Cooking destroys some nutrients and makes others easier to absorb. Which effect wins depends on the vegetable, the nutrient, and the method. Vitamin C and other water-soluble nutrients are the main casualties. Carotenoids such as lycopene and beta-carotene often become more available after heating. In broccoli, the key change isn’t a vitamin at all: heat…
To cook dried beans, sort and rinse them, soak them if you like, then simmer them gently in salted water until the centers turn creamy. That usually takes somewhere between 45 minutes and two hours, depending on the bean and how old it is. Lentils are easier. They need no soaking, and most varieties are…
If you’ve ever pushed a pile of gray-green mush around your plate, you already know the problem. Vegetables are good for you, everyone says so, and yet a lot of us only eat them out of duty. The usual explanation is that vegetables just aren’t that exciting. That’s rarely true. More often, the vegetables were…
Air fryers have gone from novelty to countertop staple in a few years, and most of the marketing rests on one idea: crispy food, minus the guilt. It’s a nice promise, but it raises an obvious question. If you already own an oven, is the air fryer actually healthier, or is it a very good-looking…
