The 150 Healthiest 15-Minute Recipes on Earth (3 page)

First of all, let’s be clear about something:
Compromise
isn’t a dirty word. We’re living in the real world, and, as mentioned earlier, it’s not always going to be possible or practical to choose perfect, fresh, organic, local ingredients and cook them from scratch. To accomplish our bigger goal of providing you with healthy meals in 15 minutes, we made a few small compromises. We occasionally used processed products to stay under 15 minutes, but we feel that on balance, the health benefits of the recipes in which this was done still far outweigh the minor negatives associated with a small amount of processed food.

In general, when using processed or prepared foods (sauces, wraps, and the like), it’s best to go for the highest-quality versions (fresh, clean ingredients, whole grain, etc.) and nix things that have too many chemicals, too much refined sugar or flour, or multiple artificial ingredients whose names you can’t pronounce. We tried to be conscious of sodium content as well, and fiercely conscious of trans fats (hydrogenated oils), which we simply did not use no matter what.

What we did do was front-load the recipes with whole foods, which
come from what I have referred to as the Jonny Bowden Four Food
Groups—food you fish for, hunt, gather, or pluck
.

As long as these foods make up the bulk of your diet, you will be way ahead of the game. Those foods account for the majority of the ingredients in the recipes that follow.

Finally we’d like to suggest that your whole diet shouldn’t be composed of these quick and easy meals. If you can, try to make some time for slow food—food that may not come together in 15 minutes, but whose taste, texture, flavor, complexity, and nutritional benefits are worth the extra time needed to prepare it. We offer nutrient or flavor “bonus tips” in several of the recipes themselves for when you have an extra 5, 10, or 30 minutes.

If your diet consists of a good balance of slow food and the truly healthy fast food featured in this cookbook, you should be in very good shape indeed.

We hope reading these recipes (and the introductions) will help you make a shift in your relationship to food. Food, after all, is fuel for your body and brain, but it is more than that. It is celebration, sharing, and giving. It is meditative, mindful, and sensual. It is a source of joy and community. It is both nutritious and recreational.

It is essential.

Why not make the most of it?

Enjoy the journey.

—Jonny Bowden
Woodland Hills, CA, 2010

The average amount of time an American family spent cooking meals in the 1980s was about two hours a day. Today those two cooking hours have dwindled down to an average of 20 minutes—for all three meals! Clearly many of us have been leaning on prepared, takeout, and restaurant food to get ourselves fed. But, as Dr. Jonny so eloquently tells us, the quality of that high-calorie/low-nutrient-density food is poor and the health cost of eating so much of it has been dear, as evidenced by the epidemic of obesity we’re facing (and all the other issues that have come along for the ride, such as type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease).

So if fast food isn’t worth the health toll, and we no longer have two hours a day at our disposal for cooking, we need to get smarter about the raw ingredients we buy, and the way we use our time in the kitchen. Following are tips for getting healthy, tasty meals on the table fast. I’ve recommended a few key pieces of equipment to help cut your prep time, shopping tips, core pantry staples for the speedy whole foods kitchen, general time-saving tips for food preparation, and simple things to you can do to ensure delicious and varied flavors in your meals.

The recipes are divided into three chapters. Chapter 1 is the heart of the book, with about 100 recipes (mainly entrées with a few breakfast dishes) that will take you about 15 minutes from set up (see Organize Your Kitchen on
page 22
) to prepare and cook, with suggested speedy sides to complete your meal. Among the selections are about 25 recipes that require little to no actual cooking. Many of them are more like assembly meals that you can get from pantry to placemat in 15 minutes or less. Chapter 2 offers about 25 delicious entrées that require only 15 minutes or less of preparation, but need a little more time for cooking (never more than 45 minutes). Chapter 3 contains 25 tasty and innovative balanced snack ideas, most of which can be made in a flash, and many of which can serve as mini-meals in a pinch.

Dr. Jonny introduces all the recipes and highlights the special health qualities of particular ingredients or nutrients in his Nutritional Notes throughout the book. The recipes in the first two chapters suggest side dishes to complete the meal, superspeed tips that will trim even more time off the prep, ideas for enriching your dish if you have 5, 10, or 30 extra minutes of time, and variation tips for ingredient substitutions to make the dishes more versatile.

The Planned Leftover tag indicates that a recipe includes planned leftovers. Planned leftover meals allow you to prepare two meals in the same amount of time as one, so you can eat fresh that night and freeze another meal to eat at any time over the next two months. Follow our directions for flawless freezing, then thaw the dish overnight in the refrigerator before the evening you would like to eat it. The next night it’s ready to simply heat and eat! Include a PL meal in your repertoire once a week and you will soon have a stock of high-quality, frozen prepared meals on hand for those evenings when you’re too tired to lift a finger for food prep, but still need to feed the family. One more thing: If a non-PL dish freezes well, and most of them do, you can transform it into PL by simply doubling the amount of the original recipe and freezing one of the meals. (See the note on batching later this introduction.)

THE STARS

Though we love all the recipes in the book, we wanted to note those that were outstandingly healthy and delicious—the best of the best. It was a challenge deciding which ones to give a star to, and we’re sure you could argue that some deservedly good ones didn’t get stars. Remember, everything in this book is a star in its respective category—the ones we chose soar above the rest in terms of the nutrition they provide your body and the outstanding flavor they deliver to your taste buds. Enjoy!

These are the pieces of cooking equipment that I return to again and again when I need to get a dish together quickly. Investing in good kitchen tools that allow you to prepare fresh food fast will save you scads of money over time in less expensive home-cooked meals versus pricier packaged or restaurant food.

