Mexican food: A healthy dinner makeover
Making a few thoughtful additions to your favorite Mexican recipes can be easy and healthy.
Core your bell peppers and fill them with your preferred enchilada mixture: spicy chicken, beef, or cheese. Crédito: Flickr
Sure, when one thinks of Mexican food, visions of cheesy, greasy enchiladas may emerge. So how do you get your spicy fix in a healthy dinner without congesting your arteries or clogging your heart? Here are a few tips for reinventing your favorite Mexican dishes without sacrificing flavor or your health.
The incredible chile rellada? Enchilleno?
Whatever you want to call it, this dish mixes the best of two worlds: the enchilada and the chile relleno. Instead of your normal corn tortilla, use a bell pepper as the shell. Green, red, or yellow, the bell pepper is a versatile (and colorful!) vegetable that is so tasty, you might never return to a corn tortilla. Well, that may be overstating things, but the bell pepper offers fiber and plenty of vitamins to your dish.
Core your bell peppers and fill them with your preferred enchilada mixture: spicy chicken, beef, or cheese. Another benefit of the bell pepper substitution is that it provides a natural portion control, as you’re more likely to feel full after eating an entire bell pepper instead of the usual three rolled corn tortillas that, visually at least, let you keep pushing on well after you’re full.
Gobble, gobble
It’s true: Many Mexican food favorites are enjoyed with ground beef. Though delicious, even the leanest ground beef can be not so heart- or cholesterol-friendly over the long haul. Don’t despair. Ground turkey, particularly ground turkey breast, is a healthy dinner substitute that doesn’t require you to sacrifice your favorite dishes altogether. Use it on chalupas, puffy tacos, nachos, or any other dish you normally prepare with ground beef, and go ahead and gobble it up.
Yogurt is the new sour cream
Sure, nobody would believe you or want to come near your enchilada dishes if you told them about the Greek yogurt for sour cream substitution. Well, what they don’t know won’t hurt them. Just the opposite, in fact. Replace the sour cream with a low-fat (or no fat) Greek plain yogurt as your topping.
Mix the yogurt with a few tablespoons of your salsa topping, and the yogurt will take on the smoky, tangy flavors of the salsa. Then spread your mixture over the enchiladas either before or after baking, depending on your preference. Either way, the effect is the same: a creamy, spicy sauce atop your enchiladas!
Adding, not subtracting
While many substitutions have been mentioned, here’s an addition to your healthy dinner: greens. There isn’t a Mexican dish that can’t benefit from blending in a few choice vegetables. Some simple and powerful additions you can make are corn kernels, spinach, and diced zucchini. These vegetables will complement your filling and add both color and nutrients to your healthy dinner.
Making a few thoughtful additions and subtractions to your favorite Mexican recipes can be both easy, inexpensive and, most importantly, give you a healthy dinner.
