Vegetables provide almost the entire spectrum of essential vitamins and minerals that your body needs to function optimally. I'm sure you don't need to be told that vegetables are healthy, but just in case you believe man can live on bread alone, here is some evidence I found from a quick search of academic journals. Increased vegetable consumption is associated with:
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| Additional benefit: salad is evidently hilarious |
The problem is that generally vegetables aren't all that fun to eat. At best they still tend to pale in comparison to sweet, fatty or sugary foods which light up all our brain's more primitive reward centres (this why candied bacon is so bizarrely delicious); at worst they literally taste like farts.
As such, here are some of my go-to vegetable variations and preparations to make eating your 5-a-day a bit less shit:
As such, here are some of my go-to vegetable variations and preparations to make eating your 5-a-day a bit less shit:
Coleslaw for people who aren't fat
Mayo is pretty gross. The wobbly white goop contains very little that you want to be putting in your body, but take mayo away and coleslaw is damn near a superfood.
Cabbage ranks pretty high up there on the list of the best vegetables to be putting in your face, with loads of vitamin C and K, potassium and manganese as well as some pretty interesting anti-carcinogenic compounds called glucosinolates. I eat this coleslaw pretty much every day and don't have cancer; what more evidence could you want? Carrots are also one of the best things you can eat, giving you tons of vitamin A and a decent amount of B vitamins for a vegetable. Finely shred them together and you are making music.
Basic Slaw:
- 3 parts cabbage (standard white or a mix of red and white works best), finely shredded
- 1 part carrot, grated
Basic Dressing:
- 1 part oil (Extra virgin olive, avocado, walnut, macadamia, hemp seed)
- 1-3 parts acid (Apple cider vinegar, red/white wine vinegar, balsamic vinegar, rice vinegar, lemon juice)
- Sweetener (I use Stevia tabs) to taste
Variations:
- Add thinly sliced apple or bell peppers for extra crunch and sweetness, add raw onion if you hate yourself and everyone that you plan to talk to for the next few hours, add kale if you think you are better than everyone else.
- For a less obnoxious onion flavour, you can add some fresh chopped chives or spring onions and parsley.
- Really any vegetable that is good to eat raw can be chucked in, but you should probably avoid anything too watery (I'm looking at you tomato and cucumber). Some surprisingly good additions that might otherwise end up in the bin are grated broccoli stalk or shredded cauliflower leaves, both under-utilised parts of their respective veg.
- Throw in a handful of nuts or dried fruits if you want to add some calorie density.
- Use any oil with apple cider vinegar or lemon juice and add mustard for a classic sweet mustard slaw.
- Add finely chopped fresh chillies or a splash of hot sauce for an added zing.
- Use a neutral tasting oil (eg. walnut) and swap half for toasted sesame oil, then add rice vinegar, soy sauce, ginger and garlic for a savoury Asian slaw.
The real key to good slaw that makes eating your vegetables a joy is fine shredding of the cabbage. For all its benefits, raw cabbage is a tough bugger and the jaw workout that you get munching through chunky cut raw cabbage may be more than you bargained for. The best tools for shredding are either a mandoline (watch your fingertips... trust me on that one), or a food processor with a shredder attachment; go as thin as possible on either and grate the carrot to a similar size.
When it comes to the dressing, there is loads of room for play, so experiment away. The classic recommendation for salad dressings is 3 parts oil to 1 part acid because it will hold an emulsion, here we don't care about that as everything will be intimately mixed anyway, so we've dropped the oil content right down to save calories and up the tang factor. I personally have a killer sweet tooth, so the couple of Stevia tabs are ever present, you my not find this to be the case, but I'd bet that once you have had low calorie, sweet, tangy slaw you will be a convert.
