Summer Barbecue Recipe Makeovers

Make your barbecue menu healthier, from finger foods to dessert.

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Lighter Barbecue Meats

Go for lighter and leaner cuts, whether you are grilling beef, pork, or poultry. Then, the trick is keeping them lean by marinating it or serving it with a lower-fat, lower-calorie sauce/marinade.

Make hamburgers with an extra-lean ground beef. When grilling steak, look for the cuts with more red and less white (like top sirloin, top round, chateaubriand, and filet mignon). For pork, one of the leanest bets is the tenderloin (see recipe below). When grilling pork chops, use center-cut chops and trim any visible fat.

Take the skin off the chicken before you marinate and cook it. Or choose seafood in addition to or instead of your typical grilled meat fare.

Lighter Barbecue Desserts

Ice cream is often part of summer barbecues, so look for light ice cream options -- they are there, and they are good!

For cakes or brownies made from mixes, remember that you usually don’t have to add the oil or butter called for (the mix already contains around 3 or 4 grams of fat per serving). Substitute something lighter, like fat-free sour cream, yogurt, strong coffee, or fruit juice, for the fat. (See the recipe below for Coconut Cream Cake.)

Summer Barbecue Recipe Makeovers

Here are four recipes perfect for summer barbecues, each lightened up.

Oven Fried Blue Cheese Olives

WebMD Weight Loss Clinic members: Journal as 2 servings olives OR 1 tablespoon nuts

Instead of filling the center with blue cheese, we're using a mixture of blue cheese and light cream cheese. And instead of deep frying the olives, we're coating them with canola cooking spray and baking in a hot oven.

15-ounce can jumbo pitted black olives, drained well on paper towels

1 1/2 ounces blue cheese

2 tablespoons light cream cheese

1/8 teaspoon black pepper

1/3 cup egg substitute

1 cup Italian-style dry bread crumbs

Canola cooking spray

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Coat a 9x9-inch baking dish with canola cooking spray. Add blue cheese, light cream cheese and black pepper to a small bowl and blend well with a fork. Using your fingers or a pastry bag, fill each olive with the blue cheese mixture.
Add egg substitute to a custard cup. Add breadcrumbs to a shallow bowl. Dip olives in the egg mixture then roll in the breadcrumbs to coat well. Place olives in prepared dish and coat the top with canola cooking spray.
Bake in center of oven for 12-13 minutes or until golden brown. Let them cool, and then serve.

Yield: 7 servings (6 olives per serving)

Per serving: 88 calories, 3.5 g protein, 7 g carbohydrate, 5 g fat, 1.7 g saturated fat, 2.6 g monounsaturated fat, 0.3 g polyunsaturated fat, 6 mg cholesterol, 1 g fiber, 530 mg sodium. Calories from fat: 51%.

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