Healthy One Pot Meals
How are you staying warm this winter?
There’s just something so great about getting cozy with a warm
bowl of soup or stew. By the end of the day, after trudging through the
snow, you’re tired, but there’s still dinner to be made… That’s the beauty
of the one pot meal, not only are they warming and delicious, they’re
pretty easy to make too!
In order for your one-pot meal to cover all of your nutritional needs, you
will need to include a few key ingredients. Make sure your meals have one
choice from each of these four categories:
1. Vegetables
Onions, carrots, and celery provide a great base for soup or stew by giving
your water some flavour. Next, you can add in seasonal vegetables like
squash, sweet potatoes, rutabaga, turnips, parsnips, Brussels sprouts,
fennel, broccoli, cauliflower, and kale. You can get really crazy here! Use
as many vegetables as you’d like to include.
2. Legumes
These are best when cooked from scratch. Legumes like beans and lentils add
a low-fat source of iron, fibre, and protein to your meal. Choose from
chickpeas, black beans, white beans, lentils, yellow split peas, kidney
beans, mung beans, or black-eyed peas.
3. Herbs and spices
Make sure to have some basics on hand, including cumin, parsley, sage,
oregano, garlic, ginger, rosemary, thyme, basil, marjoram, turmeric. Check
out my list of six essentials herbs and spices for healthy cooking.
4. Whole grains
Using barley, oats, quinoa, brown rice, or millet can add a dose of complex
carbohydrates, texture, and substance to your pot. Whole grains up your
dish’s fibre content as well.
There you have it — a well-rounded one-pot meal! These dishes make for a
convenient and easy approach to dinnertime in the fall and winter months.
You can make a large batch and take portions out as you need them
throughout the week, or even warm some up and put it into a stainless steel
thermos for you or your kids to take on the go for lunches. You can also
freeze portions in glass containers and store them for a snowy day when you
don’t feel like cooking or going anywhere.
Why not benefit from cooking some of your own meals at home? You get to be
creative, you know what goes into it, it’s convenient, and you know it’s
going to be delicious! You can start with this healthy recipe for
minestrone soup, featuring seasonal chard and butternut squash, and check
out a month’s worth of one-pot recipes here.
New-Age Minestrone
Ingredients:
1 Spanish onion, cut into large dice
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1-2 cloves of garlic, minced
1½ teaspoons sea salt
1 tablespoon dried oregano
4-6 cups filtered water or stock
1 bay leaf
1 butternut squash, peeled and cut into medium dice (or roast half squash
in oven on 350F for 45 minutes, peel flesh away from skin, and place in
pot)
1 sweet potato, cut into large dice
3 ribs celery, cut into large dice
1 large or 2 small zucchini, cut into small chunks
1 bunch of chard, cut into bit-sized pieces
1 cup kidney beans (optional), soaked and cooked
½ cup elbow brown rice noodles (optional), cooked
Procedure:
- In a small pot, sweat onion in oil with salt until soft.
- Add oregano and sweat a few more minutes.
- Add water and bay leaf.
- Add vegetables in order given (squash, sweet potatoes, celery,
zucchini).
- Turn up heat until water bubbles, then lower and simmer covered for
40-45 minutes.
- Stir vegetables until squash falls apart.
- Add in chopped chard.
- Cover and simmer for 10 minutes.
- Stir a few more times and serve.
For a smoother texture, simmer the squash separately until soft (in 1-2
cups of water), and puree in a food processor. Add squash to the soup for
the last 10 minutes of cooking.
Recipe sourced from Marni Wasserman.
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