Home » Food and Drink »  Go Healthy »  Enjoy Your Veggies Want to add colour, taste, texture and bulk to your daily diet? Simply indulge in a variety of vegetables which can be prepared in a hundred different ways to suit your tough taste buds.
There is nothing like a perfect way to cook the veggies just buy up all colours and revel in each one distinct taste.

So how can you have them?

For starters, try them raw. Most veggies taste absolutely fabulous especially when they come straight from the garden. Chew on fresh lettuce, smooth red tomatoes, yummy sticks of celery, layers of cabbage, pungent onions, crisp radish, and beautiful young carrots - and you can never go wrong. Combine these with veggies like broccoli, peas, beans and cauliflower which can be the starters that you can have with mouth watering dips. All you have to do is to wash the veggies, chop them and… well… eat them of course! Toss them all into a yummy salad and you’ll never stop eating. Just think! You are getting fabulous taste and they are low on cals too! If you have a problem eating raw vegetables, you could have them steamed. What happens here is that the vegetables get softened in the process and the veggies retain their rich colour provided they are steamed right. Use very little water in the bottom pan and the steamer pan with the veggies should just about touch the water. The simmering water in the bottom cooks the vegetables perfectly and they do not lose their nutritive value. Some years back, the accepted and widely practiced method of cooking veggies was boiling. It is the loss of nutrients when you boil them that has made people resort to other methods. But if you are one of those who believes in boiling, just use the water from boiling which is known as the stock - in your cooking (like while making a sauce) instead of throwing it away. The cooking method that has gained in popularity is microwave. This is because the colour, flavour and the nutrients are all retained in this method. It takes a lot of trial and errors though till you find the right way to microwave the veggies.

Just Remember these Few Tips

Do not put too much food to be cooked at a time in the microwave as it will take longer to cook. It is always better to keep it for less minutes rather than overcook them which will ruin the whole thing. If you remove food from the fridge and put it in the microwave, it will take longer to cook too. Remember that food continues to get cooked even after it is removed from the microwave as it is part of the whole cooking process – so allow for this too to prevent overcooking. The Chinese adopt the stir fry method to cook the vegetables. This is a very fast method of quick frying the vegetables along with the sauces, all in one pan to make a complete meal. The vessel used for this is called the ‘wok’ and the vegetables are all cut to the same size so as to allow them to get cooked fast. The key to this lies in the preparation well ahead of the cooking. The wok is heated to a high temperature which is then maintained throughout. The vegetables retain much of their rich colour and crispness when cooked in this manner. All root vegetables like potato, carrot, beetroot and turnip (shalgam) can be cooked to perfection by baking them in a hot oven. Again the trick is to chop them in equal sizes, brush them lightly with some heart-healthy olive oil and put them in the oven to roast. This method will take time – at least 40 minutes and the result will be very different from the other methods. Here, the outside will be chewy while the inside will be rather moist and fluffy. Absolutely delicious! So go ahead and try out these various methods to cook and serve the family’s quota of fresh vegetables and you will love to see the smiles all round!