Reality TV shows like Chopped made cooking a competitive sport, but it doesn’t have to be that much at stake. Getting to grips with a few healthy recipes can go a long way. (There’s nothing wrong with takeout or delivery, but most of us can’t afford to outsource every single meal!) It also takes some of the guesswork out about midweek meals because it means you can do several easy ones Have dinner to fall back on when you don’t feel like ordering or getting creative.
Best of all, simple, healthy meals are often the easiest to lump together. Sometimes it comes down to combining a few simple staples – fried chicken with plain roasted vegetables, or a perfect hard-boiled egg on a bowl of vegetables and grains. In other cases, it means tossing a bunch of ingredients into a single cooking vessel and walking away to let the magic happen, as in the case of healthy crockpot recipes.
Some people love full-time cooking projects – that’s great, and when you have friends like that, you should definitely stop out for dinner every now and then. But if you’re more of a cook with essentials, that’s no shame. While not everyone has the patience for sourdough or the technical skills for pate en croûte, for example, most adults can perfect a few healthy chicken recipes in a number of different ways.
Whether you’re starting your cooking skills from scratch or just want to simplify your kitchen routine, here are the top, healthy recipes to add to your list.
But first, a note on the word healthy: We know that healthy is a complicated term. Not only can it mean different things to different people, but it’s a word that is quite charged (and sometimes weighed down) thanks to the influence of the diet industry on the way we think about food. At SELF, when we talk about healthy eating, of course, we are talking about nutritious, filling, and filling foods. But we’re also talking about foods that will help you connect with your culture, encourage joy, and just taste delicious. Some of these foods may fall under traditional notions of “healthy”. And some maybe not. We selected these recipes with all of that in mind while trying to appeal to a wide variety of nutritional needs and taste buds.
