Arlene Makes Easy Low-Fat Entrées

It seems like there’s always a new diet fad to follow, and back in the 90s “low fat” cooking was all the rage. We know now that there are some healthy fats that are good to include in your diet, but it still doesn’t hurt to have some great recipes made with lean proteins that everyone can enjoy. In this episode from 1994, Arlene cooks a pork and broccoli stir-fry, BBQ turkey tenderloins, and a broiled ham steak with orange glaze. Yum!

Barbecued Turkey Tenderloins

This recipe is fast, easy, and low fat!
Course Main Course

Ingredients
  

  • 2 lbs boneless, skinless, turkey breast tenderloins (about 4 tenderloins)
  • 2 Tbs water
  • 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
  • 1/4 cup ketchup
  • 1/2 tsp dry mustard
  • 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
  • 1/2 onion, finely diced
  • 1 clove garlic, minced
  • hot sauce (to taste)
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/4 tsp pepper

Instructions
 

  • Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place tenderloins in a greased 13×9" baking dish.
  • In a small bowl, stir and combine all ingredients except turkey. Pour mixture over turkey and spread evenly with a spatula.
  • Bake uncovered for 15 minutes or until the thickest part of the meat registers 165 degrees with an instant read meat thermometer. Allow to rest for 10 minutes before serving. Depending on the size of the tenderloins, they can be served whole or cut into pieces. Enjoy!

Sesame Pork and Broccoli Stir-Fry

This is a very low-fat dish, especially if you use a lean cut of pork.
Course Main Course
Cuisine Chinese

Ingredients
  

Sauce

  • 1 can chicken broth
  • 2 Tbs corn starch
  • 1 Tbs soy sauce
  • 4 green onions, sliced thinly
  • 2 Tbs oil
  • 1 clove garlic, minced
  • 1 pork tenderloin, cut into cubes (about 1 lb)
  • 1-2 heads broccoli, cleaned and cut into bite-size pieces
  • 1/3 cup chopped pimento peppers
  • 1 Tbs toasted sesame seeds

Instructions
 

  • Whisk broth, corn starch, and soy sauce together. Stir in green onions.
  • Heat a large nonstick skillet over medium heat. Add oil and continue heating until oil just starts to shimmer but does not burn. Add garlic and saute for 30 seconds. Then add pork. Cook pork, stirring occasionally, for 5-10 minutes until no longer pink.
  • After pork is cooked, place into a colander over a bowl or a paper towel-lined bowl, and allow excess juices and grease to drain. Add broth mixture to pan and whisk over medium heat. Add broccoli and stir so that sauce evenly coats it. Bring sauce up to a boil and continue stirring. Add pimento peppers and add pork back to pan. Cook until broccoli is tender and pork is warmed through. Serve on a big platter. Garnish with toasted sesame seeds. Enjoy!

Broiled Ham Steak with Orange Glaze

Fast, easy, low fat, this dish is great for breakfast, brunch, or dinner!
Course Main Course

Ingredients
  

  • 1 1/2 tsp Dijon mustard
  • 1/4 cup orange marmalade
  • 1/4 tsp orange peel
  • 1/8 tsp cinnamon
  • 1 large, lean ham steak (1.5-2 lbs)

Instructions
 

  • Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Score ham steak around the outside with little slits; this prevents it from curling up as it roasts.
  • Combine mustard, marmalade, orange peel, and cinnamon in a small bowl. Place ham steak on a clean, greased broiler pan. Brush or spread mixture over the top side of the ham steak.
  • Broil ham steak in the oven at 500 degrees for 2-5 minutes. Watch closely so that it does not burn! After glaze begins to brown, remove pan from oven, flip the steak over, glaze the second side, and broil for another 2-5 minutes, until glaze browns but does not burn. Remove from oven and allow to rest 5 minutes before cutting and serving. Enjoy!

