How to Ensure Your Grilled Meal is Healthy

Grilling your food not only makes it taste better, but it can enhance the health factor of your meal if you do it right. In fact, it’s our favorite way of cooking!

As with anything we eat, watching what we cook, how we prepare it, and how we cook it is the key to making sure it is good for us. In this article, we look at how to ensure your grilled meal is healthy.

Tips for Grilling Healthy

One of the best things you can do is clean the grill before you cook. This helps avoid any chemicals left over.

In addition, before cooking your meats, marinate them first. It’s been shown that marinades can reduce the amount of any carcinogens in grilled meats. Do leave out the sugar and try to include rosemary, sage, oregano and time as they’ve been shown to reduce the cancer causing effects of grilling meat. The American Cancer Society also recommends letting your protein sit for 30 minutes in a marinade made with an acid like vinegar or lemon juice.

Our favorite tip for grilling healthy is to grill vegetables and even fruit instead of meat.  You know that meat is tasty when cooked on the grill, and we can tell you that veggies are dynamite when cooked on the grill. Plus, fruits and vegetables are free of any potential cancer-causing chemicals.

Here are a few more tips when grilling meat:

• Remove heavy char or burned crust before you eat that steak.
• Cook leaner meats. Always remove the skin and any visible fat from your meat before cooking. Fat is a known carcinogen producer.
• Flip meat less frequently while cooking so you avoid producing any harmful chemicals.
• Cook meat thoroughly but don’t overcook it. Always use a thermometer to get the right internal temperature.
• Finally, chose your proteins wisely. Leave the hot dogs, sausages, ham, and bacon for special occasions and grill lean meat like chicken, pork, and fish most often. On occasion, you can throw in lean beef, lamb and other red meats.

Final Thoughts

Eating healthy is sure on our radar, and we want to make sure we’re cooking our food in the most healthy way possible. We’ve given you some tips for cooking meat and even choosing the right cuts of meats.

Bottom line – grilling is great! Choose lean meats and vegetables on most days of the week. Save the higher fat and processed meats for specials occasions or a backyard BBQ. As with most things, moderation is key.

Grilling is healthier, it keeps the heat out of your kitchen, and makes for easy clean up. These are all the reasons it’s our go-to way to cook dinner. Have questions? Be sure and stop by or contact us to learn more. Don’t have a grill? We can help. Check out our Big Green Eggs and Green Mountain Grills!