Are you looking for recipes easy to make and to remember that are quick, yummy, healthy and weight management friendly, to incorporate in your day to day? There is one that makes the perfect healthy dinner for weight loss. 

It is one of my most precious secrets: my vegetable creams, specially my cauliflower cream that taste like mashed potato.

Believe me, I have shared this secret with great success with family members and many of my students. The result: everybody loving the cream, not even knowing that it is a vegetable one! And the great thing? Not only is weight management friendly, but it is super easy to make!  

In this post, I am going to share with you:

• 10 reasons why vegetable creams are the perfect healthy dinner for weight loss, 
• 10 tips and secrets to make vegetable creams, and 
• 10 simple steps to make them!

10 Reasons Why Vegetable Creams are the Perfect Healthy Dinner for Weight Loss

1. You might be scared to make them because they sound like very sophisticated, but once you have cooked it one time you’ll see how simple it is.

2. All of them follow a very similar pattern, so you have as many options as almost vegetables you can think of. I do all the time cauliflower, butternut squash, broccoli and zucchini. I do mushrooms, spinach and carrots and other veggies less often. Somebody just told me about the celery cream which I haven’t tried yet!  

3. You don’t even need to remember or look for a recipe every time you want to cook a vegetable cream. All of them can be cooked following an easy and general rule.

4. You can always make it much more sophisticated if you have an inspired day or you want something different. Just look for a recipe somewhere else, this is not the place!

5. If you want to incorporate dairy into your diet, for your kids or yourself, this is the right place to do it. In my case, I have a teenager that doesn’t drink milk, so I am always trying to find ways to feed her some extra calcium for the extra requirements of her growing bones. In that case I use fat free milk to get lots of calcium and little fat and I add cheese after cooking the cream and while serving to have that extra calcium.

6. Super healthy. You can eat a large serve of veggies with just a bowl of vegetable cream.

7. Weight Loss Management Friendly. If you are trying to lose weight you just need to be careful and use a tiny amount of olive oil, use fat free milk for the veggie cream and be easy on the cheese.

8. You can cook several types of veggie cream and refrigerate them for a few days or freeze them, so you always have some available.

9. You can have them for lunch, snack or dinner.

10. You can add camouflaged vegetables that you can’t make your family eat. For example, the cauliflower cream, if you cook it with milk, it almost tastes like a potato cream.

10 Tips and Secrets to Make Vegetable Creams

You’ll always be successful with your vegetable creams if you follow a few tips and secrets:

1. Golden Secret: Stir-fry the onion and/or leeks with olive oil at medium heat until golden. That will give you a unique flavor.

2. Add the veggies to the golden onion at medium/high and stir-fry all together. Again, to add flavor.

3. This is the mix of species I use for all veggie creams: a bit of curry, mustard, cumin, salt and pepper.

4. Add fresh ginger to the butternut squash and the zucchini creams and nutmeg for the milk based creams.

5. Use chicken broth to cover the vegetables.

6. Add milk, if you like to use dairy, to the cauliflower and broccoli cream, and even for zucchini, carrot and pumpkin. In this case, cover the vegetables half with broth and half with milk.

7. Cook covered just until the veggies are tender.

8. Add a cup of mozzarella or similar cheese to creams where you are using dairy.

9. If using a blender, do batches and mix all batches in a large bowl before serving to get a well mix result.

10.Serve all of them with a spoon of parmesan cheese and a spoon of sour cream.

What to Do. 10 Simple Steps to Make Vegetable Creams

1. Stir-fry the onion and/or leeks until golden. Leeks are expensive. You can find them frozen much more affordable. Medium heat.

2. Add the veggies and stir-fry with onion until golden. Medium/high heat.

3. Add the spices as suggested.

4. Add chicken broth.

5. Add milk if desired.

6. Cook until veggies are tender.

7. Add mozzarella or similar cheese if desired.

8. Blend all together.

9. Mix batches on a large bowl.

10. Serve in small bowls with cheese and sour cream if desired.

 

Let me know what you think and enjoy!