For some people, sauces and dressings are essential to ensure that meals are tasty. However, sometimes side dishes have more calories than the main dish. Keep reading to find out what dressings are fattening and learn some recipes to prepare at home.
A hot dog has 270 calories. But no one eats a hotdog without sauce. By adding golf sauce (50 grams), you'll add 320 extra calories. But it's worse if you choose mayonnaise. You'll add up around 400 extra calories. However, by using mustard, you'll only be adding 35 calories.
Something similar happens with spaghetti. A 100-gram serving has 370 calories. If we add some pomodoro sauce, we'll be adding 60 extra calories (equivalent to 100 grams). But if you prefer a white sauce, you'll be tripling the value to 163 calories.
Think, then choose your sauce
The Spanish publication Consumer Eroski conducted a laboratory analysis of 8 sauces and found important differences: mayonnaise sauce and garlic sauce, in addition to providing a lot of fat, provide 7 times more calories than ketchup or barbecue sauce. Cocktail sauces, like curry and roquefort, come next, with a fat content of 25% to 43% and between 286 and 430 calories, per 100 grams. Finally, ketchup, mustard, and barbecue sauce have 0.5% to 4% of fat and less than 100 calories per 100 grams. That makes these three sauces the best choices for low-calorie diets.
Make your own spice
Annette Sym, expert in low-calorie cooking, gives you some tips for creating your own sauces:
- Use fresh herbs to enhance flavors. They have few or no calories and are free of fat and sodium.
- Using dried herbs is another way of adding flavor to a recipe, but they should be used sparingly, since they are much stronger than fresh herbs. For example, fry and stir some fresh, chopped basil in a saucepan. Then, add it to your preparation; 1/2 to 1 teaspoon will be enough.
- If you have parsley in the garden, you can store some fresh herbs in the refrigerator. But use them only to make sauces, not in salads. You can also freeze them in a closed container. When you need them, you can use them diced.
- To add some color to your plate, add a teaspoon of turmeric to the water when preparing rice. This will give a better appearance to your food.
- There's nothing worse than having a dish you can't eat because you added too much chili. To avoid this from happening again and wasting food, use chili powder. Start by adding 1/8 teaspoon and try it. If you want to make food a bit spicier, add another 1/8 teaspoon, until you get the desired flavor.
