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Just after some meal ideas! My gall bladder is acting up again and I need to cut out as much fat as possible from my meals.
However my dh is a student so we normally have sausages and mince a lot because they are cheap - but not exactly low fat!
Anyone got any good meal ideas that fit into both of those requirements? Last pregnancy he was working so it was easier to afford lower fat stuff.
Thanks for any suggestions!
Turkey. Any cuts are yummy and cheap. Much cheaper than chicken and a leaner meat as well.
I make turkey and barley soup or turkey and vegetable soup. You can buy the giant drumsticks and bake them in the oven they are a real novelty with kids. My DS, who's only just turned 2 thinks he is eating dinosaur :)
Lentils - Makes yummy soup or dahl or just a stew with veggies. Good for you too.
That's all I can think of at the moment.
Can you get bulk cuts and mince them yourself? I often see whole rump for about $8/kg (was actually $6/kg here yesterday) or gravy beef. You could mince these in a food processor after removing the majority of fat and still make meals that go a long way for a family (as opposed to just steak dishes).
Soups would also be a cheap meal with lots of bulky filling stuff like pearl barley or soup mix/risoni/rice/pasta and loads of vege. Very little fat.
Soup and stew all the way.
Lentil soup, Dahl, spinach & ricotta cannelloni
Fried Rice
Pasta with pasta sauce with a diced chorizo sausage cooked in the sauce, gives a lovely smokey flavour, chuck in a handful of diced bacon to add meaty ness if thats what your kids want.
Dahl with sweet potato and spinach.
I made a super yummy diced ham and lentil soup the other day , not as gluggy as pea and ham, but mega filling.
Admittedly chorizo and bacon are not low fat, but its in the quantity, I am talking 1 sausage and 100gms of diced bacon between the whole familiy.
We are trying to cut down on our meat consumption and up our veges and am finding that, if you can make it meat flavoured, its really like having a meat meal.
We are also back eating veges with carbs in them, and this makes plumping out a meal soooo much cheaper.
Hmm lentils are being mentioned a lot. Maybe I need to go searching for vegetarian type recipes...
Tuna patties
Casserole/stews using topside or rump in the slow cooker
Chicken thighs
Also, when cooking mince, brown it off then drain all the fat.
Or you can par boil it and remove the fat prior to putting into pan to brown.
Par boil mince?!?
Tuna is something I just found in my calorie king book (from years ago!). That and kangaroo. Kangaroo is really low in fat but I just don't know if I can bring myself to eat Skippy....
Yeah, I like tuna :lol:
Yeah it was a suggestion in a healthy eating book I had/have somewhere - you boil it in water until the fat comes to the surface and then drain and brown it as normal. It doesn't smell real nice though to start with!
Simply frying off the mince like normal, but then straining it will serve the same purpose and leave you with a much more edible product at the end of it. ;)
Fried rice here is a go to. It is seriously scarey how cheap and easy it is to make and how many veggies I can convince the girls to eat when I make it. You can put almost anything in it, but even just a bag of frozen, small dice veg like the carrots/corn/caps/peas mixes work well. Soy and oyster sauce on and it will last us days. A batch with fully fresh veg, ham and egg will cost me about $10, and probably serve 6-9 serves depending on how much the girls eat. If I can, I buy a few prawns for DD1, she lurves them, I can get a good 8 for only a couple of dollars.
There is a chowder recipe I posted a couple of years ago, I'll see if I can find the link.
Cooks in the microwave in about 20 minutes, is delicious and costs about $5 to make. Seriously cheap and awesome.
Look for any recipes that work with long slow cooking for meat - they will use whole cuts of meat, rather than mince or sausages, and they will be almost as cheap, like gravy beef. Less fat for you, more flavour for your food, and less fillers.
I've been loving rice noodles lately. Sometimes I make a salad with them with chicken or beef and whatever salad vegies I have in the fridge and I put the fat free balsamic mustard dressing from Coles over it. I also stir fry some vegies with some meat and chuck through the rice noodles at the end with some Ketjap Manis, honey, sweet chilli and lime juice. They're so quick and easy and cheap!
You can cook mince, then put it in a colander & tip boiling water over it, washes most of the fat off. Then you can cook it up with loads of veggies (grated if you prefer), add a jar of pasta sauce, it gives you a large amount of bolognaise with a very small amount of fat in it. Add to pasta with a sprinkle of Parmesan.
