9 easy ways to add lean beef and other healthy meats to your diet

Adding protein to your diet is essential for a maintaining a healthy body. Muscles, skin, and bones all benefit from a regular protein intake, so it's essential to include some form of protein in your diet. While meat is a great addition to any diet, it often comes with too much saturated fats, so it's important to look for leaner sources of protein.  Here are some easy ways to add lean meat to your diet.

If you see fat on your food, remove it. For example:

• If there's fat on the meat, trim it off.
• If there's skin on the chicken, remove it.
• If there's liquefied fat on top of the stew or soup, skim it off.
• If there's a pool of grease underneath your meat, sop it up with a paper napkin.

• Roasting makes fat melt away from meat. That's good.
• If potatoes, carrots, turnips or other vegetables are in the pan, they'll absorb the fat you're trying to avoid. That's bad.
• A better approach: Cook the meat, decant the fat, and then cook the vegetables in the remaining broth.

• After you brown the beef, drain it, then rinse it with water. It's the best way to remove as much fat as possible.

• Sauté thinly sliced onions, peppers, tomatoes and garlic cloves and spoon a healthy portion over the steak slices. This will make the meat portion seem even larger and more inviting — without extra meat.

• Typically, steaks and pork chops are served whole, and that makes for a giant portion, far beyond the healthy amount.
• The solution: Slice the steak in the kitchen and fan out slices on the dinner plates. This looks great and really reduces the portion sizes.

This may be the best trick of all when it comes to getting meat portions correct. Rather than thinking of meat as something to be served by itself, make it part of other dishes. Here are several smart ways.

• Add thinly sliced beef to your sautéed vegetables or wok stir-fries.
• Top a crunchy, robust salad with beef slices.
• Make kebabs with lean meat cubes and vegetables.
• Add small chunks of cooked pork and sautéed vegetables to cooked brown rice for a one-dish meal.
• Add lean ground beef to spaghetti sauce.
• Make bean, vegetable and meat combinations, such as chili or cassoulet. Just be sure to add the meat to the beans after it's been cooked and drained; otherwise, the beans will absorb the fat.

• In the morning, it'll be super-easy to remove the hardened fat that's on top.

• One piece of crumbled bacon goes a long way toward adding that wonderful smoky flavour to healthier dishes.

• These cuts have 4.5 grams or less of saturated fat and five to 10 grams of total fat per serving.
• Look for these other lean cuts: bottom, eye or top round; round tip; top sirloin; top loin; tenderloin.

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