Food processor (with attachments for slicing and grating)
. The food processor is a simply indispensable tool for high-speed grating, slicing, and chopping. It is all you need to make sauces, dressings, raw-food bars, soups, and “instant” puddings (see chapter 3).

High-powered blender
. A powerful blender can grind nuts into milk or butter, chop fruit and ice and blend it into smoothies, and even make a quick soup from raw veggies, all in a few seconds to a couple of minutes. Dr. Jonny and I love our Vita-Mix blenders.

Immersion blender
. The immersion blender is a portable wand with a blender and mixer attachment. Pureeing a soup in the blender or food processor requires cooling time and usually takes multiple messy batches to
get the job done. With an immersion blender you can drop it in your pot of soup (or eggs, batter, or dressing ingredients) and get the dish to the consistency you desire in seconds, with a super quick cleanup.

Mandoline
. The mandoline allows you to quickly, thinly, and evenly slice or julienne firm fruits and vegetables (such as apples, carrots, beets, turnips, celery root, etc.) more safely than using a kitchen knife, and with less cleanup than a food processor.

Double mesh sieve and colander
. Double mesh sieves and colanders allow for quick rinsing and draining of almost any ingredient that gets wet, including tiny grains, such as quinoa or amaranth. They are also terrific for use with delicate pastas, like rice noodles, and the best thing out there for draining and rising canned beans in no time flat. Look for stainless-steel varieties to prevent rusting.

Multiple nesting mixing bowls, measuring cups, and spoons
. One of the skills of a speedy whole foods cook is preparing multiple dishes at once. To do this efficiently, have several different bowls you can use simultaneously and more than one set of measuring spoons and cups, so you don’t need to wash between every use. These are inexpensive, so it won’t set you back much to purchase additional sets if you already have some you like. My favorite bowls are my cheapest steel ones because they are light and shallow, easy to use and manipulate, and super fast to clean.

Tempered glassware with rubber lids
. Dr. Jonny and I both advocate cooking and storing foods in glass over plastic. Glass is a better environmental choice than plastic, it’s more sanitary, does not transfer flavors or colors among different dishes, and does not leach anything scary into your food when heated. Not all plastics contain BPA and other unpleasantries, but why take the risk when glass is so great in so many other ways? A tempered glass product (we like Pyrex) will not shatter in the freezer or oven, so it can travel from hot to cold without needing a container transfer, saving you time and effort. Being able to snap a lid over leftovers to refrigerate them or to batch extras for freezing is a great, time-saving convenience.

Sharp chef’s and paring knives and a sharpener
. Investing in one high-quality chef’s knife and one high-quality paring knife (good steel, full tang, sharp edge) will save a great deal of slicing and dicing time over the years. Most slips and struggles with cutting occur because of working with a dull blade. Buy an electric sharpener or a sharpening stone, or take your knives to a sharpening service, which is usually inexpensive. By the way, that rod in a knife block doesn’t actually sharpen, it’s just for smoothing out any burrs on an already sharp edge.

One of the secret keys to being able to get meals on the table quickly is keeping a well-stocked larder. If you have a good collection of staple ingredients on hand at all times, you will always be able to pull a quick meal out of your hat. Try these tips:

•
Make a list
. It’s much more efficient to spend 10 minutes making a good list of what you need to restock your pantry and to make the dishes for that week, than to get to the grocery store and try to figure it out as you wander the aisles. Take a quick look in your fridge and pantry for staples. Jot down what’s getting low. Then think for a minute about what dishes you know you would like to make for the next few days. Scan the recipes and write down any special ingredients you will need. For long lists, group similar items according to the area of the store where you’ll find them (frozen food, produce, etc.) This will also save you time in the store by preventing the need to double back over an aisle you’ve already passed.

•
Get groceries to go
. Another neat time-saving strategy is to use an online grocery service. Some allow you to send them your list and then you pick up the bagged groceries yourself, while others deliver the goods straight to your door. The cost for these services varies, but most options for the larger-chain stores are quite reasonable.

•
Let the grocer do it for you
. There are plenty of whole food products out there that will save several prep steps in the kitchen. Prewashed greens, preshredded or diced veggies and cheese, precubed meat, sliced mushrooms, and prepared garlic are a few key staples.

•
Stock up on these speedy whole foods staples
. Choose high quality, “clean” items with no additives, or chemical or other artificial ingredients.

•
Produce
. Opt for organic produce, and, whenever possible, choose fruits and vegetables that are in season. In addition to fresh produce, we also use dried fruits in this book–choose unsulphured, unsweetened, or juice-sweetened varieties, when possible.

•
Canned and jarred foods
. When selecting canned and jarred foods, always choose high quality options with no additives or preservatives, such as sodium or any unfamiliar ingredients you can’t pronounce.

•
Condiments, oils, sweeteners, seasonings, and baking items
. Some of the lesser known ingredients used in this book include high-heat oils such as unrefined virgin coconut oil, macadamia nut oil,
peanut oil, rice bran oil (neutral flavor), and ghee (clarified butter); sweeteners such as xylitol or erythritol, Sucanat, and stevia extract; seasonings such as unrefined high-quality sea salt (SI or Himalayan pink), Bragg Liquid Aminos, low-sodium tamari, umeboshi plum vinegar, miso paste, and mirin; and baking items such as whole wheat pastry flour, stone-ground corn meal, oat bran, wheat germ, and kudzu.