Providing low-salt, low-sugar, low-fat foods at a barbecue takes planning. Barbecue favorites such as baked beans often contain saturated fat in the form of fatback chunks, bacon or pork belly, and sugar in the form of brown sugar, molasses, dark corn syrup or honey. Classic biscuit and cornbread recipes frequently use bacon grease or shortening. Potato, macaroni and kidney bean salads have high sodium and fat levels, eve though they use vegetable fats to make the mayonnaise each one contains.
Slim, Trim Baked Beans
Use dried pinto or navy beans, soaked overnight in unsalted water, to make your baked beans. Besides reducing the salt content of the final dish, leaving out any salt or vinegar in the recipe helps the beans cook faster, advises Linda Stradley, site owner of What's Cooking America. Once the beans soak for at least six hours, you can season them with parsley, paprika, onions and garlic. Replacing any fatback, bacon or pork belly with chunks of lean, pan-seared pork, turkey or chicken reduces the fat content. You can also omit the meat altogether and make vegetarian beans. Sweeten the beans with applesauce, plum sauce, apricot puree or fruit nectar instead of brown sugar or honey.
Grilled Vegetables
Using a spray bottle to apply olive oil instead of brushing oil onto vegetables or tossing them in oil will allow you greater control over their fat content. While charred vegetables do not form the cancer-causing polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and heterocyclic amines the way charred meat does, they can still pick up carcinogens from the smoke produced by any meat drippings that made it onto the coals, especially with the grill lid down. Corn on the cob, jalapeno peppers stuffed with cheese, sliced eggplant, and whole or stuffed onions and mushrooms all grill in 8 to 12 minutes or so, while quartered potatoes take up to 25 minutes to cook.
Salads
Potato, macaroni and kidney bean salad appear at nearly every barbecue, picnic or potluck for good reasons: they contain inexpensive ingredients and have high crowd appeal. Substituting plain, skim-milk yogurt or fat-free sour cream for mayonnaise reduces the calorie content of these salads by more than 600, which is about 60 calories per serving, when you compare their nutrition data from the USDA Nutrient Database for Standard Reference side by side, using the HealthAliciousNess.com food comparison tool.
Fresh Fruit
Watermelon, cantaloupe and honeydew, whole apples, pears, peaches and plums all make excellent, healthy side dishes. Carved watermelon baskets can hold a variety of melon balls, along with grapes, cherries and strawberries. Keeping the baskets on ice keeps fruit firm and tasty longer. Whole, unpeeled fruits stay safe all day, as long as they are not in direct sun.
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