How and Why We Cook With No Oil - Elaine Watkins

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If you’re trying to lose weight or interested in learning about simple ways you can impact your future health for the better, then I want here’s how you can cook with no oil.

What?

How do you cook without oil? Why cook with no oil?

Aside from showing you how to dry sauté onions, I quickly show you how I easily sauté most of my vegetables without oil now and; therefore, without the:

unnecessary calories with no purpose
unnecessary potential health damage to my body
additional expense of all the oil I was using before

Why: Weight Loss

One tablespoon of oil is 120 calories.

But nobody that I know eats 1 tablespoon of oil, so if I were to take 30 seconds to think about some of what used to be included in my daily intake of oil in the past, I would have to calculate in the oil in:

just about everything I sautéed, baked, roasted, fried (even partially)
salad dressings, marinades, and most condiments
almost all processed foods including breads, crackers, and even those frozen meals in a bag
fast food and much of what is prepared by many restaurants
many dried fruits, nuts, chips, and other snacks

Well. I definitely took in more than 1 tablespoon of oil per day.

And before I knew that food had an impact on my health, as well as during the time I generously poured coconut and olive oil on just about everything because of the incredible benefits reported by so many, I was probably ingesting even up to 25 tablespoons per day.

Just to throw out a few numbers as a visual on the amount of additional calories you might be (and I was) taking in daily with 1 Tablespoon of oil = 120 calories:

10 Tablespoons per day = 1200 calories
15 Tablespoons per day = 1800 calories
25 Tablespoons per day = 3000 calories

Ouch!

And that’s just oil. You haven’t calculated in the food you’re actually eating yet.

Why: Health Recovery

I hadn’t thought much about the relationship between cardiovascular disease and oil specifically until watching Forks Over Knives with my husband. It was just a few months after losing a parent to gradually debilitating congestive heart failure and as my other parent worsens from the same congestive heart failure, as well as suffering from decades of various heart and vascular difficulties, surgeries, and treatments. This is all while one of my husband’s parents is also dealing with similar issues, along with my sibling and several other family members and friends.

We are surrounded by people that exemplify how the popularly accepted and followed protocol is Not working.

One of the doctors spotlighted in Forks Over Knives is Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn and his research that showed clear improvement and predominantly reversal of cardiovascular disease through a whole food plant based diet including the exclusion of oil.

Cardiovascular disease is the #1 killer relating to health, in the United States and is often connected with other health challenges also impacted by the same health-damaging drivers including unhealthy food choices.

I definitely recommend the movie, but here’s also a 14-minute TedTalk that Dr. Esselstyn did way back in 2012 as a quick, additional resource.

How to Dry Saute

In all of my years of preparing food for my friends and family, it Never occurred to me that I could actually cook without oil, butter, or lard.

And why would I want to? Back then, I didn’t know about the impact my food choices were already having on my health.

But now I know the weight loss benefits and health benefits of skipping oil.

And making changes weren’t really as hard as I had imagined they would be.

And the added benefits of cutting oil purchases from my grocery budget And I can’t even describe how much easier it is to clean up the kitchen these days.

I’m not sure how to quantify that, but definitely these are nice benefits of cutting back on or eliminating the use of oil in food preparation.

My husband and I decided to start cooking with no oil immediately after watching Forks Over Knives and have continued through to today.

And it’s actually proven to be easier than I expected it to be.

Dry Sautéing Onions With No Oil

For an example today, I chose to dry sauté garlic while my pan was heating up.

Then when my garlic was done and my pan was hot, I dry sautéed onions. I got both of these done with one skillet only, and I used both the garlic and the onion across multiple meals.

Dry sautéing is pretty simple:

Heat up your skillet
Toss in your onions (or other vegetable)
Stir periodically (as needed) and add a tablespoon of water, if you want a bit more moisture
Remove from heat when the onions have reached desired caramelization
FYI – Toss in another vegetable to warm up or cook, and pick up the onion flavors

Watch My Video

I’m now on Brighteon and on Rumble, so be sure to subscribe to one or both. In the meantime, watch my Dry Sauteing video at one of these links:

Summing Up Why I Often Cook With No Oil

Consider reducing, or even eliminating, the oils you’re using wherever you have another option for preparing that food to:

cut wasted calorie intake
minimize exposure to potential health-hindering ingredient
save money (one less ingredient to buy or less frequently bought)
make cleaning up easier

And don’t be surprised at how easy this transition is.

And while you’re thinking about healthy food, check out these posts: