If you have recently started a healthy lifestyle, you will want your food to be varied as much as possible. This will help you keep eating nutritiously. Your taste buds will easily get bored if your daily meals consist only of green salads, smoothies, and steamed chicken or vegetables. Try slow cooking – you’re still in control of the ingredients on the plate to make sure what you’re eating is healthy.

Here are three tasty recipes for a slow cooker that healthy diners will love:

Vegan Crock Pot Corn Soup

What do you need:

Three potatoes, diced

1 large onion, diced

1 garlic clove minced

2 red chili peppers, chopped

Juice of 1 lime

2 cans of whole kernel corn

3 cups of vegetable broth

1 3/4 cups soy milk

1/4 cup margarine

1 tablespoon parsley flakes

1 tablespoon chili powder

2 teaspoons of salt

Black pepper to taste

Combine potatoes, onion, garlic, chili peppers, corn, vegetable broth, parsley, chili powder, salt, and pepper in a slow cooker. Cook for 7 hours over low heat. When ready, in a blender or food processor until smooth. Return to the slow cooker and add the soy milk and margarine. Cook for 1 more hour over low heat. Add the lemon juice before serving.

Easy slow cooker spaghetti squash

What do you need:

1 whole spaghetti squash, well washed

1 1/2 cups of water

Puncture the outside of the pumpkin 10-15 times and place in a crock pot. Pour water over the squash. Cover and cook 4 to 6 hours over low heat. Remove the squash from the pot and place on a cutting board to cool, about 30 minutes. When done, cut the squash lengthwise in half. Discard the seeds. With a fork, shred the skin to make “spaghetti strands.” Serve topped with your favorite pasta sauce.

Slow Cooked Coconut Vegetable Curry

What do you need:

5 russet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1-inch cubes

1 large green bell pepper, cut into strips

1 large red bell pepper, cut into strips

1 can of unsweetened coconut cream

1 small package dried onion soup mix

1 1/2 cups carrots

1 cup green peas

1/4 cup fresh cilantro, chopped

1/4 cup curry powder

2 tablespoons flour

1 tablespoon chili powder

1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes

Water, as needed

Place the potatoes in a slow cooker. Combine the curry powder, flour, chili powder, cayenne pepper, and red pepper flakes. Sprinkle mixture over chicken. Add green and red bell peppers, coconut cream, and onion soup mix to pot. Stir to combine the ingredients well. Cover and cook 3-4 hours over low heat, occasionally adding water to keep in moisture. Add the carrots to the pot and cook for 30 more minutes. Add the peas to the mixture and cook for another 30 minutes until all the vegetables are tender. Garnish with cilantro before serving.

There are several helpful techniques and practical tips for making delicious recipes. Deglazing is such an important technique that it can turn a good-tasting recipe into a great-tasting one.

Deglaze a pan

The next step in sautéing is deglazing.

When you fry or sauté the ingredients, there is a brown residue sticking to the pan. They are the leftover food particles also known as hobbies. These particles are actually formed from the caramelization of the natural sugars in the ingredients that are fried and contain a lot of concentrated flavor.

What you should do is take some liquid that is broth, wine or water and pour it into the pan. Then, put the pan back on the heat and lightly remove these particles.

If the recipe contains a lot of fat, that can be tempered with the use of acidic deglazing liquids like lemon juice and wines.

The liquid that has been added to the pot can be used in multiple ways.

First, it can be added back to the recipe that is being cooked. Or you can intensify the flavor.

With the addition of some herbs and spices.

You can even add flour to thicken the mixture. Or, finally, it can be used in the preparation of a sauce base.

Cooking techniques like deglazing are generally more popular with meat than vegetables.

Caramelize

Another type of browning process follows sautéing.

Once the ingredients in the skillet become translucent from sautéing the ingredients, continue cooking to the point where they are golden brown. This brings out the natural sweetness of the food and intensifies the flavor and aroma of the dish.

Other tips to improve the taste are:

Roasting spices and nuts release their natural oil and add incredible flavor.

Slow cooking is a great way to enhance flavor, especially when making sauce or curry-based recipes, stews, and soups.

Use butter (mainly Western cuisine) instead of oil, as it adds more flavor when heated and improves recipes as long as it is used in moderation.

Another way is to use ingredients that complement each other. If you find dark leafy greens bitter, add a little fat and acid when heating to soften the flavor.

All of these tips and tricks can help improve cooking techniques to produce more delicious recipes.