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Seafood Recipes Can Be Fun, Easy And, Yes, Healthy
By Shannon Linnen | July 31, 2009
Cooking with seafood can be a great deal of fun, isn’t very difficult, and gives many meals that are high in nutritional value and low in calories. There are many types of seafood you can use as the base of your meal, such as crab, shrimp, and scallops. Use some of the ideas in this article, and you’ll add many tasty dinners to your repertoire.
It does not take long to find an appealing recipe for your seafood dish. All you have to do is visit one of the many search engines and just do a search for “Seafood Recipe” to quickly find out there are many available resources out there. From here it is just a matter of sorting through all the different recipes available and find one that you truly like.
Of course usual clambake recipes and lobster recipes are good, but who has the time for the clambake or the money for lobster? As a working wife and mother, time is of the essence and if I cannot get dinner on the table in a reasonable amount of time, it’s not worth doing, but in the process I must be able to please my family.
I personally have trouble eyeballing ingredients to see if I have added the right amount. I have a few ingredients that I use frequently in many dishes and have adapted them into my new healthier menu. Seafood is excellent for a tasty, low-calorie menu because it can be cooked in almost any fashion without losing its flavor.
Using shrimp as an example, we find that a pound of shrimp contains about 26 to 35 individual shrimp and costs roughly $8. That’s pretty cheap for the base of a meal that your entire family will enjoy. Use a small paring knife to peel the shrimp and remove the veins, by passing the knife from the top of the shrimp toward its tail. That makes it much easier to open the shell, and then the shrimp should pop out right away. (Or, if you’re willing to pay a bit more, you can purchase frozen shrimp already peeled.)
Use about a teaspoon of butter and a teaspoon of extra-virgin olive oil in the bottom of a saut pan, add a clove or garlic (let’s be honest – we are not peeling and mincing our own garlic here, we are using a teaspoon of already chopped garlic in the jar), a half of finely chopped sweet onion, some salt and pepper, some parsley and your favorite seafood seasoning. You can just as easily wrap all of your ingredients in foil and pop on the grill or under the broiler for about 20 minutes for no-fuss cooking.
Offer your shrimp over a bed of wild rice (that you cooked in chicken broth) along with a side of asparagus and baby portabella mushrooms (cooked together with a bit of extra virgin olive oil and salt on the stovetop or wrapped in foil on the grill) and you end up with a succulent feast that is not only tasty but healthy, too in 30 – 45 minutes… now if I could only get my husband to do the dishes, it would be perfect.
After awhile, cooking with fresh seafood items will become a standard way of cooking for you. The best part of utilizing seafood in your normal diet is it just so healthy! It is important to note that making sure your seafood is fresh is absolutely necessary. To ensure this, choose a company located on the eastern seaboard to handle the shipping of your seafood items. If at some point you run out of things to cook, no problem, just go online and view all the great seafood recipes out there. Of course you always have the option of visiting a bookstore in your town or city and they almost always have a large collection of cookbooks available.
When presented with the challenge of entertaining your family or just some close friends, it is the absolute best time to prepare a delicious seafood recipe. When you family and friends dig into the tasty seafood appetizer or main course they will have no choice but to automatically think this is a very special occasion and will feel as if this is a very rare treat.
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