Sides
Power Up Your Main Dishes
For my last installment of College Cooking 102: Nutritious Meals Under $10, I want to cover sides. I have covered my weekly main dishes, including most meats and even smoothies, but I have yet to give you a completed meal design, so now I will fill in those gaps with this article.
Every good main dish has to have a killer side or two to provide a full, complete meal. Usually, cooks pair steak with potatoes, and likewise, your main dishes should have a companion alongside them. Potatoes, however, are not as healthy as some other foods and are loaded with starches and carbohydrates. This high carb load leads to your body processing and turning those carbs into sugars, digested and burned up at high speeds. The fast rate of digestion leads to your body feeling hungrier quicker and leads to overeating and weight gain. There are plenty of other great veggies that you can use as alternatives to the potato, and you may even like them more!
Caulifower
Cauliflower is a chameleon of foods. It is incredibly versatile and can effortlessly imitate many flavors, but one of the flavors it mimics best is potatoes. With just a little garlic, chives, and butter, mashed cauliflower can rival any mashed potato in flavor and texture. Not only is the white tree flavorful, but it also has one-fifth of the carbs and Calories as a potato. If you search for a crunchier side for your main dish, cauliflower can accomplish this goal as well. An air fryer is perfect for this job, as you can salt and season your cauliflower (paprika and parmesan work well) and air fry them for around 20 minutes at 390 degrees Fahrenheit. This method crisps the florets of the cauliflower and cooks the stem portion through to be soft. This method is tasty with broccoli as well.
Eggplant
Another excellent potato alternative is eggplant. If you look at a set amount of calories, these two may look very similar in nutritious makeup. A significant difference in numbers appears when you look at the caloric density of the eggplant. If you get 200 calories of eggplant and 200 calories, you will have about 3.5 times more eggplant than potato. Eggplants also have an impressive advantage in vitamins and minerals over potatoes. I love this recipe for eggplant fries as a substitute for America’s favorite side, french fries. They also have a lot of flavor and crunch over the regular fry, so they are not just a healthy alternative but also taste great!
Peppers
If you are willing to put forth the effort, Peppers make a great side dish for many foods. Peppers can provide many flavors, crunch, vitamin C, and vitamin A without sacrificing a significant amount of Calories. one of the coolest ways to use a pepper is to stuff it with other foods! My wife is a massive proponent for cutting the bell peppers into slices and eating them with dips. Dipping peppers takes the place of crackers or chips and adds unique flavor and texture that nothing else can provide. I have yet to acquire the taste for bell peppers, but as someone who lives with someone who loves them, I can say that my wife highly recommends the bell pepper as a snack.
Edimame
Since I am not a fan of the bell pepper, I had to find another healthy snack to eat in between meals. I found that perfect snack in edamame. Also known as soybeans, this hairy bean is a fantastic snack when you feel a little hunger but not ready for a complete meal. They are great to have in the fridge because not only are they great snacks, but they are great sides too! They are super easy to cook, and usually, they come in a steamer bag that goes in the fridge until you are ready to cook and heats up in about 1 minute. Being so easy to cook makes for a simple, tasty pop to your dishes and adds a nice green color to your main course. You can use edamame as appetizers, so feel free to throw some out before your party receives their main meal.
Sides make the Dish
Hopefully, these articles have helped you around the kitchen and helped put together some healthier, tastier meals to make dieting a little easier. All of these sides are decently cheap and will pair well as a substitute to any regular side that doesn’t fit into your diet. Feel free to come back and revisit these recipes and ideas as you try them to see what you can change to make them your own.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dalton Childs
Student Author - Spring 2021
