Healthy meal Ideas NZ has everything you need to plan and prepare tasty fresh meals that everyone in the family will enjoy.
Any seasoned cook knows that the right set of ingredients can make or break a recipe. And any seasoned weight loss guru will tell you – fat free foods are not what we need to resist temptation and boost metabolism for weight loss.
Tasty Recipes That Make the Most of Cherry Season
Only in season from late spring through August, fresh cherries are fleeting — so make the most of them while they’re ripe, juicy, and bursting with flavor. These knockout dishes, which include sweet treats and savory mains, highlight the very best of this magical fruit.
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Grilled Chicken Drumsticks with Bourbon-Cherry BBQ Sauce
This fruity, boozy take on barbecue has all the characteristics of your favorite sauce—deep caramel notes, a savory backbone, and a pleasant vinegar tang. You can sub sweet cherries for sour, adjusting the amount of honey and vinegar to taste. For a shortcut, start with 1 cup purchased unsweetened cherry juice.
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Vanilla Frozen Yogurt with Fresh Cherry Swirl
Creamy and luscious with a touch of tart, this simple fro-yo was a clear staff favorite. A combination of half-and-half, plain whole milk yogurt, and a little corn syrup gives the frozen yogurt its supersmooth texture.
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Kale and Wheat Berry Salad with Fresh Cherry Dressing
Fresh cherries perform double duty, featuring in both the dressing (in which they’re pureed) and the finished salad. Curly kale has a hearty, slightly tough texture, but massaging it with the salt tenderizes it nicely. If you’d rather use baby kale, you can skip the massage. If you have trouble finding watermelon radishes, any radishes will work beautifully.
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Cherry–Goat Cheese Ice Cream
This creamy, goat cheese-base ice cream showcases seasonal Bing cherries, which have an intensely sweet and tangy flavor. Go the extra mile and make homemade waffle cone cups for serving (and a fun presentation!). Keep leftover ice cream in your freezer for when your sweet tooth strikes.
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Crispy Polenta Cakes With Mushroom-and-Cherry Ragu
The mushrooms and cherries may seem like unlikely friends, but the cherries add a subtle sweetness and bright acidity to the savory mushrooms, giving you a mixture that’s slightly sweet, salty, rich, and earthy. This dinner is pretty simple to make, but if you want to make it ahead, go for it: simply reheat the mushroom raguand toss in the Brussels sprout leaves and cherries just before serving.
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Sweet-and-Sour Cherry Tartlets
We like the “naked” look of a couple of tartlets with just a few star cutouts, as shown. If you don’t, this recipe makes enough dough for each tartlet to have its own pastry lid.
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Vegetarian Cherry-and-Tomato Tartare
Traditional tartare is an indulgent delight of varying raw textures, which we replicate here using cherries, walnuts, and a surprising mixture of orange and cream. Try it on baguettes with a grassy olive oil for contrast, or plate it among a bed of bitter greens (such as arugula) for a salad.
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Cherry-Basil Lemonade Spritzers
Instead of the fluorescent cocktail-cherry garnish, fresh cherries take center stage in this refreshing lemon-and-vodka sipper. Macerating the cherries in sugar helps to soften their thick skins and release their juices, which become gorgeously syrupy in the pan.
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Fresh Cherry Relish
Cherries are a great base for savory sauces, like this tangy fresh cherry and fennel relish. For the best relish texture and presentation, be sure to evenly and finely chop all of the ingredients. A food processor would be a good shortcut, but chopping by hand gives the nicest result. Serve with grilled pork tenderloin, lamb chops, or grilled turkey cutlets.
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Cherry-Ricotta Toast
Move over, avocado toast! This ricotta toast is a world of textures thanks to the creamy fresh cheese, thick cherry spread, and crunchy pistachios.
Gut-Healthy Dinners You Can Make in 30 Minutes or Less
Gut health can be tricky—when your microbiome is out of whack, it can cause all kinds of problems, from poor digestion to lack of sleep. These high-fiber recipes have lots of gut-healthy ingredients, like beans, broccoli and apple, so you can end your day with something healthy and delicious in just half an hour. Recipes like our White Bean & Sun-Dried Tomato Gnocchi and Seared Scallops with Green Goddess Slaw are tasty and simple, so you can have them any night of the week.