Transcript

  • Hello and welcome to “At Home” today. We’re so glad that you could be with us. It’s always nice when friends drop by. Today we’re gonna be sharing with you some interesting entrees. Because these entrees are all low in fat and low in calorie. We’re trying to bring you another one of our series of cooking, like eating right, which I think everybody is tuning into these days. I know around the studio here everyone is talking about low-fat this, low-fat that. low-fat or no fat pretzels, let’s get no fat this. And there’s a lot of help out there. I’ve told you that before. There’s lots of things that now they have taken the fats from, and it really is not that bad tasting except one exception, I don’t like the cream cheese. It doesn’t taste like cream cheese ’cause there’s no cream in it, obviously. But anyway, there’s a lot of good healthy carbohydrates in your grains, in your breads, we’ve gone over this before. It’s just important to cut back where you can. If you use whole milk, cut it to 2%. If you use 2%, cut to 1%. If you use 1%, try half. And Dale just for you, if you’re using half, go skim. Now I know you can do it. Some people don’t like the way it makes your cereal look blue that’s what I’ve heard. But anyway, I think anytime you can cut back it’s really important to do so and I think that it’s healthier, it’s better for your body, and you lose some pounds that you didn’t expect to lose just by cutting back on those things. So today we’re bringing you three main dishes. Now you won’t have the accompanying dishes to go with it but this will get you started on three main dishes to prepare for your family. They’re not hard, they’re not intricate, they’re just healthy for your meals, okay. We always enjoy getting our letters from you folks out there, and this one comes from Puerto Rico. Imagine! So glad that you folks are watching there. It says, “It’s the first time that I saw your show. “My daughter and me especially enjoyed your show “because throughout it you did it with lots of love, “and may God bless you and your family.” And this is a Ms. Hernandez. Thank you so much, Puerto Rico. So nice to hear from you. And the other letter, another letter. This comes from Pattersonville, New York. Now you have to see this. This is a neat letter. Maybe we can get a real good shot of this here, because I have to read it while you’re looking at it. It says, “Dear cook”, C, O, O, C, K. “Dear cook, I love you and I like the recipes “and the recipes are good, “and I want God to keep making them.” Oh sorry, “I want you to keep making them.” Hard to read upside down. She’s age six, “Love Tabitha”. And look down here, Tabitha even drew a little picture. Isn’t that neat? I love when kids to “At Home”, because you know six years old is not too young to get started in the kitchen. It’s really important. This little one, her name is Tabitha, and Jones sent it in for her from Pattersonville, New York. Tabitha thank you so much. It was so nice to receive your letter. Write to me again okay, and we’re gonna keep recipes coming to you. Another one I want to talk about says, “Thank you very much. “Dear Arlene, thank you very much for the recipes, “may our good Lord always bless you, your family, “and the wonderful staff of “At Home”, “Bless you abundantly.” This is from a lady here in the Pittsburgh area. I just want to say that I do thank God for the staff that makes this all possible because without a team effort, guys behind the cameras, and girls there too, and the technical people upstairs. It’s never a one man show, I tell them that all the time. If we don’t work together, it’s just like in your home, if you all don’t work together, then you don’t have peace. If everybody is working apart from one another you can’t have a togetherness or a unity. That’s the way it is with this program. Everybody doing their part makes it happen. Well today, we’re gonna make it happen because today we’re gonna do those low-fat recipes, and we’re gonna get started in just a minute. We’ll be right back. See you in just a minute. Here’s todays, “At Home” hint. A touch of onion freshly added to canned vegetables and soups often disguises the canned taste. If you’ve got a helpful hint that you’d like to share with us, we want to hear from you. Send your hint to “At Home” hints CTV Wall, Pennsylvania, 15148-1499. I have to tell you they kid me about this all the time. You know I always have my recipe, Linda Wilson tells everybody, “We have to increase this by 150%.” Look how big this recipe is. So I can see it. Not really, I can see it, but they just don’t