Healthiest Indian and Mediterranean foods - re cholesterol

[Anonymous]

What are the healthiest (and easiest/fastest) Indian and Mediterranean foods - if your goals are to up the good cholesterol and lower the bad cholesterol?

I know lots (most?) Indian restaurant food is heavy and swimming in cream and probably cheap oils. And frankly I have that feeling when eating at Indian friends' homes too -- bc I think when people host others it's about serving delicious foods - which are going to be fried, full of cream etc - not heart healthy foods that you'd eat by yourself on a normal Tuesday night. Yet overall it seems like a cuisine that could go done at home w/ minimal oil and no cream. Is that true? Like I don't see how a cuisine based on things like spinach, eggplant, cauliflower, lentils can be THAT unhealthy. Same with Mediterranean food -- all I've really ever had is kabobs, rice, and a grilled vegetable like tomato on the side but it seems like simple fresh foods like that can be done in a healthy fashion.

So what are your go tos - that are easy to throw together on a weeknight? I feel like I need to step away from the "boxed" food - i.e. pasta and/or takeout; and Indian and/or Med seems like something I could stick with bc frankly I like spice and am big on jalapenos, serranos etc. -- not to the point where the food is inedible but just enough to give it a kick.

[Anonymous]

Dal and rice, with a roasted vegetable. There are so many ways to make dal you need never get bored.
Sambar (South Indian vegetable lentil stew) with rice and a stir fried vegetable (usually called poriyal)
Khichri - rice & lentil porridge with vegetables - eat with chopped salad and yogurt
Idli or dosa with sambar & chutney - the batter can be bought at the Indian store and made into steamed cakes or crepes

If you are trying to cut back on rice you can substitute a lighter alternative such as cauliflower rice as a side.

[Anonymous]

Your post seems very strange and biased. But I’ll bite—eat yellow dals and roti or rice

[Anonymous]

The other PPS have covered a lot. It seems that you eat at restaurants. Restaurant food always has a lot of fat in it - for most cuisines. Home cooked is often different. I cook a lot of Indian food. None of what I cook has cream in it- although some dishes have yogurt. Many meat based curries start with fried onions. I use olive oil (about a table spoon). That’s hardly a lot for one chicken or 2 pounds of lamb.

[Anonymous]

Grilled fish is healthy. Eat it with alot of spring greens.

Some people use alot of butter and oil to cook. So if you use butter and overcook those lentils and beans, than, it's technically not healthy. Butter=bad and high cholesterol. Over cook=nutrients sucked out of them. What's left is just fiber.
Taste=excellent! so this makes it hard to not eat them.

[Anonymous]

I'm Indian-American, and my dad's a cardiologist. Growing up, my mom cooked in a small amount of oil, and she only added a very small touch of butter/ghee at the end for taste. For some foods (e.g. daal, curries), you can cook them in a slow cooker with whole spices and very little oil to still get flavor.

Just like with any cuisine, there's a huge amount of variation in the amount of butter/animal fat that goes into Indian food. Overall, I think it's probably healthier than a lot of cuisines that use a lot of red meat, though not if you cook with tons of cream and butter (just like any other cuisine).

[Anonymous]

Dietary cholesterol is insignificant in serum cholesterol. Get statins.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Your post seems very strange and biased. But I’ll bite—eat yellow dals and roti or rice

Indian food is so unhealthy but can you give me some recipes.

[Anonymous]

Look up South Indian vegetarian recipes. Even if they use a lot of butter or ghee in the recipe, you can usually replace with just a little olive oil or use a little ghee at the end for taste, if you need. Double the amount of vegetables they use in the recipes. It can be really healthy. Those recipes are usually vegan, minus the ghee.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Your post seems very strange and biased. But I’ll bite—eat yellow dals and roti or rice

Indian food is so unhealthy but can you give me some recipes.

I'm Indian and didn't find OP offensive at all. Many everyday Indian dishes can be made healthily at home and it's fine to ask for ideas and recipes

I like the Mathur Jaffrey cookbooks, OP

[Anonymous]

Vibrant Indian by Chita Agrawal has modern and traditional takes on vegetarian Indian dishes. I try to use less oil, whole wheat roti and less white rice. I don’t use dream when I make North Indian dishes, but cashew butter I make in my food processor. On the today show this am, they demonstrated how to make yogurt rice with tempered spices. Very light (you can use low-fat yogurt) and tasty. The problem with the Indian food I food I grew up with is diabetes. Lots of rice (my family didn’t eat sweets often).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Your post seems very strange and biased. But I’ll bite—eat yellow dals and roti or rice

Indian food is so unhealthy but can you give me some recipes.

I didn't take it like that. I took it as - PARTY/RESTAURANT food is so unhealthy but can you give me some healthy cook at home recipes.

[Anonymous]

Indian food is not healthy. I love Indian food and cook it often, but if it has ghee (all recipes do!) It's basically like Paula Dean's food.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Indian food is not healthy. I love Indian food and cook it often, but if it has ghee (all recipes do!) It's basically like Paula Dean's food.

So you know about ALL Indian food?

[Anonymous]

New question. Why bother with ghee? It’s just clarified butter? And adding it just at the end for taste? Seems a lot of work. Can you just add atbsp of butter at the end?