Tips for Making a Healthy Heart Meal Recipe in a Crock Pot

A crock pot, or slow cooker, is ideal to prepare delicious, healthy meals in a little amount of time. Usually, you can just throw in a meat, vegetables and some liquids and let it cook for several hours before immediately serving it. It is healthy cooking because it can cook fresh healthy ingredients and keep them juicy and enhance the flavors. A heart-healthy crock pot recipe needs to be low-sodium, low-fat, low-cholesterol and tasty. Add this to my Recipe Box.

Don't Use Cream

An important tip to keeping a crock pot recipe heart healthy is to steer clear of cream additions, condensed soups, gravy or thick sauces such as barbecue sauce or alfredo. Even though many people find these tasty, they are very unhealthy and fattening. You can create just as much delicious flavor with healthier ingredients, such as adding two to three chicken or beef bullion cubes, heart-healthy butter, salt and pepper, water, garlic powder, herbs, stocks (such as seafood, chicken, vegetable or beef) and minced onion. The point of a crock pot is that you can combine a dozen ingredients and all the flavors will blend with each other.

Use Lots of Vegetables

Add a large amount of vegetables to your crock pot recipe. This will add to the heart-healthy value, as well as add more and more flavor. Add lots of legumes (such as barley and beans) for protein and fiber, peppers for vitamin C, and fresh herbs such as cilantro, ginger and fennel for other nutritional value. An added bonus is that legumes and vegetables always cook perfectly in crock pots, and retain all their nutritional value. Other ideal vegetables to add are carrots, sweet potatoes, acorn squash, onion, garlic (very heart healthy), tomatoes, spinach, tomatoes, broccoli, celery or red potatoes.
You can even add fruit with certain meats, like apples or pears.

Have A Healthy Protein

Use a healthy protein like skinless chicken, lean cuts of beef (such as round or sirloin), turkey, lean cuts of venison, pork tenderloin (much leaner than it used to be), bison, and fish. There are also hundreds of vegetarian recipes you can make in a crock pot that are heart healthy, hearty and delicious. Steer clear from meat such as sausage, fried chicken, pork chops, and bacon.