Poultry

Comfort food like chicken pot pie may lift your spirits, but it will weigh your body down. I know—there are few things more satisfying than biting through a super-flaky, buttery crust into a creamy, savory filling of chicken and vegetables. Pie dough is essentially flour used as a vehicle for fat. The filling can also be a fat land mine if you’re not careful. Eat this. It will make you feel good in every way.

In Italy, pasta and meats are generally served as separate courses, but in this country, we like to combine them into a single main course. This creamy pasta pairs well with the sauteed chicken.

This is a light and simple chicken dish that’s perfect for a summer barbecue. Although we eat more chicken than any other animal protein in the United States, the problem with most of it is that it is insipid and tired. A fruit-based salsa like this one offers some sweetness and acidity that really sparks up this ubiquitous bird. This recipe is simply too good not to include.

I adore risotto. It is as much fun to make and serve as it is to eat. I have spent most of my career learning how to perfect it—and much of my life eating it. There are few foods that make people moan as much as a beautifully prepared risotto does. (Remember Seinfeld?) Two things make it so delicious: the starch that is released from the rice during the slow and careful cooking process, and the butter and cheese we add to it. Unfortunately, for a few pleasurable moments on the lips, it’s a terror for the hips, thanks to the fat and carb content. This rice-less risotto uses something called TVP, or textured vegetable protein. It’s a high-fiber, high-protein soy product. It’s great both raw and cooked, and it has far fewer carbs than white rice.

This is a southern comfort food dish that some say came straight out of the Great Depression as a way to stretch a little bit of chicken to feed a big family. Flour and fat are combined to form a dumpling (such a sweet name for such an insidious food, don’t you think?) that is then is cooked in broth. In real life, those sweet little dumplings are calorie bombs that call for a healthier version—like this one.

Ever since I was a kid working in catering halls to pay for college, I’ve been fascinated by how delicious this simple dish is. Though the original has ample amounts of oozing butter, this version doesn’t have any butter in it at all, and it still tastes great. Pay close attention to the cooking time so the chicken doesn’t dry out, and prepare the sauce 2 hours ahead of cooking time.

It may have been easy to reduce the sugar, fat, calories, and carbs in these sandwiches, but when it comes to the sloppy part, you’re on your own. Eat with lots of napkins.

Some say the Reuben—corned beef brisket, Russian dressing, Swiss cheese, sauerkraut, bread—was invented by an Omaha grocer named Reuben Kulakofsky to provide sustenance to participants in a late-night poker game. This reformed version was invented to help you eat better. (Following that logic, don’t stay up late playing poker, either.)

Never trust a skinny chef—or one who serves you an 800- to 1,400-calorie chef’s salad! If you think you’re being good when you order this dish, think again. Given the exceedingly large quantity of deli meats, the Russian dressing, and the boiled eggs, you might as well eat a Big Mac. This version, however, really is a skinny salad. It calls for egg whites only, reduced-fat cheddar, and a reduced-fat full-flavor Russian dressing of my own creation.

This dish has become a staple on the American menu. From McDonalds to gastro-pubs to fine-dining restaurants, everyone has their own version. I’d venture to say mine is among the tastiest and healthiest out there.

Cobb Salad gets its name from Robert Cobb, owner of the Brown Derby restaurant in Los Angeles and first cousin of baseball great Ty Cobb. The story goes that he was browsing through the refrigerator late one night, looking for a snack, and could only find bits and pieces of leftovers—which he chopped up and turned into a salad. The rest is history. Here’s a version of Cobb Salad that was put together with a little more thought—and a lot fewer calories.

I remember the first time I had “Chinese” chicken salad. It was at a trendy West Hollywood spot on Sunset Boulevard, and it could have been/should have been a lot better than it was. Fried noodles only do not a Chinese chicken salad make. In this recipe, textured vegetable protein, or TVP, replaces the noodles for crunch and bite. TVP is made from defatted soy flour, a by-product of making soybean oil. It’s high in protein and low in fat. TVP flakes are available in the health-food aisle of most major supermarkets.

This takes a recipe that already has a reputation for promoting good health (think “Grandma’s penicillin” and “nature’s antibiotic”) and makes it even healthier. It will cure what ails you, but you don’t have to be sick to enjoy it.

I must admit that I didn’t realize at first that tortilla soup was an American favorite, but it slowly dawned on me. One of my favorite hotels serves it, there is a movie called Tortilla Soup, and when I asked my Twitter peeps about soups, it came up over and over. Its origins are Mexican, but it has become Americanized over the years. In Mexico City, this soup is made simply with roasted tomatoes, chiles, chicken broth, and corn tortillas. This version is true to the original, with a few additions.

“Loaded” doesn’t have to mean loaded with calories. The combination of black beans, salsa, and nonfat Greek yogurt makes this version of nachos a multicultural feast without the fat. Be sure to buy ground turkey made just from turkey breast—not regular ground turkey, which is made from white and dark meat and skin. The fat and caloric content of the two is significantly different.

Using low-carb tortillas was just one of the things I did to improve the health of this cheesy snack. La Tortilla Factory makes a great low-carb tortilla—you really can’t tell the difference between it and a traditional tortilla. One other thing you can do to reduce calories is to make sure you remove the skin and any obvious fat from the chicken before shredding it.

Buffalo wings are, hands down, one of the greatest dishes ever created. The combo of hot sauce and butter on a crispy chicken wing is sublime. Here’s the downside of these tasty things: Wing sauce is high in fat, chicken wings are high in fat, and the accompanying blue cheese dressing is high in fat. It all adds up to an astonishing 1,188 calories per serving. Here, the wings have been replaced with low-fat chicken tenders, the buffalo sauce with a great low-fat store-bought product, and regular blue cheese dressing with reduced-fat blue cheese dressing.