20 simple recipes so you don’t lack inspiration in the kitchen.
Dining at home is usually much cheaper and healthier than eating out or ordering food at home, but many times we don’t do it because we don’t have to cook complicated things after a long day at work. This can end up causing health problems , as well as being a significant expense for many people.
To facilitate the work of cooking dinners, in this article we present you 20 healthy recipes, easy to prepare and that have nothing to envy to restaurant food.
20 healthy, tasty and simple dinners
By cooking dinner we gain greater control over our diet, which is necessary whenever we are taking care of our health. All the recipes that we present to you are healthy, but they must be correctly complemented with the rest of the meals to achieve a balanced diet.
As a general comment, to enjoy dinners even more and improve the quality of our sleep, we recommend keeping a time gap of at least 2-3 hours between our dinner and the time we plan to go to sleep whenever possible . . This will facilitate both our rest and our digestion.
- It might interest you: “Healthy snacks: 10 very easy and quick options to prepare”
1. Broths
Broth is a very simple meal to prepare, although it can take some time and preparation. If you have no other option, today there are many supermarkets that sell prepared broths that you can keep in the pantry as an emergency.
We can make broths with meat, fish or just vegetables , with the advantage that by making them at home you can make a large quantity and store it in the fridge or freezer for future use. In addition, it can be used as an ingredient for other recipes, such as risotto.
Simply find a mixture of meats, bones, vegetables, and spices (all optional except vegetables), place them in a pot, add water, and bring the mixture to a boil. Once it has boiled, lower the intensity of the fire and let it cook for three or four hours. To finish, you have to filter the broth, saving the meat (if it has). Once it has cooled, remove the fat that solidifies on the broth and that’s it. A light, healthy, simple and economical dinner.
2. Vegetable cream
Vegetable creams, like broth, are easy to prepare and there are endless variations, so you will surely find one that is to your liking. We recommend the ones with pumpkin, zucchini, potatoes or mushrooms, but the options are practically endless .
To prepare a vegetable cream, you simply need to cut the vegetables of your choice and leave them in a pot with some butter or olive oil. Let them cook for about 10 minutes, until they soften and brown a little. After this, add vegetable broth (about two or three cups) and keep it on medium heat for about 15 minutes.
The final step of any cream of vegetables is to crush the ingredients, which you can do with a hand blender or in a blender. You can add some parmesan cheese and parsley on top of the cream to give it a little more flavor and improve its presentation.
3. Chicken and vegetable fajitas
While carbs can be heavy at dinnertime, if you leave enough time between dinner and bedtime it shouldn’t be a problem. You can buy fajitas in most supermarkets, but the most important thing is their filling .
We recommend filling the fajitas with a sautéed chicken and vegetables such as onions and peppers. Heat a frying pan with some oil, let the vegetables cook for about 10 minutes while moving them so they don’t burn. Add the chopped chicken with a little water and cover the pan. Once 10 minutes have passed on the heat, the chicken should be fully cooked, after which you can uncover the pan.
If there is any liquid left after the chicken has cooked, you can discard it or wait for it to evaporate from the heat. After this, place the stir fry on the fajitas and close them. You will get a quick, healthy and easy to prepare dinner.
4. Fresh salad with tuna
This recipe is incredibly quick and healthy, so it can get you out of a jam when you don’t have much time to cook. You simply need a salad base (cannon, lettuce, arugula…), chopped tomato, canned tuna, salt, vinegar and oil. There is nothing easier.
You can replace the tuna with fresh cheese or other ingredients that add a minimum of protein and strength to your salad, or add other vegetables such as asparagus, corn or beets.
5. Scramble with ham
Both for breakfast and dinner, the revoltillo is a light and simple dish that will provide us with a lot of protein. It requires beating 3 eggs per person and adding the diced slices of ham. You can add salt before pouring it into the pan, which must be hot and with the flame at medium-high power.
Do not stop stirring until you see that the egg has dried (if you go too far it will be rubbery, be careful). And that’s it! You just have to season and serve. Bread is the perfect accompaniment, but not if we plan to sleep soon.
