Great tips. Esp with the use of olive oil. Thanks!

I always use yoghurt as a substitute for mayonaise, sour cream, cream. Great for potato salads, dips, dressings etc

Instead of oil for salad dressings – lemon juice works well.

Excellent suggestions, Kathryn. I’m going to share them with my patients/clients & their families.

The message I’ve been reading lately & agree with is: it’s better for health & happiness to have a little bit of the real thing e.g.,(butter, olive oil) than fake fats (e.g., margarine, low-cal dressings) in large amounts. There’s certainly plenty of thoughtful (some might also say controversial) writing on the subject of fat.

I’ve tasted muffins in which most of the fat had been replaced by prune paste – as delicious, if not more so, than the full-fat version. It makes sense to me to replace the fat where it’s not essential for flavour or other properties it adds to baked goods — as long as the product is tasty.

Sue – yoghurt is a good substitution isn’t it. I often use on Mexican-ish food, where you’d normally have loads of cheese and sourcream. Instead a bit of yoghurt works wonders.

Elaine – you are so right. I think we need a bit of a mind-shift. Not every high fat food has to be taken out of a healthy diet, not even a weight loss way of eating. But thinking of foods like butter as a “treat” is a more sensible and realistic approach.

I quite enjoy experimenting with substitutions. It doesn’t always work, but when it does you can produce something wonderful and full flavoured, with less saturated fat. A recipe you can use again and again.

Much needed information – these are things I should think about a lot more, because even though we eat healthily, I do have a tendency to forget about all the added fat. Thank you.

I am totally guilty of heavy-handed oil usage.

And since making the wedges in AHK, I’m completely converted. (And it’s not all that extra much washing up anyways).

I’ll have to try your yoghurt and ricotta blend – it sounds great. It’s interesting to hear Elaine’s suggestion about fruit puree in muffins. I’ve been using a few cake recipes with olive oil lately, but I have taken complete recipes rather than substituting oil for butter in recipes that ask for butter. Do you know whether that sort of substitution works? and what sort of recipes are best to try it with?

Jennifer – glad to hear you found it useful. It’s easy to forget about the fat and while we do need some, most people do eat a bit too much. I’m always keen to find ways of reducing the fat, without reducing my enjoyment of the food.

Lucy – I agree, it’s really not that much extra washing up!

Arwen – the yoghurt and ricotta is luverly. I’ve been using it for years. I’m also intrigued by Elaine’s prune juice suggestion. Afraid I’m not an experienced enough baker to answer your question. Might be worth a try-out though . . .

I’ve tried prune puree and apple puree to reduce fat – I find that putting pumpkin or other veg in dips means you can do without the oil (eg in hummus) and I had a fruit mince recipe at christmas which had walnuts and banana rather than suet or butter. I sometimes prefer some nut butter or tahini than just oli or butter to get the most flavour out of my fat. Agree with the comments that taste is king or queen or president (if you are a monarchist)!

Thanks for the very sensible tips. I haven’t tried mixing ricotta and yoghurt before but you have inspired me to try it. We often use a scraping of hoummus ot a very low fat soft cheese as a spread on bread or in sandwiches. A tip for using cheese as a topping is to use a really strong flavoured variety
( I’m thinking seriously strong cheddar) then you don’t need to use nearly as much to achieve a good flavour. I have now resolved to measure all oil in future, its all too easy to just “glug” it straight out of the bottle and end up using far too much.

Great tips Kathryn. I’m particularly a fan of using less cheese than the recipe states and measuring the amount of oil that we use.

I’ve found with frying that recipes sometimes seem like they’re starting to stick to the pan in the later stages of cooking but that a tiny splash of water can work just as well as adding more oil.

Excellent. Especially the ricotta + yogurt. I always wondered how to make my delicious potato soup without cream. Now I’ve got to try it!

Hi there Jessica, the other thing you could try with potato soup is putting in some low fat sour cream, that would still give you a lovely creaminess, without all the extra saturated fat. Plus the article I link to in the post has some other suggestions you might find useful.

Great article. A tip that I was taught was to coat vegetables in some milk before roasting them. They taste great and no oil.

Carissa, that’s really interesting. I’ve never heard of coating your vegetables in milk before roasting and I would also never have thought to do that. I’m utterly intrigued, so will definitely be trying that out soon. Thanks for leaving this tip.

Hi there. Just wanted to add to your ‘top with cheese’ tip, a little hint I got from the AIS cookbooks. If you use a strong cheese, such as parmesan, you can use a hell of a lot less without losing that cheesy taste. I’ve tried it out with their Italian Pasta Bake, and it’s a winner!

Oops, just read the other comments. Looks like Penny beat me to it with the cheese ;-)

Kylieonwheels – well both you and Penny are right! Using a strong tasting cheese does mean you can get away with less. I often turn to fetta for that exact reason.