Healthy Low-Cal Dinner Options
In just a few minutes, you can prepare a delicious, low calorie, nutritious and flavorful meal for your entire family. Dr. Terry Simpson, known as the Weight Loss Doctor, shares his secret to a low-cal, healthy and quick meal.
One of my favorite kitchen tools is the Wok. It is easy to use, versatile and inexpensive. If you don’t have one, purchase a simple Wok, non electric, that you can use on the stove top. My Wok was just $12 at Tuesday Morning.
Here is what you will need for this recipe:
1 1/2 lb of Broccoli
1 lb of cut beef (flank steak, sirloin, whatever the grocery store has cut for stir fry)
Soy sauce
Minced garlic (comes in a jar – great stuff)
Stir Fry sauce (lots of varieties out there)
Pepper
Vegetable oil
First- take your steak out and put it in a shallow pan and cover it with soy sauce and some vegetable oil (3 parts soy sauce, 1 part oil) – some people prefer to toss in a teaspoon of corn starch to bind it all together. Add some pepper to taste. This is just a marinade that will put some nice flavor in the beef. You can even do this the night before. Put all those ingredients together and store in the refrigerator – the longer that you marinade the beef, the more tender it becomes, but don’t marinade for longer than a day.
Cooking vegetables in a Wok is easy. For this recipe, you’ll need broccoli. Like most vegetables, broccoli has few calories — about 27 calories for 1/2 cup of chopped broccoli.
Put about 1 1/2 inches of water in the Wok and cover it. You won’t find a Wok cover – so use any pan cover you have. Crank up the heat. Once the water comes to a boil, add the broccoli.
In 3 minutes your broccoli is ready — easier than using a steamer because it’s faster, and tastes fresh.
I then toss the broccoli into a colander and leave it there. Dry it with a quick wipe of a towel – don’t get burned! Your Wok is now hot, so add about a tablespoon of vegetable oil to coat the bottom of the Wok (ok, here is confession number one: I don’t measure much) – just be sure to coat the bottom.
Add the minced garlic and stir. Once you can smell it (in about half a minute), you are ready to add your beef.
Take the marinated beef and toss it in the wok. The Wok has a large surface area – and you want each strip of beef to have contact with the Wok. In 30 seconds the beef will be done on that side, and then flip them with a kitchen tool, like a wooden spoon or even a large metal one. Stir the beef so it gets done on all sides, this will take one or two minutes.
Now, pour in the stir-fry sauce and simmer for 30 seconds. Put the broccoli back in and stir it so the sauce coats everything. You are ready to serve! (Recipe serves 4 people).
Calorie Count — 200 calories for the beef, 27 calories for the broccoli, 10 calories for the stir fry sauce, and maybe 5 calories for the oil. Dinner for less than 300 calories and done in five minutes!
You can get more complicated with your sauces and your beef marinade. So try this first, and as you get to where you want to do more I suggest you buy a copy of my friend Jaden Hair’s Cookbook – The Steamy Kitchen
This is one of the easiest dinners you can imagine. You need a Wok and a few simple ingredients.
Ingredients are simple:
1 bag of pre-cut brocoli flouretts
1 pound of stir fry beef
1 tablespoon of minced garlic
Soy Sauce
Vegetable Oil
Pepper
Take the stir fry beef and cover in mixture of soy sauce and oil (3 parts soy sauce 1 part oil -- so 1 cup soy sauce and 1/3 cup oil)- season with black pepper. Place in the refrigerator for one to twenty three hours
In a wok put about 1 inch of water and place on high heat. When the water is boiling add the broccoli and cover with a lid. After 3 minutes if it is tender- pour it out into a strainer and wipe the water out of the wok with a dry towel (be careful)
Put about a tablespoon of vegetable oil at the bottom of the wok. Add one tablespoon of minced garlic - and stir until you can smell it (about 30 seconds)
Add the beef to the wok with its marinade - dump it in. Once it is done on one side- stir until the meat is done.
Once the meat is browned add back the brocolli and add stir fry sauce to coat it all (typically about a cup - pre-made mix is fine)
Stir for a minute- until it coats everything-- and serve.
You can see my video of this- and see how easy you can do this.