6. Tuna omelette
Perhaps something more complex than the revoltillo, but definitely simple and healthy, is the tuna omelette. It is simply a thin three-egg omelette (same as the revoltillo but without ham or stirring, we just have to turn it over) on which we will place a mixture of shredded tuna with one or two tablespoons of cream cheese.
This filling can also be chard, spinach or another vegetable that can be eaten practically raw. The cream cheese will help keep everything in place once you’ve placed it on top of the tortilla as it finishes cooking. Fold it in half to make a half moon and hold the shape with a spatula until you see that it is stable.
A recipe also simple and healthy (although we should not abuse eggs in our day to day).
7. Roasted stuffed pepper
This dish is very healthy, tremendously simple and very colorful. Ideal for when someone else comes over for dinner! Simply cut the peppers in half, remove the stem and seeds. We recommend filling it with a simple stir fry of rice, vegetables and tomato sauce.
When the pepper is stuffed, you can put a meltable cheese on top (completely optional but it improves the flavor of the dish) before covering them with foil and leaving them in the oven at 180ºC-160ºC for 20 minutes.
If you have put cheese on them, you can remove the foil and put them back in the oven for about 5-10 minutes, until the cheese is gratin. With or without cheese, it is a simple, fast, colorful and above all healthy dinner.
8. Noodles with mushroom and onion sauce
Pasta, in moderation, is a simple dish that allows us to accompany it in many ways, with greater or lesser difficulty. An easy, quick and healthy way to accompany pasta is with a light mushroom and onion sauce.
Cook pasta (we recommend tagliatelle) according to package directions. They usually take no more than 15 minutes to make. At the same time, we will cook the mushroom and onion sauce. Add about 3-4 mushrooms and half an onion per person, finely chopped, to a pan with some olive oil. Add salt and pepper immediately and cook over medium heat about 10 minutes, until soft.
While the sauce cooks in the pan, you can add a little white wine for flavor . If you do, wait until the smoke from the pan is no longer so white and smells of alcohol. To finish, we recommend adding a tablespoon of the pasta water to your sauce, as it will serve as a binder to make it more uniform.
Finally we can blend with a hand blender if we wish, add a little cooking cream to the sauce and mix it with the pasta in a bowl before serving.
9. Baked sweet potato
The baked sweet potato is delicious, simple and very healthy . You must clean the skin of the sweet potatoes gently, make holes in them with a fork and place them on a baking sheet, preferably with a baking paper underneath, since the sweet potato usually exudes juices during cooking.
Wrap your sweet potatoes in foil before placing them in the oven at around 220ºC for 40 to 50 minutes. You can check that they are ready by pricking them to make sure they are tender. Before serving them, you just have to season them.
10. Marinated tuna steaks with lemon
This is an incredibly rich and healthy dish that doesn’t even need heat to cook . We need tuna steaks cut half a centimeter thick, which we will place in a narrow container.
To these we will add a marinade made from the juice of two lemons, a splash of soy sauce and a splash of olive oil. The liquid should completely or nearly cover the fillets. After this, we cover it with plastic wrap or a lid and leave it in the fridge for 24 hours.
The acid from the lemon will penetrate the tuna, cooking it and giving it flavor. You have to make it a day in advance, but this recipe is super healthy and incredibly simple.
11. Green curry with chicken
Today it is common for us to have an Asian supermarket nearby, or for us to have an Asian food section in our usual supermarket. This dish calls for green curry paste, chicken, broccoli, onion, coconut milk, lime leaves, and rice to go with it.
We simply do a small stir-fry with the vegetables in a deep frying pan or in a small pot, in which we have put a little oil. Add the chicken once the vegetables are soft, until it is cooked on the outside. After this, we add coconut milk, stir and let cook for about 10 minutes with the lime leaves .
We add the specified amount of green curry and turn off the heat. If it is too thick, we can add more coconut milk until the sauce has the desired consistency. We serve it in a small bowl, along with the rice.