When I was having gallbladder problems, I bought a bulk tray of chicken breast, divided it into small portions, added some low fat marinades, and froze them in individual bags. Then I would cook them in a dry pan, and slice and serve in things like warm salads and tortilla wraps or enchiladas with lots of salad.
Fish is good, provided you don't choose oily fish like salmon (which is very good for you but might aggravate the gb). And spend a bit of extra time at the shops, I was able to find some relatively cheap low-fat versions of things, eg the local supermarket sold lowfat sausages that cost 50c more than the other ones.
I lost a lot of weight quickly eating like this and was quite hungry so adding in some no-fat yoghurt and low fat dairy like custard or rice pudding with a side of fruit helped fill the hole.
Thanks md. I stocked up on chobani yoghurts yesterday because Coles had them for $1 each. Although I tried to budget shop somehow my groceries came to $230! I only budgeted for $150 because it was only meals until Wednesday. Crikey.
And yes, I might lose weight, I did last pregnancy, gave birth at nearly 42 weeks 7kg lighter than I was at the start of my pregnancy. I could definitely lose weight though, so that might be a good thing lol
Up the amount for veggie meals. Add protein like eggs.
Fresh tofu is also a really cheap source of protein. I buy a kilo from our local Asian grocer for $4.60. I cut it into cubes and pan fry it and add it to dhal or to stir fry. Mmmmm.... Craving tofu!
Oi madam, why aren't you making your own yogurt??? ;)
You can make your own rice noodle too.
Oh, and soup! Gallons and gallons of glorious soup!
So cheap and easy to make and you can cram all sorts of goodness into them too.
Love homemade yoghurt. I Cheat though and use easy yo. Yummo!
Thanks for the lentil inspiration. I've got 2 pots of spiced lentil (cumin, coriander, cardamon and garam masala) and tomato soup on to cook at the mo. Here's a pic. I wish I could upload the delicious smell too! 3725
I did the following with 4 x chicken thighs (cut then browned), did the browning of the cut veges in a pan then the rest in the slow cooker. YUM!!!! I'm not even a soup person
Chicken Noodle Soup
1 whole Chicken Cooked
2 large Onions Peeled & Diced
2 large Carrots Peeled & Diced
2 stalks Celery Diced
1 clove Garlic Finely Chopped
2 litres Chicken Stock
1 small Swede Peeled & Diced
2 large Potatoes Peeled & Diced
1 sprig Thyme
1.5 cups Pasta Macaroni, Spirals or Fettucine
2 Tbsp Parsley Chopped
Sea Salt & Ground Pepper to taste
Remove the meat off the chicken carcass and dice or tear into thick chunks. Set aside.
Heat some oil in a large stock pot and add onion, carrots, celery and garlic and sauté for 3 minutes until the vegetables soften and start to brown.
Add the chicken stock, thyme, swede and potatoes and bring to a simmer, then simmer gently for an hour. Turn the heat up and bring it to a rapid simmer. Add pasta and chicken pieces and cook for another 15 minutes or until pasta is al dente. Stir through parsley and check for seasoning.
Serve with crusty bread.
Good for protein but I can't have too many eggs - fat intake has to be pretty minimal.:
I've tried making my own low fat yoghurt but it fails every time! Even with an easy yo thingy.:
Soups are a good idea - must do more soups.
Curious as to how to do low-fat fried rice... Every time I try to fry rice it sucks up heaps of oil, and sticks anyway.
I had a recipe somewhere that used packet chicken noodle soup. You used a tiny bit of oil to coat the rice and then added in water and the soup mix and put on the lid to let the rice absorb the liquid.:
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You cook the rice before you use it, chill it and use it cold in the recipe.
My fried rice uses less than a tablespoon of oil in the wok to saute the vegetables first (And that is for a hug batch that will make about 12 serves). It you stir fry it, it won't stick and you don't need more oil than that.
My current favourite low fat meal is ratatouille. Now that its getting cold here, it's awesome.
I worked out if I could keep my whole meal under 10g of fat, I didn't have any problems, and veggie based fats seemed to aggravate less than animal fats. For eggs, I would use 1 whole egg and then a couple of egg whites to bulk it out & boost protein intake.
I should mention that we couldn't afford a lot so often I would cook something else for the family (just make sure you put your low fat thing in the pan first or cook it desperately. I had the worst attack one time when DH chucked my dinner on the Barbie at the same time as everything else).
Hmm... I do that. It just sticks really badly still. Maybe it's one of those things that works best in a teflon pan? I don't have any non-stick pans.:
Desperate for oil, is it? ;):
LOL. Excellent autocorrect moment.
SEPARATELY.