Whilst you could be extra accustomed to seeing the massive orange gourd in your entrance step round Halloween than in your dinner plate, it’s far more than spooky-season yard decor—it’s really a stable fiber supply, in accordance with Nguyen. In the event you’re not conversant in cooking with pumpkin, Nguyen has a couple of options. Attempt roasting it within the oven, filled with a filling like rice or meat, or seasoned by itself. “One roast squash lasts fairly lengthy,” Nguyen says. You too can purchase a can of the pureed stuff to save lots of your self some prep time. That works notably properly in baked items like scones, muffins, candy breads, cookies, brownies, and cheesecake bites, but it surely can be tailored to savory dishes like chili, curry, pasta, lasagna, mac and cheese, meatballs, empanadas, and lots of extra.
You possibly can even swap in pumpkin for beans to make Nguyen’s signature “mishmash soup state of affairs”—once more, that’s a throw-together, freezer-friendly recipe that includes inventory, aromatics, and seasonal veggies. Having simple and sturdy dishes on the prepared is “an effective way to guarantee myself that if there are days the place it’s simply powerful to get the fiber in, I’ve these within the rotation,” she says.
6. Brussels sprouts
6 g fiber per one cup cooked
Brussels sprouts and different cruciferous greens like cauliflower are famously powerful and bitter, particularly when uncooked, so Nguyen recommends in search of out recipes and cooking strategies that make them “a bit extra tolerable and flavorful”—roasting, for instance. “You possibly can simply let it sit within the oven when you go do different issues,” she says. “Simply be sure you have an excellent seasoning combine on.” (Sauces and dressings like balsamic vinegar or maple syrup also can assist improve the flavour, as a few of these 32 recipes reveal.)
So as to add to their enchantment, cruciferous veggies like brussels sprouts have a tendency to carry up properly within the freezer when contemporary, so that they’re well-suited for long-term chilly storage, Nguyen says. Not like another varieties of produce, as SELF beforehand reported, “they don’t style too mopey after you defrost them,” she explains. (You possibly can thank their low water content material for that!)
7. Broccoli
5 g fiber per one cup cooked
Like brussels sprouts, broccoli belongs to the cruciferous vegetable household, so a cooking methodology like roasting will help soften these stalks up and make them extra palatable general. Much like peas, broccoli can be integrated into mac and cheese to make it just a little extra appetizing—a dish Younger and her grad-school classmates referred to as “mac and bushes.” Typically, “including in a few of these frozen issues when your pasta is boiling could be an effective way to sneak in some extra nutrient worth,” she says.
8. Kale
5 g fiber per one cup cooked
Cooked kale could be “a wonderful choice” so far as a fiber supply, Younger says. Whether or not you’re boiling, sautéing, or counting on a wholly completely different cooking methodology, that course of will compact the fiber content material, vastly lowering how a lot that you must eat to absorb a stable quantity. Certain, you can additionally get fiber from the uncooked stuff if you happen to’re into salads or smoothies, however simply know that the payoff goes to be approach smaller: One cup of uncooked kale comprises lower than one gram of fiber—hardly a formidable determine in comparison with the sooner entries on this listing.
9. Collard greens
5 g fiber per one cup cooked
