At Christmas or New Year, Romanians eat salad buff. In addition, now, in winter, it is a “complete and very consistent food” and is welcome, explains Ligia Alexandrescu, consultant in sports nutrition, nutrition education and food communication, to HotNews.ro.

Beef salad is a lot of carbohydrates – boiled potatoes, peas, carrots. From the beginning, we have 3 starchy vegetables, the nutritionist tells us.

In addition to these vegetables, we also add mayonnaise, which is often rich in fat and cholesterol, because both saturated fat from the egg and yolk and unsaturated fat from oil.

Ligia Alexandrescu, sports nutrition, food education and food communication consultant / Photo: HotNews.ro

We can improve the recipe and reduce its calorie content using several methods, says Ligia Alexandrescu:

1. First, we can increase the number of peas and carrots at the expense of potatoes. Not much, about 20% of potatoes will be replaced by peas and carrots, as they have a lower glycemic index. There are areas where potatoes are replaced with parsnips. However, this composition should remain according to the structure of the 3 vegetables that we are used to.

2. Pickled cucumbers are also added to the beef salad – and really pickled cucumbers are good to put not in vinegar, but in brine, and the taste will be special, so that the probiotics in the cucumbers are mixed with mayonnaise and other vegetables to help digestion. In addition, the calorie content is lower.

3. Mayonnaise can also be improved as a recipe: instead of egg, we can add yogurt. In addition, for a good, slightly spicy taste, we can also add a few teaspoons of mustard. It is good that it is a quality mustard that contains even mustard seeds and does not contain a lot of salt and a lot of starch. We can add oil, but it’s better to use a good quality oil – a neutral flavored oil like grape seed oil, so not a highly refined oil. In this way, the calorie content of the “Beef” salad is reduced, because the yolk, which brought a lot of cholesterol, is replaced with yogurt with probiotics. And the product, the “Beef” salad, also has a good appearance, but has fewer calories and, in addition, is easier to digest.

Beef salad / Photo: Marian Mocanu | Dreamstime.com

Photo: Dreamstime.com