Festive Recipe Ideas to Get You Started
If you’re still at a loss as to how to create a tasty, diabetes-friendly dish for your table, these ideas can help you get working on a healthier holiday menu. These traditional crowd-pleasers all get the thumbs-up from diabetes experts.
1. Roasted Brussels Sprouts
Smithson suggests giving this staple prime real estate on your holiday table. Roasted Brussels sprouts are the rare traditional holiday dish that is already naturally healthy, as long as you don’t choose a recipe with lots of bacon or syrupy sauces. Brussels sprouts are a nonstarchy vegetable, chock-full of vitamins and minerals yet low in carbs and calories.
Cooking could hardly be more straightforward: Simply toss sliced Brussels sprouts with a healthy fat like olive or avocado oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and roast in the oven at a high temperature. You’ll end up with a crunchy, healthy, and delicious side dish.
2. Mashed Sweet Potatoes
Your guests will probably expect mashed potatoes to sop up their extra gravy. This isn’t a great choice for people with diabetes, as potatoes are pretty much all carbs, and that’s before you add copious amounts of salt, butter, and heavy cream.
Try switching things up with a healthier root vegetable, says Smithson. Sweet potatoes, despite their natural sweetness, have fewer carbs than potatoes, and their flavor means it’s not necessary to add so much fat and salt. Keep the skin, which has plenty of fiber and nutrients, and consider using healthier ingredients to punch up the flavor, like olive oil instead of salt, or fresh herbs.
3. Healthier Pumpkin Pie
What are the holidays without pie? Pumpkin pie is actually not a bad choice among pies. Pumpkin is a nutrient-dense vegetable with only a moderate carb content, and canned pumpkin purees have a fair amount of fiber and protein with zero added sugar. “Including higher-fiber foods with your meals will help blunt spikes in blood sugar,” Smithson says.
Of course, the classic pumpkin pie recipe also requires a huge portion of refined white sugar. Luckily, the internet is full of healthy pumpkin pie recipes that reduce the added sugar content but adjust the other ingredients so that the texture comes out just right.
4. Low-Sugar Cranberry Sauce
Classic canned cranberry sauce includes a massive amount of added sugar, often in the form of high fructose corn syrup. It’s exactly the type of food that people with diabetes are taught to avoid.
5. Simple Green Beans
You’ll definitely want to pass on the green bean casserole, which buries healthy veggies underneath heavy creamed soup and canned fried onions.
Instead, rescue these healthy vegetables and return them to their rightful place as a star of your holiday table. Raw green beans can be simply roasted or quickly boiled to keep them fresh and snappy. From there, you can treat them like a salad, dressing them with olive oil and lemon juice and mixing in healthy bursts of flavor with ingredients like fresh herbs, walnuts, and pomegranate seeds. This easy change can help you keep your holiday meal light, bright, and nutritious.
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