Jun 17, 2009

Baked Soy Cutlets

I'm trying to lose weight and eat healthier. Yep - there I said it!

I wanted to add more protein to my food. Before I rant off about the goodness of these Soy granules/chunks - I do have to admit that I hated these when I was growing up. When I was doing my MBA, my hostel mess would serve us a dish made with these chunks and would serve them with rotis that could break windows - and they called it the mealmaker! I hated it. Period. There was nothing that would convince me to eat a few spoons of this. It had the weirdest smell to it and it looked kind of crappy to me. Everything that place had to eat was kind of bad - completely contraty to the hostel food I had when I was in rani meyyammi hostel - which at that time had the best food in chennai! That's a whole different blog post - I can rant off about the great food forever.

Anyways, I've always been a little cautious about this stuff - I know that its good. But its not the thing I always go looking for when I do grocery shopping. It proabably sat in the aisle that I never entered! Or never noticed. But, yesterday I went looking for it - wanted to start using it as a part of my food plan. And I'm glad I did it.

Here is a little sales talk on the product - I normally don't do this - but thought people should know how healthy these things are -


Here are some nutritional facts about these little powerhouse babies-

Nutrional Information

Approximate composition per 100g

Energy value 336 k cal
Protein 54.2 g
Fat 0.4 g
Carbohydrate 28.9 g
Calcium 533 mg
Iron 21.2 mg
Check this out - this has more than 13 times the protein of a glass of milk!! How about that!

Recommended for:Infants (excellent child nutrition), Adults, Diabetics, Heart Patients etc.
Nutrela contains no cholesterol
Hundred percent vegetarian
Made from 100% pure NON-GMO soyabeans
The package had a recipe for making soy cutlets. Since I did not have a hundred recipe ideas in my head to make with this, I thought why not make these cutlets. But, the recipe did call for using a lot of potatoes as base and deep frying the cutlets. I did not want to do that. When you are going healthy, why not be healthy all the way. So, I decided to bake these with minimum oil if needed. So, here's what I did.
Boil the soy granules in hot water for about 3-5 mins.


Drain all the water and also squeeze the water out of the granules.


Chop all the veggies - I uses onions, green chillies, carrots, beans, peas, fresh green spinach, corn and 1 boiled potato. You can use your favortite veggies.


Mix the soy granules with all the veggies. Add Salt and red chilli powder to taste.


You will need about 1-2 cups of bread crumbs - I toasted about 4 slices of white bread (for even more healthier cutlets, use wheat bread) and then ground it up into crumbs.

Mix the soy veggie mix and the bread crumbs well and then make small balls out of it. Flatten these balls to make a cutlet. Do this step one small batch at a time - that way the bread crumbs won't get all soggy.


Arrange these cutlets in a baking sheet. If you don't have an oven, you can cook them on a tawa. Until this point, we have not added any oil to this. But here, use a small brush and brush a little oil on top of the patties. I used olive oil but you can use any oil that you have.


Bake in a preheated oven at 350F for about 20 -30 mins or until you can see the top part getting crisp.


Here they look a little crisp. Time to switch off the oven. Leave it in there for another 5 mins.

Here they are all done. The good part about this is that you add all the veggies raw, and they are baked - so you don't lose much nutritious value of the veggies by overcooking them. And the only carbs in this is the one potato and the bread. These are well compensated with the high protein from the soy granules.


Serve hot with ketchup or maggi sweet and sour! Enjoy. Your body will thank you for all the goodness you gave it.


5 comments:

  1. I tried it with chopped pineapple instead of corn and it tasted yummy too.. :)

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  2. Hey Kay - Pineapple is such a good substitute for corn. I'm glad you tried it. Hope all in your family liked it.

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  3. Wow! Looks yummy & healthy, man tht's double whammy!.

    Loved u'r blog, it is 2 myriad and vast 2 be labelled a blog. Really nice Anu :)! Thanks for all the support & comment u posted 2wards my B of the B.
    Till later

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  4. I always wondered what can be made out of these soy chunks. Good idea! Sall try it out sometime.

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  5. You have given such a nice idea for eating soy and these can be used in betweeb bread for sandwich

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