Sour cream instead of mayonnaise: nutritionists told how to reduce the calorie content of New Year’s dishes

The festive table is better to make “gourmet”

Moscow region experts have revealed tricks that will help make the New Year’s table dietary and not spoil them. Everyone knows very well how difficult it is to leave the New Year’s table. The abundance of traditional and original dishes is crazy. Eating enough of everything that you may have denied yourself throughout the year is the privilege of a festive night. But you need to know the tricks of how not to overeat, while trying everything.

The very first step to improving nutrition is changing the sauce.

“Instead of mayonnaise, I would advise using sour cream, the fat content of which is not more than 15%, or yogurt dressing,” says Olga Turina, a nutritionist from Krasnogorsk. – And in general, be more attentive to sauces. If you cook them yourself, use olive oil instead of sunflower oil.

“For starters, you can partially replace the potatoes with a steam zucchini,” says Olga. – Potatoes provide a large carbohydrate capacity, while zucchini has a starchy, neutral flavor and can be a good substitute. You can also “conjure” with meat filling – it is better to use lean boiled meat or chicken than doctor’s sausage.

Another Russian tradition on the New Year’s table is a herring under a fur coat. It is certainly difficult to find a replacement for both oily fish and its “fur coat”. But there are no hopeless situations. The cook from Odintsovo, Inna Belozertseva, suggests going for a trick – making a little less layers than usual. For example, you can donate one layer of potatoes. And the chef called meat the most “heavy” product on the New Year’s table.

– Duck, goose, pork are very high-calorie in themselves, – says Inna. – But a roasted turkey, for example, is four times leaner than a goose and even much lighter than a chicken. A whole chicken has a very uneven distribution of fat. A lot is on the hips and on the back. Therefore, it will be much more correct to choose a turkey for the New Year’s table – it is large, satisfying and contains much fewer calories.

It is also important to properly stuff the bird. If you bake it whole, stuffing it with undercooked cereals, then they, in turn, will absorb the fat that will be released during cooking. Then those who want to lose weight do not need to eat this cereal, they should only use it as an absorbent mechanism. What then to choose as a side dish, you ask? Raw salad vegetables: cucumbers, tomatoes, radishes.

“We all love sandwiches with caviar, especially on holidays, when everyday food gets boring,” says Victoria Ganina, a nutritionist from Podolsk. – But do not abuse this product – make sandwiches on a huge slice of white bread with a fatty layer of butter. In no case do not use tartlets – dried and concentrated, they are often fatter than the bread itself. The most ideal option for a “substrate” is a thin slice of rye bread. Alternatively, you can make toasts from dried Borodino or rye-wheat bread without butter – small squares. Caviar is laid out on them with a small slide, and pierced on top with a stick with an olive to make it beautiful.

Ideally, it is better to make the New Year’s table “gourmet”, where there is a little bit of everything in small portions, so that a person can get maximum pleasure – try a large number of dishes, and not eat up “basins” of Olivier.