Ratatouille is more than just an adorable movie
A staple of the (French) Mediterranean diet, this dish of stewed tomato, peppers, onions, courgette, aubergine, garlic, herbs and whatever else is hanging around is delicious, easy and full of good stuff. How good, you ask? Well, you'll get butt loads of vitamin C from the tomatoes, peppers and courgette, good amounts of potassium and manganese from peppers, courgette and aubergine, a whole smorgasbord of antioxidants and some super interesting compounds like allicin in garlic which has been shown to improve immune function.
Expert French chefs argue over the correct way to make ratatouille; does one sauté each vegetable separately? Does one pre-sauté some vegetables and then layer and bake the whole mixture? Does one chuck it all in the slow cooker (with a cursory sauté if I'm feeling fancy)? Probably not. But that is easy. And easy is what I'm about (...ladies).
Ratatouille:
I have always loved sour foods, so I find the tang of fermented foods like sauerkraut, kimchi and classic style pickled cucumbers God-damn delicious. Feel free to skip this section if the mention of pickled or fermented foods makes you a little queasy, although I think you should reconsider. They likely won't make up a huge part of your diet, but lacto-fermented veg are basically on steroids when it comes to nutritional punch. Not only does fermentation make many nutrients more bio-available by pre-digestion (including aforementioned glucosinolates), digest anti-nutrients and in some cases create new nutrients (such as B vitamins - important for veggies and vegans), if the ferments are eaten uncooked, they provide live lactic acid bacteria, which can have profound positive effects of gut micro-fauna and as such, overall health.
Going into depth about fermentation and fermented foods is a book in itself (and if you want to read that book, I highly recommend 'The Art of Fermentation' by Sandor Katz), instead I will share the most basic rules of thumb for fermenting vegetables and some suggestions of where to go from there.
How to ferment vegetables:
When it comes to the dressing, there is loads of room for play, so experiment away. The classic recommendation for salad dressings is 3 parts oil to 1 part acid because it will hold an emulsion, here we don't care about that as everything will be intimately mixed anyway, so we've dropped the oil content right down to save calories and up the tang factor. I personally have a killer sweet tooth, so the couple of Stevia tabs are ever present, you my not find this to be the case, but I'd bet that once you have had low calorie, sweet, tangy slaw you will be a convert.
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| Picture absolutely not relevant. Just keeping the guys and lesbians interested. |
Ratatouille is more than just an adorable movie
A staple of the (French) Mediterranean diet, this dish of stewed tomato, peppers, onions, courgette, aubergine, garlic, herbs and whatever else is hanging around is delicious, easy and full of good stuff. How good, you ask? Well, you'll get butt loads of vitamin C from the tomatoes, peppers and courgette, good amounts of potassium and manganese from peppers, courgette and aubergine, a whole smorgasbord of antioxidants and some super interesting compounds like allicin in garlic which has been shown to improve immune function.
If anyone can make anything as beautiful as the above video, I want to be your friend.
Ratatouille:
- 2 onions
- At least 4 cloves of garlic
- 2 aubergines
- 2-4 courgettes
- 2-3 peppers of any colour
- 2 tins of good quality tomatoes and (optional) a tube of tomato puree
- Fresh or dried basil, thyme, marjoram and bay leaf
- Butter and/or Extra virgin olive oil
First, chop everything. Keep it fairly chunky for everything except the onions and garlic. Sauté (that means fry in a bit of fat) the onions until they are softened and a bit brown, adding the chopped garlic for a couple of minutes at the end. Whack it in the slow cooker. If you are feeling lazy, put everything else in, switch to low and cook for about 4 hours or until everything is tender. If you are inclined to be a flashy bastard, keep your skillet hot and sauté the peppers until slightly blistered and browned and likewise with the aubergines and courgettes. This will give added flavour, but also added hassle, your call. When its all cooked, give it a taste, add some fresh herbs if you have them, a drizzle of olive oil and salt and pepper to taste. You now have a pile of vegetables that are actually pleasant to eat and you get to pretend you know about French food. Tres fancy.
