Rocco DiSpirito's Advice For Making Rich Dishes Without Adding Extra Fat

For celebrity chefs like Rocco DiSpirito, there is a delicate balancing act between crafting decadent, over-the-top food for an audience of millions, and trying to ensure that people make health-conscious choices where possible and don't over-indulge. Along the way, DiSpirito faced his own challenges with his weight, but he brought something to his health and wellness journey that most dieters don't: the know-how to make low-fat foods taste rich while leaving out the fattening part.

DiSpirito cooked his way into America's heart when his reality TV show, "The Restaurant," hit our screens in 2003. With his youthful vitality and down-to-earth charm, he was made for television. However, by 2006, the celeb chef found himself carrying around 30 extra pounds. His doctor told him that medication or a diet and lifestyle change offered answers to the blood pressure and high cholesterol issues he faced, and the celeb chef chose a diet change.

He lost the extra weight by adopting the controversial Atkins Diet. The chef also decided on a gradual weight loss approach, and took simple steps such as replacing the sugar in his yogurt pops recipe with Splenda. In the process, he gained a healthier outlook and became known as more than just a celebrity chef. He's now a health and wellness champion who knows that the secrets to staying healthy, while eating well, lie in food substitutions and spices.

For someone like Rocco DiSpirito — who admits to loving the greasy deliciousness of bacon — finding viable substitutes for fat in recipes is paramount. Dietary fat plays an important role in recipes, and it functions as both the holder and bringer of flavor. In the former case, if fats are infused with spices and herbs or even the flavor of a meat, like beef, they'll keep the taste of those foods intact. Fats also bring their own flavors to the mix. And as far as creating a little something that lingers on the palate after dinner is through, that's something fat can do too.

Needless to say, taking fat out of the equation means removing much of the flavor in food, leaving recipes tasting drab. For a chef like Rocco DiSpirito, substitutions that replace both the flavor of fat and its feeling of richness in the mouth offer the best answer to the too-much-fat-in-food issue. Purées made from garlic, vegetables, and onions, as well as the flavors of ingredients like chicken stocks and nonfat yogurt, mimick the creamy thickness of cream and butter in his recipes, without adding too much extra fat.

Who knew that swollen nerves could trick your tastebuds enough to convince you that you're, in fact, consuming a rich and delish meal? It's a trick that not only works, it's one that Rocco DiSpirito swears by. When he wants to create the spicy, rich sensation on the tongue, the celebrity chef pulls the likes of cayenne, jalapeños, and red pepper flakes from his spice rack and pantry. When it comes to the best way to season food for weight loss, those count among the chef's go-to spices.

This trick would work in tandem with another trick that the celeb chef favors: negative calorie cooking. Foods like leafy green vegetables, tomatoes, celery, mushrooms, and other similar foods come chock full of water, the truly negative calorie food. That is, water has zero calories, and you could burn up to one calorie ingesting it. By extension, foods with a high water content bring the same concept to a diet — even if their calorie-burning properties are exaggerated somewhat.

Spicing these foods up gives you triple the benefits. They're low in calories and puff up the nerves in the mouth, convincing you into thinking you've eaten something fatty. And spices like DiSpirito uses to flavor his cooking, including veggies, also speed up the metabolism, encouraging the body to shed more pounds while eating the same amount of food.