Some oilless, butterless dishes .... yet not tasteless!

These foods are delicious and will also keep you fit :)

Mixed vegetables - chicken salad, Mexican white beans with rice, Thai fish with vegetables

These three dishes are completely different cuisines; the first one is a continental, the next is Mexican and the other is a Thai dish. However, I have categorized them within the similar recipe  list as the basic cooking method is more or less the same; only the ingredients are different. 

 

So, first I would mention what is common for cooking all of these items.  I have not used any oil or butter for cooking these dishes and used a minimum number of spices. So, the flavor comes from the vegetables or meat that we use. In that case we need to be extra attentive with our cooking process and choosing the raw ingredients to make these plates tasty.  Garlic, onion and tomato add taste to the food. So, they have been placed in three of these dishes.

 

This was my experiment; instead of oil or butter, I moisted the cooking pan with some amount of water and added chopped tomatoes and garlic immediately, then added some salt and cooked it for a while on medium heat with a lid on the pan. The chopped tomatoes and the added  water kept the mixture moist and prevented it from burning. It needed to be cooked for some time so that the raw smell of the garlic went away. Then, I added the chopped vegetables that usually take more time to get cooked (for example potatoes and carrots), added some salt and cooked it for some time so that they became a little bit tender. After that, I added chicken to make chicken salad, cooked white beans (I kept some amounts of white beans immersed in water overnight and then boiled it in water with little amount of added salt.) to make the Mexican dish and boneless fish and Thai cooking sauce for the preparation of the Thai cuisine. I cooked the mixture on medium heat in the covered pan for sometime so that everything got  3/4th cooked. Then, I added the vegetables that take less time to be cooked, for example broccoli and red potatoes and again cooked the mixture as before until everything became well cooked.   The cooking time will depend on the type of dish you are making.  At the end I added chopped onion and bell peppers and cooked it for 2-3 minutes on medium flame. I added these ingredients at the end because in that way they  remain crisp and make the dish tastier. Then, I removed the cooking pan from heat and kept it covered with a lid for 5-7 minutes. And at that point, the dishes were ready to serve. 

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