Harness the umami
If you are asking 'What the hell is an umami?', you bout to get learned fool. Umami is one of the basic tastes (the others being sweet, salty, bitter, sour), literally translated from Japanese it means "delicious taste", but refers to the pleasant savoury flavours found in meats, fish and cheeses. The main compounds responsible for the tasty umami are called glutamates, guanylates and inosinates; fortunately we can find these compounds in other places, so my recommendation here isn't just to add meat or cheese to your veg (although that works as well).
Some vegetables such as tomatoes and mushrooms already have a decent level of umami, which is a large part of why cooked tomato based dishes are usually more pleasant to eat than a plate of spinach, however we can also use condiments to up the umami and make our vegetables a bit more tasty. Chief among these condiments is soy sauce (or other fermented soy products like miso), in fact soy sauce was reportedly originally made by Chinese monks who ate it to replace the flavour (and to some extent nutrition) of meat, which they were prohibited from eating. Some other foods and condiments which deliver an umami whack are fish sauce, smoked paprika, toasted sesame oil, sun dried tomatoes, Worcestershire sauce, dried mushrooms and Marmite.
If you are making any sort of sauce, soup or stew that can do with a bit of 'beefing up' in the flavour department, adding any combination of the soy sauce, fish sauce, Worcestershire sauce or Marmite will definitely help. Otherwise, to any boiled/steamed/roasted/sautéd/stir-fried veg add one or more of the above as part of a dressing to dramatically up the enjoyment of eating them. Some ideas:
Fermented foods are delicious hippy shit |
| Picture absolutely not relevant. Just keeping the girls and gays interested. |
Harness the umami
If you are asking 'What the hell is an umami?', you bout to get learned fool. Umami is one of the basic tastes (the others being sweet, salty, bitter, sour), literally translated from Japanese it means "delicious taste", but refers to the pleasant savoury flavours found in meats, fish and cheeses. The main compounds responsible for the tasty umami are called glutamates, guanylates and inosinates; fortunately we can find these compounds in other places, so my recommendation here isn't just to add meat or cheese to your veg (although that works as well).
Some vegetables such as tomatoes and mushrooms already have a decent level of umami, which is a large part of why cooked tomato based dishes are usually more pleasant to eat than a plate of spinach, however we can also use condiments to up the umami and make our vegetables a bit more tasty. Chief among these condiments is soy sauce (or other fermented soy products like miso), in fact soy sauce was reportedly originally made by Chinese monks who ate it to replace the flavour (and to some extent nutrition) of meat, which they were prohibited from eating. Some other foods and condiments which deliver an umami whack are fish sauce, smoked paprika, toasted sesame oil, sun dried tomatoes, Worcestershire sauce, dried mushrooms and Marmite.
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| "Oooommmmmmmmmushrooms with soy sauce for dinner" |
If you are making any sort of sauce, soup or stew that can do with a bit of 'beefing up' in the flavour department, adding any combination of the soy sauce, fish sauce, Worcestershire sauce or Marmite will definitely help. Otherwise, to any boiled/steamed/roasted/sautéd/stir-fried veg add one or more of the above as part of a dressing to dramatically up the enjoyment of eating them. Some ideas:
- Mix 2 parts soy and 1 part Worcestershire sauce and lightly coat cooked cruciferous veg such as cabbage, broccoli or sprouts. Extra tasty points (although maybe not for everyday eating) if you cook them using a high heat and get a bit of char. This will form compounds like pyrroles, pyrazines and furans via the Maillard reaction, these compounds and similar are found in seared meat, toast and roasted coffee giving roasty, nutty flavours.
- Mix 2 parts soy sauce, 1 part toasted sesame oil, and 1 part vinegar and use as a stir fry sauce that tastes far more complex than it is. Optional, but recommended extras: Garlic, ginger and chilli (or even better a fermented chilli condiment like Gojuchang or Sriracha).
- Cook mushrooms with Marmite for a vegetable side dish that might as well just be meat. Add smoked paprika for this to pretty much taste like bacon. When I attempt to go vegan (stay tuned) this will likely be a large part of my diet.
