Extreme makeover: Creamy pastas and curries

Love creamy dishes? By using these simple techniques, you can still indulge.

Pasta

The secret to creamy pasta without the cream is to use lite evaporated milk. Apply this to any recipe which uses cream as a sauce – just take care not to heat your sauce too hot as evaporated milk can form a skin if the heat is too fierce. Try our HFG fettuccine carbonara recipe.

How they compare

Traditional fettucine carbonara
Total energy per serve = 2500kJ
Total fat per serve = 42.4g (24.9g saturated fat)

HFG fettucine carbonara
Total energy per serve = 1585kJ
Total fat per serve = 12.5g (5.9g saturated fat)

Creamy curries, butter chicken curries

Try these tips:

• For Thai curries, use lite coconut milk or lite evaporated milk – there's even a coconut flavour.
• For Indian curries that use butter and cream, use half the butter (you'll still get the flavour) and use lite evaporated milk or lite sour cream instead of cream.
• Try Sophie Gray's gorgeous Butter chicken soup for the flavour of butter chicken with a fraction of the fat.
• Try HFG Thai chicken curry.

How they compare

Traditional Thai curry
Total energy per serve = 1445kJ
Total fat per serve = 20.6g (13.7g saturated)

HFG Thai curry
Total energy per serve = 1115kJ
Total fat per serve = 9.6g (3.7g saturated)