trust me to see it well. So they make it so big, that it would take somebody that really is having a sight problem not to see this. But anyway, today the first of three entrees that are low in fats per serving and low in calories, is a barbecued turkey tenderloins. And what you’re going to do is take your baking dish. We’ve gone to Foodlands, and they have a nice selection of, this is turkey breast tenderloin. Because these are the pieces, look there’s absolutely no fat on these. And it’s important just to layer them, single layer, into the dish, to your baking dish. This is so simple it’s like almost ridiculous for me to tell you that there’s a recipe because it’s very easy and quite tasty. This is gonna have a barbecued flavoring. Anytime you do barbecue, you know that’s basically ketchup, you make it sweet, then you make it sour. And this sauce that we’re gonna make to put on this is very simple. I’m gonna give you the ingredients so that everybody knows just what is in it. There’s two tablespoons of water, put that in a bowl. Next we have a fourth of a cup of cider vinegar. Remember the cider vinegar, the basis for that is apple. You don’t want the distilled or the white you want the cider, ’cause that gives such good flavor. Put that in your bowl. Then we’re gonna take, I believe it’s a fourth cup of catsup, or ketchup whichever you want to say. I often thought how come they spell it sometimes K, A, T, S, U, P. And then the other ones say, K, E, T, C, H, U, P. Is it two different things? Good question, I really don’t know. Whatever it is, it’s red and it comes from tomatoes and it’s in a jar, and Heinz makes a good one. Anyway it’s ketchup here. We’re gonna put a fourth of a cup. All right, next we’re gonna add some, half of a teaspoon of dried mustard. This stuff is potent, don’t get carried away with that. It’s much stronger than the other. Here is some Worcester sauce. Did I do well on that Linda? Linda always corrects me if I don’t do it so good. Then we have three tablespoons of minced onions, that’s very fine onion. And a clove of garlic. We’re gonna add that, get all the little morsels out. My folks, my parents loved turkey. My dad really loved turkey. That was one of his favorites. And he would really, I mean you could fix it any and he loved it. He liked the dark meat, my mother liked the white meat. I like the white meat, and Paul likes the dark meat. And so when we buy a turkey we don’t have a problem because it gets eaten up, because everybody eats the part that they like the best. Now we’re gonna add, it says one to two drops of hot sauce. If you like it more, put more. If you don’t like it at all, don’t put any in. All right, let’s get a little shot of salt, not too much. And some pepper. We’re gonna grind some fresh pepper there. I love the fresh, I always tell you that the fresh pepper gives it a better flavor, than that stuff that’s been sitting in a can for a while on your grocery shelf. All right so now we’re gonna take, this looks like a little bit of sauce but we’re gonna just gonna pour this all over our turkey tenderloins. Now these are very, very, you see there’s no fat on that, so these are very lean and very good for you because any time that you are cooking low-fat, you have to trim all the visible fat from the meat. No matter what kind of meat it is. And with this turkey, you saw that there was now fat on this at all because turkey is one of the leaner meats. But you still have to remember that there are some grams of fat in turkey. Now we’re gonna just put this into a 350 degree oven that has been pre-heated. Do not cover it. We don’t want to cover it. But we do want to be sure that the sauce is all over the bottom of the dish. We’re gonna place it in our oven, and let it go. I’m gonna go ahead and set this for 15 minutes. All right the next one that we’re going to prepare is called stir-fried sesame pork with broccoli. This is a really good taste. This kind of has an oriental flavor to it. In my mind anytime I use anything with sesame oil or sesame seeds, I have an oriental flavor it does to me anyway. Well first of all in this bowl, we’re going to put some ingredients which will be a can of chicken broth. This is just a regular sized can of chicken broth. This is gonna make a broth that we will be putting into the drippings of the pan in just a few minutes. Two tablespoons of cornstarch. We have a tablespoon of soy sauce. And I’m gonna mix that around. You want to use a whisk to get all the little lumps out. Mix that corn starch around. And then we’re gonna just stir in our green onions. That’s