least buy frozen.
Most vegetables can easily be microwaved.
Mix some diced onions and peppers into corn. Salt and pepper. Microwave for about 3 minutes. Add some shredded cheddar. Serve.
Peas: add a pinch of peppermint. Pat of butter. Microwave for 3 minutes.
Asparagrass. . .has to be thin and green. Cut off end of stalk so the hard stringy part is gone. Put in a microwave pot with about 2 ounces water. Microwave about three to five minutes. Should remain crisp. Drain and serve with a vinegar and oil dress or a ranch dressing.
Cheese sauce, good for any augratin dish, especially brocolli, Cauliflower, and potatoes. Cook the vegies separately.
In a small pot melt 2 tblsps of butter in a half cup of milk. Add one of the following (a bit of lemon juice, a touch of white wine, a touch of cognac, or a smidgen of mustard—this is an ingredient that helps to melt the cheese. Choose by your own taste.) Once the butter has melted stir in either a tbsp of floor or a tsp of corn starch. Keep stirring over medium heat until the white sauce starts to thicken. Add a cup of cheese. (More if you like.) A little at a time. You can use cheddar, parmesan, romano. . .swiss is hard because it gets stringy. Mozzarella tends to become melted pizza. . .
pour over vegetabls and either eat or top brown in oven.
KY Hot brown. Prepare as above. On a piece of toast layer ham, turkey and asparagrass. Cover with cheese sauce. Quickly brown.
I’ve recently been addicted to grilled asparagus:
Get fresh asparagus, break off the bottoms where the stalks break naturally, toss them with a drizzle of olive oil, and grill them on a grill pan or on the BBQ until they have char marks and are tender-crisp. Season them with a bit of minced garlic or a few chopped chives, and dress them with a bit of lemon juice and olive oil. The stalks develop a nice nutty, charry flavor when grilled. Dee-lish!