Reduced Meat Recipes

More and more I am looking for ways to eat less meat. Both for myself and for my clients. From a health perspective even if you are buying free range or organic you still don’t know for sure whether the animals have been treated with antibiotics and/or added hormones. If you are eating good quality meat sparingly through the week small quantities or either of these are not ideal, but also not the end of the world. But if you are a real meat eater, i.e. eating meat in at least one of your meals every day (like me!) it is going to be beneficial to your health to start eating less of it.

But of course the food still needs to taste good otherwise you are never going to stick to it. So more and more I am experimenting with ways to tweak some of my favourite meaty meals to decrease the quantity of meat in them. Personally I have found that eating half meat and half other ingredients to replace it is a better way to go, than trying to eliminate it altogether. That way you barely notice the difference. Cutting it out altogether changes the taste too much I think. So here are a couple of my favourite reduced meat recipes.

1/ Thai Chicken (and quorn!) Curry

(350 calories per person) Recipe for 2 people.

150 grams (10 ½oz) chicken breast, cut into chunks
150 grams plain quorn mince.
4 kaffir lime leaves (just use lime juice if you can’t get it)
200 grams (7 oz) coconut milk (low fat)
1 red pepper, cut into chunks
1 courgette, cut into chunks
½ tbsp olive oil
a big bunch of fresh basil
50 grams brown rice, boiled.

GREEN CURRY PASTE: (or use a pre made paste if you don’t have time)
4 small green chillies (less if you aren’t too keen on spicy foods)
1 onion, diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
20 grams (3/4 oz) ginger, minced
1 stalk lemongrass, diced
1/2 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp shrimp paste
3 Tbsp fish sauce
1 tsp brown sugar
2 Tbsp lime juice
Big bunch of fresh coriander/cilantro leaves and stems, chopped

Cooking Instructions;
1/ Put all the curry paste ingredients together in a food processor. Blitz into a paste.
2/ Heat a pan/wok, then add the green curry paste.
3/ Stir-fry briefly for around 1 minute, then add the coconut milk.
4/ Add the chicken and quorn, bring to the boil, then reduce to a simmer for 5 minutes or until chicken is cooked through.
5/ Add the pepper and courgette plus the strips of lime leaf, then simmer for another 2-3 mins.
6/ Add the fish sauce to taste, then serve with boiled brown rice.

The quorn is basically replacing half of the chicken. In my opinion because you still have some chicken in there plus all the other fragrant ingredients you won’t notice any difference.

17/ Spanish Chicken Stew

(400 calories per person) Recipe for 2 people

150 grams chicken thigh meat (approx. 2 small thighs)
100 grams lentils
1 tin of chickpeas
2 tbsp smoked paprika
2 stalks of celery, cut into chunks
1 onion, sliced
2 carrots, cut into chunks
1 pepper, cut into chunks
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
400 grams (14 oz) tinned tomatoes
250 ml (1 cup) chicken stock
75 grams cous cous.
Salt and pepper

Directions;

1/ Soften the vegetables and garlic for 5 mins or so.
3/ Add the tinned tomatoes and the chicken stock and bring to the boil.
4/ Add the chicken, paprika, lentils and chickpeas, put the lid on the dish and place in the oven (150C/300F/GAS2)
5/ Cook for 3 hours, until the chicken is falling off the bone.
6/ Serve with cous cous.

This time the lentils and chickpeas are replacing half of the chicken. Again I think the dish is equally tasty.

Conclusion – Reduced Meat Recipes

I find halving the meat I have in recipes is a better way of keeping the dish close to the original. That’s not to say you can’t have some great meat free meals too, but some dishes simply need some meat in there to make it tasty for natural carnivores!

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