about four green onions that have been sliced. We’re gonna set this aside because our pans getting good and hot. We’re gonna add two tablespoons of oil. In the non-stick pan, again you need to get one, if you don’t have one if you’re gonna do low-fat cooking or any kind of low-calorie cooking because many times you don’t even have to put anything in the pan. The pan itself will cook the ingredients and you don’t have to have any added fat to it. So it’s really worth the investment. All right then we’re going to do a clove of garlic. And that’s gonna flavor our pork because the meat that goes in this is a pork tenderloin. I have to tell you, turn this down a little bit. This is some of the leanest, most beautiful pieces of pork. You just trim all the visible fat that you possibly can off. There wasn’t much on this, Foodland has a nice selection over there. But look how nice and lean that is. This is just bite sized bits. This is about one pound. You’ve got the garlic in there, we’re gonna quickly fry up these pork cubes. And you know that they’re cooked when you no longer see pink, and that should take three to five minutes, something like that. Maybe a little longer, depending on how high the heat is. Did you know that one of the things, if you’re in a hurry and you really need to get stuff done fast, put your pan on the stove, put the fire under it and get the utensils good and hot, so that when you add your ingredients they’ll start to cook immediately. See if I had not heated the pan up, I’d have put the oil in then I have to wait for the oil, put the garlic in, I have to wait for the garlic This way if I have the utensil good and hot whatever I put in there will start to cook immediately and then your cooking time cuts down a lot. So you see how they’re already getting white. I remember years ago they used to make you cook pork forever it seemed because of the possibility of the disease that was in it. But it’s not the case so much anymore, and I think they’re finding, I think you still have to cook pork through, thoroughly. But I don’t think it has to be as long a period of time as they used to say. I remember my mother, which was a rare treat, when she’d make pork chops, it seemed like she started them at 2:00 in the afternoon, it would seem to me, I’m sure she didn’t. But she cooked, and cooked, and cooked them so that they would be sure to be well done. My dad liked meats, all kinds of meats, totally well done all the time. He did not like it to be, even in beef, he wanted it well done. Chicken, well done. She had to have everything well done for dad. Now when this browns, and it’s doing beautifully, you can see just keep moving it around the pan, ’cause it’s important for it to cook quickly and to cook through. We’re gonna take the pork, so we get them evenly brown. No more pink showing. ‘Cause we’re gonna cook them a little bit more later too. We’re going to add our dressing that we made before, the broths, and the green beans, and the cornstarch. We’re gonna be adding that to this skillet and we’re gonna stir-fry our broccoli. Which will be very easy to do. Okay, we’re just about there. You can smell the wonderful smell of the broccoli, I mean the pork and the garlic together. Now this browned up. Make sure there’s no pink, that’s how you can tell. There’s no pink left. This is very high heat. And in any type of low-calorie or low-fat cooking you always want to take off any of the fat that you can. So I have some paper towels in a bowl, and we’re going to be putting these cubes into this bowl and it will drain off any excess fat that may have, I don’t know how it could though, ’cause this meat is so lean. But it’s important to do that because you want to cut as much fat out as you can, out of your diet. It’s amazing for years, everybody counted calories. Calories, don’t go over this many calories. Now it’s, okay let’s count the fats and forget about worrying about the calories. Right now to these drippings, we’re just gonna keep that there. We’re gonna go ahead and add, this is our cornstarch remember. Gonna pour that in there, turn my gas down just a bit. This is gonna thicken up, okay. And we’re gonna add the broccoli. Stir that around. We’re gonna put, this is about a bunch. A good sized bunch of broccoli that has all been cleaned, and peeled, and cut into bite sized bits. You don’t want great big chunks of broccoli because these should be in proportion to the cubes of meat. We’re gonna let that come up to a biol. Let that cook. Now we’re gonna stir this and let it get going. Let’s see here. Need to let that come up to a