While back in the day our grandparents and great grandparents used to make their own food, in the 21st century most of us can’t be bothered to make the food from scratch but will rather reach for pre-made meals, sauces, and desserts. However, while it saves you time on preparing them, these foods are much higher in calory intake and are not as healthy as the homemade food. Instead of trying to save time on cooking, you should consider improving your health by making your own salad dressings, bake bread by yourself and whip up several other foods that will both be cheaper and healthier homemade.
Make Cookies Without a Pre-made Mix
Buying a bag of cookie mix and just combining it with a few other ingredients doesn’t work to your advantage. If you think about it, to make the perfectly chunky and sweet dessert you’ll need flour, eggs, butter, chocolate chips, sugar, some baking powder and a bit of vanilla extract for that zesty kick. You don’t need a store-bought mixture when you can whip all that together and make it from scratch to taste even yummier. Furthermore, when you start dabbling in the kitchen, you might even become inspired and start adding more ingredients to the cookie mix, creating your unique recipe.
Bake Your Own Bread
Kneading the dough with your grandma is probably one of the most beautiful memories from your childhood, but would you even bother making the bread yourself today when you can go to the supermarket and pick from a variety of loaves? If you’re thinking No way, you should certainly think twice about it. Not only is it more affordable to have a bread maker, but it’s also a much healthier option to bake bread at home. The bread that you’ll make with your own two hands will contain fewer additives, taste better, cost less and provide you with a sense of fulfilment as well. Investing in a Breville bread maker, for example, will allow you to have freshly baked bread on a daily basis, knowing exactly which ingredients it contains. Another benefit of having a bread maker is that you can find Breville spare parts easily and have them delivered quickly in case you experience any malfunction with the appliance. Provide your family with the healthiest food option by being your own cook, and make your wallet happy at the same time.
Sauces and Dips of All Kind
If you love binge-watching your favourite tv show with a bowl of snacks and a variety of dips, you’ll be happy to know that all of those yummy sauces can be made in your kitchen. Not only can you make a smaller or a larger portion of for example a guacamole sauce, but you can also make it taste according to what excites your taste buds the most. You can experiment and make half kale half basil guacamole, mix a delicious tomato sauce from fresh tomatoes, and mix up the most delicious hummus of all in your kitchen. If you have a food processor you won’t have any trouble creating smooth, rich textures for all the sauces and dips that will taste delicious without adding pounds to your weight.
Make Pizza from Scratch
Your favourite pizza doesn’t have to be gluten-free or vegan to be healthy. On the contrary, if you make it at home, not only will it be healthy but it will also taste amazing. Granted It’ll take a bit longer to make it and let the yeast rise alongside baking it, but the benefits of having a homemade meal outweigh the time you’ll need to knead the dough and put the toppings on the dough. With a homemade tomato sauce, you already have, there’s no doubt your pizza will taste even better than the one from the pizzeria.
Oven-baked Chips
Do you have a bag of potatoes at home? Well, all you need to do is preheat the oven, get a grater and start slicing the potatoes. Within minutes you’ll have a full bowl of thin potato slices that are ready to be seasoned and baked in the oven for the best taste and very few calories. Unlike fried chips, oven-baked require less grease which makes them a super healthy alternative to the bag of chips you’d otherwise get at the supermarket. Just be sure to slice the potatoes super thin, to make them perfectly crispy. Mix olive oil, paprika and salt in a large bowl to create the perfect seasoning mix for your chips.
Salad Dressings
Salads are not what they used to be when we only had them on the side of our main courses. Nowadays you can have a decent meal made of a variety of vegetables all combined in a delicious salad. However, no salad would be the yummy meal we enjoy without its dressing. So, to avoid splurging on store-bought options, go for a homemade alternative that will wake up all of your senses and save you money while you’re at it. For a delectable vinaigrette, mix olive oil, white wine vinegar, fresh orange juice, fresh lemon juice, finely grated lemon zest, a pinch of salt and black pepper and you’ve got the perfect dressing for your light salad.
Final Thoughts
If you’ve been relying on supermarket fast food mixes before, now it’s time you switched to homemade alternatives that will be much healthier for you. It won’t take too much time to prepare the dressings, it won’t break the bank combining the ingredients for kneading the dough and it’ll taste even better than store-bought versions.
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