Cooking for a low fat diet doesn't have to mean the end of tasty meals. Indeed, once you've become accustomed to cooking the low fat way, you’ll wonder why you didn't start earlier.

The health benefits of eating a low fat diet are immense but if you’re not used to cooking this way, you may find a few low fat cooking tips will help make your transition a little smoother.


Cooking methods

The way you cook can have a huge impact on its overall fat content, particularly if you like frying, or even worse, deep fat frying. If you currently use a deep fat fryer, throw it away and invest in a decent non-stick pan.

With your non-stick pan, have go at dry frying your food with no oil or fat. This works particularly well with food such as mince where you can dry fry and drain off any fat released during the cooking process. If necessary, add small amounts of water to avoid any burning.

Grilling enables any excess fat to drain away into a grill pan. However, you may need to lightly brush or spray the outside of some food with a little oil to keep it from drying out.

Stir frying meats and vegetables is a wonderful way of creating a delicious meal using very little cooking oil. The food is cooked on a high heat and moved around the pan or wok quickly, helping to retain valuable vitamins and minerals.

Baking or roasting as an alternative to frying allows you to use less oil. Instead of leaving your food to cook in a pool of oil, try using a spray such as Fry Light or decant your regular oil into a plastic spray bottle. This method works very well with chips and vegetables. Lightly spray your food with oil and pop into the oven where it'll brown and crisp perfectly without being greasy. 

Food preparation

When it comes to preparing your food, you can do a lot to lessen the fat content before you start cooking. If you’re preparing red meat such as a steak or chops, always trim or cut off any visible fat. And if you’re cooking chicken, try buying it skinless. If that’s not possible, either remove the skin before cooking or definitely before eating!

After grilling or shallow frying, place the cooked food onto absorbent kitchen paper to mop up any excess oil. This is useful for food such as bacon, sausages, chips, steaks and burgers.

If you’re making sandwiches, use fat reduced butter and spread it very thinly. Alternatively, try omitting the butter altogether and use low fat cream cheese or fat free mayonnaise instead.

You can lose hundreds of fat grams simply by replacing your regular food with a low fat version. For instance, the majority of dairy foods have low fat or fat free alternatives. Therefore, any recipe that calls for dairy can easily be replaced using the low fat option. This includes cake baking where butter can be swapped for a low fat brand. Cream, milk, yogurt and cheese often have an extremely high fat content so wherever possible, switch to the low fat or fat free alternative.

It’s never too soon to begin cooking the low fat way. By using less oil and fat in your cooking, you’ll soon start appreciating how tasty food can be when it’s not greasy or fatty. And by swapping your regular foods with low fat alternatives, you’ll not only be reducing your fat intake, in many cases you’ll be cutting down on calories as well. Start by making small changes at first if that's easier, but most of all, enjoy your cooking and your food.