boil. After this comes up to a boil, and it cooks, the broccoli is nice and tender. We’re gonna put the pork back into it, let it heat through thoroughly. That can be as much as five to 10 minutes, if you need that. Keep that in mind when you do the broccoli. And you want to keep stirring it. When it’s done, you’re gonna add the pimento at the same time you put the pork in. And when it’s finished and you put it on the platter, you’re gonna sprinkle with some toasted sesame seeds. Just sprinkle it over the top of it, about tablespoons or two, whichever that you prefer. Next I want to show you, while this is cooking I’m gonna walk away from this, we’ll come back to it. The third entree that I want to show you is something that’s very, very simple. And it is just a piece of ham. You say Arlene ham? You think that’s low-fat? Well this per serving has five grams of fat. That’s pretty good, and only 154 calories. Now if you’re doing the 30 grams of fat per day program, you can see where this would be very good to have as a main course. Put a baked potato with it, put some fresh broccoli, some fresh asparagus or something. This is a very nice portion to have and for that kind of fat content, which is only five grams. But we’re gonna put this on a broiler pan. But let me show you, we’re gonna baste it with something first. And what we’re basting with, here is some Dijon mustard, this is about one and a half tablespoons of Dijon. Sorry one and a half teaspoons of Dijon, and some orange marmalade. The thing that was hardest for me to get used to when I started counting the fat grams was that a lot of things that were no-nos before you could have, like jelly, marmalade. Because there’s no fat in jellies, there’s sugar. You need to be careful of that. But there’s no fat in them. I just put some orange peel, some fresh orange peel about a fourth of a teaspoon. And this is cinnamon, we’re gonna add that to it. Just about an eighth of a teaspoon of cinnamon. I’m gonna mix this around. You’ve got your mustard, the orange marmalade, cinnamon, and your grated orange peel. Smells wonderful. Now you’ll want to put this on a broiler pan because we’re gonna broil it. So we’ve already take the broiler pan from our oven. Of course if you’re doing this outside on a grill, it’s a perfect thing for a grill. And we’ve cut all the obvious fat from the edge of it. We’ve scored it so, you ever put a ham steak on it’s starts curling up, and it doesn’t brown. You scored around the edge, cut little slits every here and there. The whole way around the ham slice, place it on your broiler pan. Then we’re just going to baste this wonderful marmalade, and cinnamon, and mustard. Those three seem to go together when it comes… You know you have mustard on your ham sandwich so why not put it on when it’s cooking. Just adds flavor to it. All right, we’re gonna put this, you’re gonna let it broil for a couple of minutes on this first side, you’ll turn it over, let it broil on the second side, after you have put the marmalade on. This is done in about seven or eight minutes because this is a piece of fully cooked ham. You don’t want to buy ham unless it’s fully cooked to do this with because this is a quick supper. This is a quick meal. This is something to get to fast. So we’ll be right back after this important message. In fact we’re gonna tell you how you can get these recipes today, and we’re gonna show you the finished product of all the entree we’ve made in just a minute. We’ll be right back.
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  • Well we’re back and I want to show you how to present these entrees that we’ve been doing today. These low-fat, no fat entrees. And first of all what we’re gonna do is come over with me, I want you to see this ham steak that looks so wonderful. We’ve broiled it on both sides. Nice and tender, the little bit of the orange marmalade is still there as the glaze. Put that in our serving plate. Gonna bring it over here and you know the appeal is in the eye, so you want to do something that will make it look appealing. And we’ve just taken a couple slice of orange and we’re going to curl them and put a piece there. Put another piece on the other side and it’s important that we use fruits like if there’s oranges in the marmalade and in the dressing that goes on this piece of ham. So we’re gonna take some fruits to decorate it with. along with the orange slices we’re gonna put some seedless red grapes just here and there, have a little cluster. And those will be good because there’s no fat in any of this. Any fruits for the most part have