How to cook seafood to get the most out of it and eat it more often? What is their positive effect on the human body? Why are they so valuable and how to properly evaluate their advantages?
The variety of our daily diet is the key to health. Folk wisdom says, we are what we eat. A person needs a wide variety of nutrients, vitamins and minerals for long and healthy years of life.
Nutritionists recommend including meat and fish, vegetables and fruits, dairy and cereal products in your menu every day, but from all the variety of snacks available to us today, agree, seafood is a rare guest on our table. How to cook seafood to get the most out of it and eat it more often? What is their positive effect on the human body? Why are they so valuable and how to properly evaluate their advantages?
What are the benefits of seafood?For the average inhabitant of our latitudes, a seafood salad is a festive dish, and a soup with algae content is completely strange. However, globalization brings the culinary traditions of other peoples into our everyday life and thereby provides an opportunity to take the maximum of their positive properties from food products. What qualities are the gifts of the sea traditionally famous for?
Seafood is an excellent alternative to meat dishes only because they are absolutely not inferior to them in terms of protein content. However, the advantage of seafood is that the protein contained in them is much easier and faster absorbed by the human body. On average, the calorie content of seafood is estimated at 60-120 kcal per 100 grams.
Seafood is not only a complete source of protein, but also an unparalleled source of polyunsaturated fatty acids, especially Omega-3. Everyone knows that these substances contribute to the full functioning of the brain, strengthen blood vessels and improve their elasticity, at the same time they reduce the level of harmful cholesterol in the blood and normalize intercellular exchange, and in the long term they are able to protect against malignant neoplasms. A sufficient amount of Omega-3 in the body stabilizes the psychological background and improves mood, perhaps that is why the inhabitants of oceanic regions are so positively disposed and minimally prone to depression.
It is known that our body needs a certain amount of certain vitamins and trace elements every day - to some extent, to a lesser extent. Thermally processed seafood cocktail (seafood mix sold in any supermarket) allows you to cover the body's daily need for such substances as:
It is the content of the last two trace elements, that is, zinc and selenium, that makes seafood an excellent aphrodisiac. Penetrating into the human body, zinc and selenium ensure the production of testosterone, which awakens the libido.
Nutritionists prescribe a "sea" diet to those who suffer from diseases of the cardiovascular and digestive systems, as well as excess weight.
Speaking about seafood, cooks and nutritionists mean any seafood suitable for human consumption, that is, edible products taken from the depths of the world's oceans, with the exception of vertebrates, that is, fish and whales. So, seafood is mollusks, shrimps, squids, octopuses, crabs, lobsters, lobsters. It will also be unnecessary to consider in detail the benefits and harms of seaweed and red and black caviar. Shrimps
This seafood is usually sold in boiled-frozen form, the reddish-pink bodies just need to be thawed. Shrimps on the shelves of grayish and greenish colors mean a fresh, only cooled product. Shrimps are also popular in sea cocktails containing sea scallops, squid, and mussels. They are served as an appetizer boiled with lemon, lime and various sauces (chili, tartar, paprika, soy sauce). Various pastas, cocktails, canapés, sandwich butter are also made from shrimp, and they are added to sushi, soups and salads.
The advantages of their composition include:
Cons in such a product as shrimp are also:
Squids
Squid is sold in various forms - canned, fresh frozen, chilled, dried. Only squid carcasses are used for food, and it is important to remove the skin. Dishes prepared from squid are quite diverse - they are baked, fried, boiled, stewed, marinated and dried, canned dishes, and of course, as part of a frozen seafood cocktail.
The advantages of squid meat are:
Cons
Mussels
Bivalve marine molluscs, of the variety of species of which only the common edible, Far Eastern giant (black mussel), Mediterranean-Black sea, Californian and several other less popular ones are suitable for food. Mollusks live in the waters of the seas and oceans in the temperate latitudes of both hemispheres. Muscle, mantle, and sometimes the liquid inside the shell are used for food. The meat has a sweet taste and a delicate, incomparable aroma. Clams are sold canned, fresh or frozen, and also as part of sea cocktails.
The advantages of mussels are rightly considered to be:
Mussels have disadvantages, like any food product:
Seaweed
This is probably the most popular seaweed consumed by humans. It has an original taste and many useful qualities. In Japanese cuisine, there are up to 150 culinary recipes with kelp - these are soups, salads and purees, beans and seafood are stewed with it, and vegetables are wrapped with it. In the cuisine adapted to the Slavic eater, kelp is used to season borschts and pickles, stews, it is used to prepare zrazis, cutlets, casseroles, dry kelp is ground into powder and used as a seasoning. However, any of these dishes will be perceived as strange, except for the salad, which has become popular, marinated seaweed with various additives ( mushrooms , squid, carrots).
Pluses
The disadvantages of sea cabbage are also related to its iodine content, it cannot be consumed by persons to whom iodine is contraindicated:
Where is the danger of seafood hiding?
Seafood is rightfully considered a delicacy. You can argue with this, they say that you can buy a handful of shrimp or mussels in a supermarket today at an absolutely affordable price. However, this is a mistake. If the most expensive mollusk in the world is the "persebes" truffle or sea ducks, the price of which starts at $ 300 per kilogram, then the cost of shrimp in the retail network can be calculated literally $ 10.
An inquisitive buyer will get to the bottom of the matter and understand that some seafood does not come to the shelves from the depths of the world's oceans, but from tanks specially created for their cultivation, for example, in the provinces of China or Vietnam. This is where the first danger of seafood lies - unnaturalness, which means a high risk of the content of dyes, growth stimulants, antibiotics. The information in the product composition is unlikely to tell about such products, you can only rely on the analysis of the assortment and trust in the manufacturer.
Another insidiousness of marine products delivered to our region is that they are far from always fresh. It is important to know that these delicate and delicate products do not differ in terms of shelf life, and for commercial purposes, unscrupulous manufacturers or sellers are in a hurry to either "refresh" a product that has already gone bad, or to process it again with not the most natural substances and in an honest way. Frozen seafood can be trusted, but if it hasn't been refrozen:
It is recommended to buy chilled seafood products only in specialized retail outlets, where the turnover of the product is significant and it does not depend on it. Again, chilled seafood should not be slimy and sticky, and have an unpleasant smell.
It is also important to remember that the safety of seafood, in addition to the quality of raw materials, also depends on the method of their preparation.
In the process of transportation, fresh seafood easily becomes a habitat for various bacteria and parasites, for example, helminths. Most of them die during heat treatment, but the risk of infection remains if you eat raw seafood. The third risk of seafood coincides with the danger of poorly prepared sushi. Gourmets are able to appreciate the taste of oysters and other molluscs that undergo minimal or no heat treatment, but such snacks, which have not previously been subjected to proper storage and transportation conditions, can become a serious test for the digestive tract.
Recipes for simple and healthy dishes with seafoodHow to cook seafood the right way? So that they not only retain the maximum of their useful properties, but also present a full range of taste qualities. First of all, it is necessary to take note of several basic principles:
Mussels and squid, shrimp and oysters, seaweed and cabbage in particular are tasty and healthy, which are well appreciated by French, Italian, Spanish and Mediterranean cuisines. Such products become a component of pizza and pasta, salads and soups.
You can diversify your daily diet with the following easy-to-prepare recipes.
Mashed bean soup with shrimp
you will need:
cooking technology:
Salad with squid, sugar, grapefruit
you will need for the salad:
you will need for refueling:
cooking technology: