Indulge in Hygge Recipes Healthily

You might have seen the word ‘hygge’ floating around quite a bit this winter, but have you dared to try saying it out loud yet? If you’re brave enough, remember it’s pronounced ‘hoo-gah’ rather than ‘higgy’. However, we can’t guarantee that you won’t still be ridiculed, as anyone talking about hygge does run the risk of sounding a little pretentious. But that’s a risk we’re willing to take, as hygge celebrates some absolutely divine food.

Hygge is a Scandinavian concept that’s all about celebrating life’s simple pleasures, whether that’s curling up with a good book in front of the fire in your cosiest socks, having a candle-lit duvet day while it’s raining outside or tucking into a huge bowl of comforting potatoes covered in delicious melted cheese.

Encouraging people to indulge in carb-laden, stodgy comfort food might not sound like something we should be doing seeing as it’s January and everyone’s on a health kick, but you can easily make hygge recipes healthier with a few clever tweaks.

Here’s a few recipe ideas to help you indulge in warming, comforting food without undoing your new year’s healthy eating resolutions:

Soup is the most warming substance known to humankind, fact. Combined with the fact that it’s a staple in many Scandinavian households, soup is perfect hygge food.

Scandi food blog My Blue and White Kitchen has a recipe for rustic Nordic pea soup that’s absolutely ideal if you want all the warmth and comfort of hygge but with all the goodness of a new year’s diet, as it’s basically just blended veg, and what could be healthier?

Obviously leave out the meat if you don’t eat it or want to reduce the fat content of the soup a little bit more. You could fry your veg in a low-cal spray oil instead of olive oil to save even more calories without losing any of the taste.

In the modern world, a trip to the flat-pack furniture shop is just as much about meatballs as it is about wardrobes and dining room tables. Now, we’re not claiming that a meal eaten out of a paper plate in a superstore canteen is the healthiest, but it can be pretty lean if you make your own version at home, which also means you don’t have to go anywhere near flat-packed pine or screws.

Lucy Loves has a really easy-to-follow recipe for Swedish-style meatballs in gravy, which you can make a little healthier by leaving out the breadcrumbs, using lean turkey mince and swapping the double cream for fat-free or low-fat natural yoghurt. Trust us, meatballs taste so much better without the lingering menace of flat-pack.

Skipperlabskovs, or skipper stew, is a really simple one-pot meal that’s packed with veg and filling carbs (dieter’s tip: fill up on these and you’ll be less likely to reach for any unhealthy snacks, thanks to your meals being so satisfying).

This Scandi-style stew was traditionally served on ships to keep the sailors nice and full with plenty of energy to, like, keep the ship afloat and stop it from sinking and stuff, so if it’s got that kind of power, we’d quite like to see what we could do after a bowlful.

Follow The Happy Foodie’s recipe for skipper stew, swapping the butter for low-calorie spray oil to make it even healthier. Feel free to bung in whatever veg you’ve got rolling around at the bottom of the fridge too to add even more goodness. Shipshape.

Tartiflette is a traditional Alpine dish, typically made from layers of bacon, potatoes and leeks, covered in delicious melted cheese, as all good meals should be. In itself, this isn’t the unhealthiest meal if you serve it up with seasonal greens, but you can make it even lighter with a couple of tweaks.

We recommend following Global Mouse Travels’ vegetarian tartiflette recipe (you can, of course, add bacon – with the fat trimmed off to make it leaner – if you like) for the basis, but leave out the potatoes and add in extra leeks if you’re trying to avoid eating too many carbs.

Alternatively, swap the potato for butternut squash, which will give you that same stodgy feel of a classic tartiflette, but you’ll be getting some extra benefits from your meal, as BNS contains a lot more vitamins, minerals and general goodness.

Top with reduced fat cheese and there’s no need to miss out on any of that lovely oozy melty cheese, which is surely the main reason that anyone eats tartiflette in the first place, right?

Berries and cream encased in pastry are very popular in Scandinavia, with most families having their own special recipe. Few things are more comforting than a slice of cake and you can still enjoy this hygge-style treat while staying on track with your new year health kick.

Scandi Foodie’s recipe for Mamma’s Berry Tart uses shortcrust pastry, but we recommend swapping it for lighter filo pastry if you don’t want to be too indulgent. For the filling, instead of using sour cream, use thick fat-free or low-fat Greek yoghurt to make it even lighter.

You could even make mini bite-sized versions of this tart rather than one big one to control how much you’re eating.

As we keep telling you, following a healthier diet doesn’t have to mean eating salad for every meal. There are always tweaks that you can make to your favourite recipes to lighten their calories without losing any of the taste or comfort factor, so if we can do that with the most indulgent hygge recipes of all, we’re pretty happy.

If we can celebrate Scandinavia and its glorious meatballs, cheesy potatoes and hot fruity tarts without abandoning our diets or having to go anywhere near a flat-pack furniture store, we can’t really ask for more from 2018.