How to preserve vitamins as much as possible during cooking

2024 Author: James Gerald | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 14:00

"I wonder how much useful stuff will remain in them?" - Russian housewives are wondering, throwing another portion of vegetables into boiling water and complaining about the loss of vitamins during heat treatment. After all, so much valuable disappears from the products while we cook them! So how to competently approach the process of preserving nutrients and get not only taste, but also health from food?

Let's start with the refrigerator

If you think that you need to protect vitamins from destruction only when exposed to high temperatures, then you are mistaken. Initially, the correct storage of vegetables and fruits will give you a head start in their subsequent processing. For example, vitamin C leaves greens faster if they are stored in the light and at room temperature. It is not for nothing that special zero zones are provided for her in refrigerators marked BioFresh. There she belongs - next to tomatoes, cucumbers, cabbage and other moisture-containing products.

Initially, the correct storage of vegetables and fruits will give you a head start in their subsequent processing.

Did you know that frozen meat and fish will lose their vitamins if they are re-frozen? Don't you make such banal mistakes? What can you say about the reverse process? After all, every second housewife has an oven or microwave with a quick defrost function. How often do you use it? That's just it! Meanwhile, nutritionists categorically state that you need to defrost food as slowly as possible, moving them from the freezer to the refrigerator, and then into cold water.

Treatment

When our mothers and grandmothers taught us to thinly cut the peel from potatoes, carrots or beets, they cared not only about reducing the amount of waste materials, but also about preserving nutrients in the product. Indeed, in many vegetables, the vitamin layer is located immediately under the shell. And it is so thin that it is easy to remove it along with the unnecessary topcoat. So remember the culinary school motto of the older generation when cleaning: the skin must glow!

But for those who are lazy, there is also a way out - heat treatment in a uniform. Vegetables can be boiled, stewed and fried in the peel. There are a huge number of recipes that use exactly this approach to heat treatment.

There are 5, 4, 3 left before being sent to the fire …

Remember to cut and peel food just before throwing it into the pot or pan. After all, vegetables cut into pieces, with a long wait for the next cooking stage, lose ten to twenty percent of vitamin C. The same applies to soaking - you should not torment the same potatoes, leaving them in water for a long time. Let him drown in a pot of boiling water quickly and with dignity, and in gratitude he will save a maximum of useful substances for you.

By the way, about boiling water. It is in it, and not in a slightly warmed liquid, that you need to throw food if you want to save more vitamins - when heated quickly, they are destroyed least of all. By the way, almost all oriental cuisine is built on the principle of "rapid fire": small pieces of food are cooked at maximum temperatures for a minimum amount of time. Maybe that's why Asians live longer? It is worth listening to the culinary advice of the world's most ancient civilizations!

We fry, steam, cook

Each of these three cooking options has its own pros and cons. Steaming is considered the most beneficial in terms of preserving vitamins. There is no need for butter or broth, which means there is no fat gain. Food does not heat up above 100 ° C, so water-soluble vitamins and minerals are not lost. For example, it is recommended to cook brown rice only in this way, because it loses vitamin B1 during cooking. In addition, with this cooking method, the food retains its color, smell and shape.

When we cook, the loss of vitamins increases by 30-60%. You can reduce these numbers by reducing the amount of water used for preparation.

When we cook, the loss of vitamins increases by 30-60%. You can reduce these numbers by reducing the amount of water used for preparation. In addition, some nutritionists advise using frozen foods, which should be thrown into boiling water right on the ice. Well, the cooked dish, of course, it is better not to reheat it.

Frying is traditionally considered the most harmful way of cooking. Fat, carcinogens - everyone has heard about these horror stories. But here's the paradox, with such heat treatment the least amount of vitamins is lost - of course, if the process is properly organized. The rule is simple: less fat, thinner pieces. This will shorten the residence time of food in the pan and, as we said above, by reducing the cooking time, you will save more nutrients. Let's remember oriental cuisine again …

Stew, grill and bake

All of these methods will also help preserve the vitamins in your foods. Using foil or a baking sleeve increases the temperature and shortens the cooking time - you know the result. And if you exclude copper dishes from kitchen utensils, then you can reduce vitamin losses even more.

Of course, any of the above methods does not guarantee you the complete safety of vitamins, and most of the nutrients will still fall on the culinary battlefield.

There is only one alternative - a raw food diet … Jokes are jokes, but they have some truth in them. If you restructure your diet so that it contains more foods unprocessed at high temperatures (vegetables, fruits, herbs), then, undoubtedly, your body will receive incomparably more vitamins than with the traditional approach to nutrition. It is not for nothing that world-class nutritionists have been insisting on the introduction of new norms for the consumption of "live" products for several years. So, in the very near future, the picture we are used to with a "healthy food plate" may take on a completely different look: the green vegetable sector will occupy at least half of the diagram. Join fashion trends!