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Garlic-Anchovy Pasta with Broccolini
Here, we sprinkle the final pasta dish with crumbled goat cheese for nice tangy bites throughout. But if you prefer a creamy sauce, stir the cheese into the pasta in Step 3 along with the reserved cooking water.
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White Bean & Sun-Dried Tomato Gnocchi
Sun-dried tomatoes are the star of this recipe— providing texture and umami. Combined with the spinach, they make this dish a great source of vitamins C and K.
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Spinach, Lima Bean & Crispy Pancetta Pasta
We opt for fresh spinach pasta here–it cooks quickly and adds a pop of color. Cooking lima beans in pancetta drippings infuses them with flavor.
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Creamy White Chili with Cream Cheese
This rich, yet healthy, white chicken chili comes together in a flash thanks to quick-cooking chicken thighs and canned white beans. Mashing some of the beans acts as a fast thickener when your soups don’t have a long time to simmer. Cream cheese adds the final bit of richness and a hint of sweet tang.
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Seared Scallops with Green Goddess Slaw
Avocado, yogurt and buttermilk lend creaminess to the herbaceous dressing coating this salad.
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Orange-Mint Freekeh Salad with Lima Beans
This salad is loaded with colorful produce: fresh mint, snap peas, radishes and oranges. For pretty snap pea slices, cut them into long, thin strips.
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White Bean Soup with Pasta
We use mirepoix—a combination of onion, celery and carrots—to flavor this soup. Keep a store-bought bag of the mixture in your freezer to ensure you always have some on hand without worrying about it going bad.
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Black Bean & Slaw Bagel
This easy open-face sandwich recipe uses a jalapeño-Cheddar bagel, but a plain bagel would work just as well. Top each bagel half with black beans and fresh slaw for a satisfying bite.
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Black Bean Wraps with Greens & Cilantro Vinaigrette
A simple salad tossed with a tangy vinaigrette packs these no-cook wraps with tons of bright cilantro flavor. The mix pairs well with mashed beans and avocado, which hold everything together.
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Black Bean-Cauliflower “Rice” Bowl
This aromatic cauliflower rice bowl comes together in minutes and is a simple meal for one. Using frozen riced cauliflower instead of rice keeps the carbs in check–and makes for quicker prep.
healthy recipes you can cook in 5 minutes or less
No time? That doesn’t mean you can’t eat something home-made and delicious. Sarah Brealey presents 25 simple suggestions for healthy meals.
1. Pea and broad bean couscous
Put equal quantities of frozen peas, frozen broad beans and dried couscous in a saucepan. Cover with boiling water and simmer for 3 minutes. Fluff up with a fork and mix in fresh mint, basil and plenty of black pepper.
Or if you’ve got 10 minutes to spare, try our recipe for carroty couscous salad (pictured), or fish and couscous salad.
2. Beetroot and lentil salad
Mix drained ready cooked beetroot (not in vinegar) with a tin of drained puy lentils (choose one with no added salt), a teaspoon of ready-made horseradish sauce and some chopped spring onion for a substantial salad in moments – perfect for packed lunches.
3. Fast home-made baked beans
Drain a tin of cannellini or butter beans (choose one with no added salt). Heat with tomato passata, and half a teaspoon of smoked paprika. Serve on toast, with a poached egg on top if you feel like it.
4. Porridge
Porridge takes just a few minutes to make in a saucepan, and even less in a microwave. Instead of adding sugar or salt, scatter with a handful (80g) of fresh berries or other fruit to get one of your 5-a-day at the same time.
5. Pasta with cherry tomatoes and rocket
Boil some quick-cook dried spaghetti (or other pasta shape, or fresh pasta) according to the packet instructions. While this is happening, wash a small punnet of cherry tomatoes per person and cut each tomato in half. Drain the pasta and immediately stir in the tomatoes and a handful of rocket per person. Serve straight away. Swap the pasta for couscous, or a pouch of pre-cooked wholegrain rice, if you prefer.