3 Essential Tips for Better Grilling

+ a recipe for Shrimp Skewers with Ginger & Turmeric

All too often, nutrition advice either disregards or flies in the face of flavor, leaving us with the misconception that good-for-you food tastes bad. That’s why my calling as a culinary nutritionist is to find that Venn diagram overlap where “delicious” and “healthy” meet, a zone I call the sweet spot.  If you have been following me for a while, you know it’s a gloriously wide intersection, brimming with possibilities.

I found myself seeking that sweet spot intersection recently when I read some concerning news about grilled foods. I personally crave the flavor of food cooked on the grill, with its appealing char and smoky essence, but when I read that this summer-favorite cooking method can produce potentially cancer-causing compounds, my heart sunk. Do I really have to be “that person” to tell people to avoid grilling, with all the flavor and fun it brings to the table? Luckily, I don’t, because there are ways to grill so that your food is both healthier AND more flavorful. Here are three simple tips for doing just that:

1. Marinate!

OK, the bad news first. Cooking meat, poultry or fish at high temperatures, as with grilling, can create significant amounts of compounds called heterocyclic amines (HCAs) which are linked with increased cancer risk.  No need to panic, though, because you can do something majorly flavorful to inhibit these compounds from forming: marinate!  One study showed that HCA formation was reduced up to 88% when steaks were marinated for 1 hour prior to grilling. This effect is, in part, due to the antioxidant content of the spices in the marinade, so use herbs and spices liberally in your marinades for health and flavor. (While we are on the topic, remember to set some marinade aside for basting before putting the meat into it—unsafe bacterial contamination can result from basting with the used marinade.)