Healthy Bites | Stories from Asia

GRILL FACT
You eat less fat when you grill as excess fat drips off the grates

You’re itching to fire up the grill and invite your friends over, but you’ve already indulged a little bit too much this summer and your jeans are getting a little too snug for comfort—enough for you to rethink having another heavy cookout.

Tightening the belt doesn’t have to be the solution to staying trim—ask any dietitian, drastic measures seldom work for the long term. Instead, eat better. Here are a few ideas on what you could put on the grill for a healthier (but still very satisfying) cookout.

Start with a slurp

People overeat when they’re hungry, and it’s hard not to devour whatever comes off the grill when you’ve been teased with delicious smoky flavors from your covered Weber grill for ages. To help you (and your guests) pace yourselves, serve soup first. Can you make soup with a grill? Yes, you can! Low in carbs, you can even make soup from ingredients you’d typically have on the grill anyway, like the onions that would’ve gone on your burger. The recipe for Grilled French Onion Soup is a great example. You should try to do away with the dipping bread, but it’s not going to be easy!

Something fishy

When it comes to choosing a protein to better your diet, fish always comes out on top as they have less saturated fat than meat. While most people think of salmon, there’s plenty of good catches that are just as good—and a little easier to get in this region. Pomfrets, for example, which we use in our Whole Grilled Masala Fish, are great on the grill and great for your health. They provide you with calcium, vitamins, iodine (important for your thyroid gland) and are also good for your eyesight.

Say cheese!

Rarely is there a grill menu that doesn’t have cheese on it. Does that mean you need to give it up though? Not at all. You just need to stick with the lower calorie options like mozzarella that contains only 85 calories per ounce, as opposed to cheddar that has 115 calories. We love the idea of sandwiching mozzarella in this Aubergine and Courgette Tower —and it looks impressive on the table too.