With the launch of Birds Eye’s new Steamfresh range, we found ourselves wondering what really is the best method for cooking vegetables?
The Steamfresh range uses innovative steaming bags, which lock in the flavours and ensure your food is always cooked perfectly. This means taste and time sorted (a blessing for us mums), but what about the nutrients?
We delved into the various cooking methods of vegetables to see how we could make our family’s meals that bit healthier.
Boiling
Boiling vegetables is a relatively quick and easy technique; however many vegetables lose their nutrients when boiled in water. The boiling water can be saved to make a soup or sauce, but that doesn’t help you on the night you’re serving the vegetables.
Frying
Apart from adding extra fat to your meal, frying was found to cause a loss of between 5 and 50 percent of each vegetable’s nutrients.
Microwaving
A Harvard investigation of the impact of various cooking methods on vegetables found microwaving is the best method for retaining nutrients. This was because nutrients weren’t being lost through boiling water and most important, the speedy cooking time that ensures sensitive nutrients affected by heat like vitamin C aren’t destroyed.
Roasting
While roasting can give vegetables a unique flavour by caramelising natural surface sugars, research has found a number of vegetables like carrots, cauliflower, courgettes and onions, see a decrease in their nutrient levels.
Steaming
Steaming is widely considered to be one of the healthiest methods of cooking vegetables with a 2008 Italian study finding that it was the best method for preserving antioxidants found in vegetables like broccoli and courgettes.
Cook from frozen
Frozen vegetables are picked at their best and frozen immediately – because of this they’re considered by many to be superior to fresh vegetables, whose quality can reduce as they are transported and left sitting in supermarkets.
So there you have it! Microwaving, steaming and cooking from frozen are considered the best ways to preserve the nutritional quality of vegetables, making the Steamfresh range an all-round winner!
Birds Eye’s Steamfresh collection includes vegetables, pasta and rice side dishes that you can cook in the microwave in minutes – perfect for busy mums!
