Meat
Moderate evidenceChicken breast
31 g of protein and 3.6 g of fat per 100 g. Almost no everyday food beats it on protein per calorie.
Chicken and chilli stir-fry
Seasoning with chilli lets you use less salt. In a Korean diet where sodium is the problem, that is chilli's most practical contribution.
2 servings20 min
Ingredients
- Chicken breast300 g
- Hot green chillies3
- Onion1
- Garlic4 cloves
- Cooking oil1 tbsp
- Soy sauce1 tsp
- Black pepperto taste
Method
Mince the garlic and leave it ten minutes. Allicin forms in that window.
Cut the chicken into bite-sized pieces and season with pepper only. No salt yet.
Slice the chillies on the diagonal. To tone down the heat, scrape out the seeds and white pith — that is where the capsaicin sits.
Get the pan properly hot, add the oil and cook the chillies for thirty seconds. The capsaicin dissolves into the oil and spreads through the whole dish.
Add the chicken and stir-fry over high heat until the surface turns white.
Add the onion for two minutes, then the minced garlic for thirty seconds more.
Finish with just one teaspoon of soy sauce. The heat covers for the salt that is not there.
Cooking note
There is a reason the chillies go into the oil first. Capsaicin dissolves in fat, not water, so releasing it into the oil spreads the heat evenly through the dish. Add the chillies late and only the chilli pieces are hot while everything else tastes flat.
The single teaspoon of soy sauce is deliberate too. Heat masks a good deal of the sense that something is under-seasoned. Chilli's real contribution here is not its nutrients but that it lets you use less salt.
Ingredients used here
Herbs & spices
Moderate evidenceChilli pepper
Across 564,748 adults in four countries, regular spicy food eaters had 12 % lower all-cause mortality — with almost no disagreement between studies.
Vegetables
Moderate evidenceOnion
Onion's antioxidant quercetin concentrates in the outer layers. Peeling two extra layers out of habit throws much of it away.
Vegetables
Moderate evidenceGarlic
The evidence for garlic points to a modest drop in blood pressure and cholesterol. The trick is to crush it and wait ten minutes before it hits the heat.