Nymble is back with another food nutrition guide. This time we share with you a list of top 10 nutritionally versatile foods or superfoods and ten nutrient-rich recipes that are super easy to whip up.
Our education and career goals make it hard for us to have a healthy lifestyle. Even though one manages to take a couple of hours out to exercise and practice mindfulness, eating out everyday is going to pose a huge hurdle.
Increased daily consumption of takeout and processed foods not only botches up our life balance but also becomes a cause of long-term ailments. In fact, a cure for several of these illnesses lies in eating right. Thus, it is essential to ensure that all three meals of the day are nutritionally balanced.
A balanced diet is one that integrates all the necessary macro and micronutrients in the right proportion. Contrary to general opinion, ingesting the right calorific amount is not enough. A healthy diet involves the consumption of holistic meals rich in protein, carbohydrates, healthy fats, and vitamins and minerals.
An average adult needs 2000 kcal to maintain their body weight and daily level of activity. This precondition varies with one’s lifestyle and health goals. Nonetheless, the most effective method to achieve this is to fill quarters of your plate with vegetables, grains, fats, and meat or vegan sources of protein.
Although this method is fairly easy, it is still a time-intensive job to plan and cook these many items. So, to simplify it, you must prep your meals.
If you have never done this before, we recommend reading our meal prep guide for beginners.
Meal prepping means planning an eating schedule, purchasing ingredients, and preparing them in advance. It involves cooking and storing different components of meals so that, when the time comes, a good part of the food has already been prepared. A little more time and you can have a scrumptious meal ready!
The way to make the most of it is to prep a few versatile components that can be easily matched among each other to whip up delicious food. This way, your ingredients overlap making the process of shopping and prepping much easier. Using versatile ingredients also ensures that you don’t get bored with daily meals while not compromising on nutrition.
You can even go a step further to relieve all kinds of stress from your kitchen environment. How is that? – By getting a private cooking robot to take care of your everyday eating. While planning and preparing versatile recipes ensure nutritious tasty meals, Nymble further reduces your efforts by cooking for you. Kitchen technology has made significant strides over the years to simplify various cooking processes. We at Nymble, recognized the need to automate the process of cooking in itself, since people are busier than ever before, and often resort to an unhealthy diet in the process. But at the same time, we chose to empower users to make their own decisions; by providing a step-by-step prep guide, customizing, curating, tracking and reviewing all meals made by the cooking robot. You can access 500+ ready-to-eat recipes, spanning every cuisine and diet, and essentially exercise control over your daily meals unlike ever envisioned before.
When trying to eat healthy with minimal effort, a few all-purpose ingredients are all you need. You will be surprised to see the sheer volume of recipes you can cook with these few foods.
Vegetables and leafy greens are organically flavorful ingredients that make for healthy meal components and tasty snacks at all times. If cut and stored correctly, they also stay fresh for a long time; thus, making the best meal prep ingredients.
Throw them in a pan with a few spices and sauces or roast them in a microwave for the easiest dinner dishes. You can then pair them with bread, rice and proteins to have a wholesome meal.
Grains like quinoa, millet, brown rice and oatmeal are rich in carbohydrates and minerals. They can be cooked, stored and used in several ways. Not only do these grains go well in porridges but also in stir-fried recipes and salads. You can also add them to soup to make a filling bowl of goodness.
Eggs are extremely nutritious and filling. They are rich in protein, healthy fats and antioxidants. Not only are they versatile but quick to whip up. In fact, scrambled eggs, sunny-side ups and omelets take less than fifteen minutes to cook. You can also fry eggs over grain bowls and toasts, or add them to salads.
These are rich sources of protein that take longer to cook. So, roasted and grilled seafood, chicken and meat must be refrigerated to reheat when needed. Just season them with spices of choice and you can pair them as bases with most of the dishes. Serving them alongside grain bowls or vegetables fulfils all your nutritional requirements.
The family of legumes comprise a rich selection of beans, peas, lentils and even peanuts and soybeans. With distinct textures and versatility, they complement a variety of curries and salads. Legumes also make their way into sandwich fillings and dips and serve as healthy snacks.
Pasta and noodles absorb any and all flavors when cooked. So, they do well with every base; be it beans, meat or vegetables. You can prepare 2-3 kinds of sauces and alternate their usage for flavorful pasta and noodles that never get old.
Milk, yoghurt, cheese and butter are used in several dishes across the breakfast, lunch and dinner. Be it fruit bowls, pasta, muffins or smoothies; dairy products form an important component (if not base) of several recipes.
Lastly, always keep fruits, nuts and seeds handy. They make the apt ready-to-grab breakfast for those fast work mornings and great snacks to quench your mid-morning hunger. You can add them to your overnight oats jars, smoothies and cereal bowls for a punch of nutritious goodness.
Now that we have discussed the multi-purpose ingredients that require little to no prep, let us have a look at some recipes that include versatile components.