very low, or no fats at all. We’re gonna do that and then we’re gonna cut this into our serving pieces, and I would suggest about a six ounce serving is 154 calories, and 5.4 grams of fat. So I think this is a very decent type of low-fat meal. Let’s face it I didn’t even think you could have ham and be on a low-fat, in keeping with a low-fat policy. But apparently you can. Don’t make the serving pieces real large, just make them nice. My dad used to love the piece around the bone, he’d say, “That’s the most tender you know.” In any kind of meat he’d say, “That’s the most tender.” Make your service pieces and then make sure if there’s any little spills around the edge you want to clean them up. And there’s your presentation. I like a little green with that because I like parsley. Besides this being really good for you, I think it really perks up a dish. So let’s put that over, that’s our first entree. Now we’re gonna do our broccoli and pork stir-fry. And we’ve chosen a nice platter for this one. Nice oval platter. You can see that the pork has cooked and here’s our broccoli. Smells wonderful, we’ve added our pimento, put the pork back in after the broccoli had cooked. And spread that about on your platter so it’s even. Some of the juices will be there, that will be all right, not a problem. What I would do here then is take our toasted sesame seeds and we want to sprinkle them, very gently. This seems like a lot, if you like a lot put it on, if you don’t, just don’t use so many. But they give it a good nutty flavor. Then because of the red pimento I would take a couple of slices of red pepper and we would just garnish with that over the top. And we’ll put that out, don’t forget to put a nice serving spoon next to it because it’s really important to do that. Let me put my fork with my ham. And the last one we made was the barbecued turkey tenderloins. They’re still in the oven. We’re gonna bring those out when they’re this hot, I don’t think you need to worry about a garnish. I think you just need to present it at the table. That smells so good. And the turkey is very tender, I mean it’s very tender. They’re falling apart, they’re so tender. That’s a quick and easy, you could do chicken like that. You could do like a really lean thin pork chop, pour that over it, that is very, very tasty, and the smell. I wish you were here to enjoy with us. Let me remind you that it’s recipes number 181, if you just write to us, send a self-addressed stamp business-sized envelope. We will be glad to send you all three of these recipes. Really important for you to include your self-addressed stamped envelope. Sometimes you’re not doing it. And so therefore we have to take the time to write out the envelope, put our stamp on it, to send it to you. And we do that but we would appreciate if you would include it when you request the recipes. You know if you have decided to cut down on calories, fats, or whatever, just give it a try. You say, but I can’t stay on any diet. Don’t think of it as a diet, think of it as a new way of eating. And there’s no beginning and no end to it it’s just something you’re going to get into and you’re gonna do it for your healths sake and for your family’s sake. I think that if you start training children at a young age, five, six, maybe even younger, to choose an apple instead of that cookie that’s full of sugar. And you know sometimes you’re gonna have to make that decision for them. Reward them with some celery, or a big juicy piece of fruit rather than all those snacks that are so full of fats, calories, and sugar. Well I don’t mean to harp on it but I think it’s important for all of us to remember that. I know that in our home, not because Paul is happy about it, sometimes I’m not either, but we’re trying to do that. And we can see the change. So I would encourage you give it a try. Get one of your girlfriends who you know is wanting to lose some weight, or just wanting to get back into shape and say let’s do it together. ‘Cause if two of you do it together when ones weak, the other one will be strong and they’ll encourage that one, and then when you’re strong and shes weak, then you can encourage her. Make it a friendship thing, and you’ll grow together, grow smaller together. Well I hope you’ve enjoyed us here today “At Home”. We’ve enjoyed doing the program. I hope that these recipes have given you some food for thought and that you’ll try them. So be sure to join us the next time because it just wouldn’t be the same without you here “At Home”. We’ll see you then.
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