- Roast a whole head of cauliflower (other brassicas work, but cauli works best) with some salt and a generous covering of smoked paprika. Extra spices like cumin, coriander, garlic powder and chilli can add a bit of fun, but the smoked paprika is the real star here.
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| Forget everything you know about cauliflower. Actually, remember most of it. But also remember that this is good way to cook it. |
I have always loved sour foods, so I find the tang of fermented foods like sauerkraut, kimchi and classic style pickled cucumbers God-damn delicious. Feel free to skip this section if the mention of pickled or fermented foods makes you a little queasy, although I think you should reconsider. They likely won't make up a huge part of your diet, but lacto-fermented veg are basically on steroids when it comes to nutritional punch. Not only does fermentation make many nutrients more bio-available by pre-digestion (including aforementioned glucosinolates), digest anti-nutrients and in some cases create new nutrients (such as B vitamins - important for veggies and vegans), if the ferments are eaten uncooked, they provide live lactic acid bacteria, which can have profound positive effects of gut micro-fauna and as such, overall health.
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| Red and pink kraut, sweet and hot cucumber pickles, pickled radishes and aubergines. Don't worry, I haven't gone full hippy, I still shower and think communism is a terrible idea. |
Going into depth about fermentation and fermented foods is a book in itself (and if you want to read that book, I highly recommend 'The Art of Fermentation' by Sandor Katz), instead I will share the most basic rules of thumb for fermenting vegetables and some suggestions of where to go from there.
How to ferment vegetables:
- Chop or grate the veg. Generally the harder the veg, the finer you will want to go.
- Dry salt method:
- Add 0.75-1.5% of the weight of the veg in salt. Use your taste to guide you (Adding salt also makes the environment less hospitable for moulds, but more hospitable for lactic acid bacteria, so we are giving the good guys a head start here). Get your hands involved and squish the veg to release some water from the cells.
- Pack the veg and resulting liquid into a jar or pot and squish them down tightly, making sure the veg is submerged beneath the liquid.
- Brine method:
- Alternatively make a 5% weight brine (i.e. 5g salt per 100ml water) optionally with a splash of vinegar to create an acidic environment, pack fresh chopped veg into a jar and pour over the brine.
- Leave for at least a couple of days, up to a couple of weeks. Have a look at the veg and taste regularly after a day or 2. There should be no signs of mould but there should be bubbles as the bacteria break carbohydrates down into lactic acid and carbon dioxide. The veg will develop a pleasant tangy acidity, once this is at a point you are happy with, put the whole thing in the fridge to slow any further fermentation.
- Enjoy
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| Rainbow kraut making my barbecued pork sandwich a thing of beauty. |
Some ideas:
- Classic kraut - Finely shred white cabbage. Dry salt. Add mustard or caraway seeds for flavour. Ferment as above.
- Rainbow kraut - As above, but get some variety in there, adding a bit of red cabbage tastes pretty much the same but turns the whole thing pink, carrots or bell peppers add sweetness, radishes add a peppery bite, celery will add a savoury crunch. You can even add fruit. Go wild, experiment.
- Simplified kimchi - Chop Chinese cabbage (use bok choi or inner leaves of Savoy cabbage if you can't find Chinese). Dry salt, using less salt than usual. Add lots of chopped garlic and chilli, some ginger and spring onions, a good splash of fish sauce and a bit of sugar (this is art, not science). Ferment.
- Simple cucumber pickles - Use small pickling cucumbers whole if you have them, otherwise chop cucumber into chucks. Make a 5% brine with an added splash of vinegar and don't be afraid to get some extra flavour in there in the form of peppercorns, mustard seeds, dill, coriander seeds, chilli, garlic. Ferment for a few days as cucumber can go mushy if left for longer periods.
Eat your vegetables, kids.
Or just eat meat, take a fibre supplement and multi-vitamin, I'm not your Dad.
