Holiday Cooking is always great fun and stress buster. With delicious recipes floating all round you might want to add a healthy touch to your cooking, so here are some Healthy Holiday Cooking Tips to help you:

 Holiday Appetizer Cooking Tips

• Choose an appetizer that has good nutritional value, such as a fruit platter, or a vegetable soup
• Choose fibrous foods such as whole grains and legumes, either in form of a salad or a dish such as roasted red pepper spread on wheat rounds
• Use low fat dips such as low fat sour cream or yoghurt; use salsa for dressing
• While using readymade mayonnaise, choose the low fat version; it has about 18 calories and 2 gm fat per person
• Prepare homemade gravies and sauces and control the use of salt and sugar
• While preparing white sauce, use skimmed milk instead of cream and whole milk
• It is a wise idea to choose a healthy cooking method such a boiling and grilling; you could grill or boil turkey, meat, chicken to keep the nutrients to maximum and use of oil to minimum
• Use nuts such as almonds and walnuts, you could also try using soy nuts for dressing up fruit platter or just as munchies
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 Healthy Holiday Tips for Main Course Dishes

• For a healthy cooking, steam, boil or roast the ingredients such as meat and vegetables; this will keep the nutrient level high
• Opt for vegetables like spinach, broccoli, carrots and beans as they are rich in vitamins and minerals
• Instead of using white rice, opt for brown rice; include whole grains like whole wheat couscous  and barley
• For marinating the dishes, choose low fat options like fruit juices, wine, low fat cream, and homemade sauces
• Freezing the dips is a good option, as after freezing you can easily remove the top fat creamy layer (hardened fat)
• Use herbs instead of salt and sugar, to enhance the flavor of the dishes; using herbs will also ensure that you will need less sauces, cream, dips to bring about the correct flavor
•  For a healthy holiday cooking, use low fat content ingredients, such as low fat cheese, skimmed milk, homemade sauces in macaroni
• While making a pan gravy, you could skim off the fat from the drippings with a spoon
• To dress up the seafood, use herbs such as thyme, which has high antioxidant content; it also helps aid inflammation

 Healthy Holiday Desserts Tips

• You could make some interesting and delicious, low cal, healthy desserts such as baked apples, fruit pizza, low fat frozen yogurt, banana muffins, and carrot cake etc.
• Use pumpkin, apples or other sweet fruits to bring about the sweetness; this will ensure that you cook sugarless desserts or use very little sugar; you could also use applesauce or fruit puree
• Homemade ice cream made in skimmed milk with nuts, raisins and little sugar tastes awesome and is low in calorie and fat content
• While decorating the cake, skip the creamy frosting, and instead opt for powdered sugar, cinnamon or cocoa

Eating healthy and low fat food during holidays will boost your energy levels and you will not have to worry about the extra weight that you might pile. Hope you try and benefit from these healthy holiday cooking tips!

Image Credits: infusioncatering.com, delish. com