As opposed to other grains that make you slightly sluggish, quinoa energizes you like never before. So, this quinoa skillet offers an amazing start to your morning. Vegetables are sauteed with herbs and seasoned with spices before fluffed quinoa is added to the mix. Cook this as a one-pot recipe to ensure that the flavors get infused well with the grain.
Find the recipe here.
Fajitas are vegetables and chickpeas sauteed with bell peppers before seasoning and broth are added. The simmering ingredients are then cooked to the perfect level of tenderness. This vegan protein-rich lunch recipe pairs well with tortilla bread, rice and even roasted meat. While salt and pepper complement this Mexican dish the best, you can experiment with other seasonings for variations.
Find the recipe here.
Blue cheese is piquant. It accompanies slightly sweet Brussels sprouts and flavorful honey mustard sauce surprisingly well. It is a huge (and welcome) deviation from the regular green side salad we want relief from.
The best way to prepare this dish is to cook and store the legumes and stir-fry them in sauce in time for meals. The versatile sauce not only pairs well here but would also adds flavor to other recipes.
Find the recipe here.
If you want to try your hands at a new cuisine but have a packed schedule, this Mediterranean couscous bowl is there to add a punch of newness to your everyday boredom. Vegetables pan-fried in olive oil seasoned with paprika, rosemary and capers are simmered with couscous in vegetable broth bringing out a unique blend of flavors. When you have all the ingredients portioned, diced and prepared, assembling a couscous bowl takes less than 15 minutes making this dish the go-to weekday dinner.
Find the recipe here.
Curd rice is a staple south Indian recipe involving rice stirred with curd and milk. A tempering mixture of oil, mustard seeds, lentils, ginger and dried red chili is then added to the mix. This dish is usually served chilled and topped with coriander and grated carrot.
Find the recipe here.
When it comes to achieving the right balance of sweet, salty, sour and spicy flavors, Pad Thai noodles rule the list. This flat rice noodle dish is flavored using a mixture of tamarind paste, fish sauce, salt, pepper and sugar giving it a distinct flavor.
You can prepare and store Pad Thai sauce along with diced vegetables and boiled noodles to whip up a delicious fix within minutes.
Find the recipe here.
Shakshuka is another Mediterranean dish that made it to the list. It is eggs poached in a sauce made predominantly of tomato and flavored with kosher salt, paprika and crushed pepper. This recipe is versatile and can be served with bread, rice or even roasted meat. You can prepare the sauce well in advance so as to have different servings of the dish throughout the week.
Find the recipe here.
Here's what a Nymble user had to say about its Shakshuka!
This dish offers another tantalizing balance of sweet, spicy and savory flavors. The fried chicken takes less than 30 minutes to cook in the thick sauce when prepped well in advance. So, this recipe comes in handy for Wednesday dinners when those takeout cravings hit really hard. And the best part is that you can replace chicken with tofu or tempeh when craving variety. Not to mention that the sauce can be used to complement other dishes as well.
Find the recipe here.
This is the easiest and the most filling breakfast recipe out there. It involves pan-frying crushed sausage and diced potatoes with seasonings of your choice. Added vegetables, leaves, scallions or even fried eggs bring to the wholesomeness of the meal.
Find the recipe here.
Protein-rich salad incorporates roasted or grilled chicken, eggs, lentils, chickpeas, fish and/or tofu along with the greens. Miso tahini sauce serves as a light cheesy dressing for such lunch recipes. All you need to do is blend miso paste, tahini, nutritional yeast and garlic powder in a blender and you are good to add it to a green bowl!
Find the recipe here.
Versatile ingredients and recipes overlap among meals. They ensure that you don’t get bored of home food and also make meal prepping easier. As such, they offer a pleasant way to stick to a nutritious diet.
While using versatile ingredients for meal prepping offers you an efficient way to stick to a nutritious diet, Nymble goes a step further easing the process of meal planning and cooking. It ‘does’ the actual cooking. You just need to select the recipe and put the prepped ingredients in the right compartments. It will cook while you can commit to other chores. Not only does Nymble have 500+ nutritional recipes, from every cuisine, designed for many different diets; it also lets you customize, curate, review and track your own recipes. A highly efficient pre-cooking meal-prep plan, plus a private cooking robot in your kitchen, is indubitably the best cooking solution there is.
To conclude, with this expansive meal-prep guide, we will leave you with some pointers to gloss over that summarizes this article succinctly. Keep these tips in mind, you may even copy these to your notepads to serve as a reminder to get started on your meal-prep journey.
The Ultimate Meal Prep Guide For Beginners
The Only Vegan Guide You Will Ever Need
Nutrition Tips To Improve Mental Health
8 Tips To Make Healthy Eating Less Boring
The Sardinian Diet : 10 Recipes for Longevity
Ten Delicious Tofu, Tempeh and Seitan Recipes
.jpg)
.jpg)