12. Gazpacho
Typical of summer, gazpacho is a light, healthy and delicious dinner that is also easy to prepare. We have to blanch the tomatoes, peel them and put them through the blender together with half a cucumber, half a pepper, a clove of garlic, oil and vinegar.
Then we just have to strain it and serve it with a slice of whole wheat bread. Refreshing, healthy, and quick to make.
13. Grilled salmon with broccoli
This recipe is much simpler than it seems, as well as being easy to prepare and delicious. Broccoli is simply a companion, which we can steam or even microwave with a little water.
As for the salmon, the ideal is to place it in a frying pan with a little oil and very hot, to prevent it from sticking. We cook it over medium-low heat, covered, until the salmon has cooked completely from bottom to top. There are people who prefer to turn it over and cook it a little more and there are others who prefer something raw, so depending on your preference.
14. Salad with couscous and chickpeas
Couscous is also a good source of carbohydrates, so the recommendation is that there is a good margin of time between dinner and your bedtime. It is very easy to prepare, you just have to boil the same volume of water as the amount of couscous you are going to prepare.
Once it has reached a boil, turn it off and place the couscous inside the pot, which we will cover immediately after stirring it.
After about five minutes, the couscous will be ready. Add a little butter and stir again until it has melted. We can serve it with a little lettuce, tomato and chickpeas for a fresh and healthy dinner.
15. Zucchini Spaghetti
Zucchini spaghetti can be found in many supermarkets, especially those that specialize in vegan or vegetarian food. We can also buy a machine that cuts the zucchini into spaghetti if we plan to make this dish a regular part of our diet.
These spaghetti have all the advantages of pasta without being full of carbohydrates, and can be served with various sauces, vegetables, cheeses or seafood. Perfect for when we need to reduce sugars in our diet.
16. Baked Salmon
Salmon can also be easily prepared in the oven. We simply wrap a salmon fillet in silver paper after rubbing salt, oil, pepper and adding some lemon, garlic or herbs to taste (dill, for example, usually goes very well with salmon).
We leave it in the oven for about 15 minutes at about 180ºC. If we take it out and it is still not to the point of our liking, we can quickly wrap it so that the salmon’s own steam finishes cooking it in a few minutes. Be careful, as this fish tends to overcook very easily. Don’t be afraid to check its consistency with a knife.
17. Baked chicken with potatoes and onion
It is a delicious classic, simple to cook and very healthy. We need to cover a tray with thin potato slices and onion strips , which we will season before putting the chicken pieces on top. We add a good jet of oil and a glass of water.
We put the tray in the oven for about 30 minutes at about 220ºC, after which we remove it and turn the chicken pieces over before repeating the baking process. It’s that simple.
18. Potato Salad
Potato salad is also a very healthy and easy dish to prepare . We just have to boil the potatoes until they are soft, peel them and cut them in the way we like the most.
We add boiled eggs, spring onion and radish, also chopped. To finish, we add a couple of tablespoons of mayonnaise, salt and pepper. It improves a lot if we serve it cold, but it can also be eaten hot. Be careful, the more mayonnaise we add, the more calories this dish will have.
19. Avocado Salads
Avocado is excellent for preparing salads . One we recommend includes chopped avocado, chickpeas, and feta cheese. We mix everything and add the juice of a lime, salt and pepper. Very fast, vegetarian and very healthy.
20. Teriyaki Chicken
Teriyaki chicken can be accompanied with vegetables or rice . Preparing teriyaki sauce can be complicated and somewhat expensive, especially if we don’t often use Japanese ingredients in our daily cooking. There is no problem in buying sauce already made, but we have to be careful with the amount of salt it contains.
We simply brown a few pieces of chicken along with a chopped spring onion for about 5 minutes, in a pan. We will add our teriyaki sauce and let it cook for about 15 minutes, being careful that the sauce does not reduce too much and ends up burning. We can accompany it with white rice.
To the classic question “what do you do?” I always answer “basically I am a psychologist”. In fact, my academic training has revolved around the psychology of development, education and community, a field of study influenced my volunteer activities, as well as my first work experiences in personal services.