1001 Low-Carb Recipes: Hundreds of Delicious Recipes... (PDF) (2024)

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1001LOW-CARBRECIPESHundreds of Delicious Recipes from Dinner to Dessert ThatLet You Live Your Low-Carb Lifestyle and Never Look BackDana CarpenderBestselling author 500 Low-Carb Recipes

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ContentsINTRODUCTIONCHAPTER 1 Ingredients You Need to Know AboutCHAPTER 2 BeveragesCHAPTER 3 Appetizers and SnacksCHAPTER 4 Eggs and DairyCHAPTER 5 BreadsCHAPTER 6 SaladsCHAPTER 7 SoupsCHAPTER 8 SidesCHAPTER 9 Fish and SeafoodCHAPTER 10 Poultry

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CHAPTER 11 BeefCHAPTER 12 Pork and LambCHAPTER 13 Sauces and SeasoningsCHAPTER 14 SweetsINDEX

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INTRODUCTIONWhat’s the hardest thing about your low-carb diet? And what’s the mostcommon reason that people abandon their low-carb way of eating and all thehealth benefits and weight loss that come with it? It’s boredom. After a fewweeks of scrambled eggs and bacon for breakfast, a hamburger with no bun forlunch, and a steak—no baked potato—for dinner, day after day, people get fedup and quit. They just can’t face a life of food monotony. Does this soundfamiliar?If you’ve been getting bored with your low-carb diet, this is the book for you.You’ll find dozens of exciting ways to vary a hamburger, a steak, pork chops,chicken, and even fish. You’ll find a wide variety of side dishes and salads.You’ll find snacks and party foods that you can eat without feeling like you’redepriving yourself. You’ll even find recipes for bread—really, truly bread—notto mention muffins, waffles, and pancakes. In short, this book has recipes for allsorts of things you never dreamed you could have on a low-carb diet.Did I come up with these recipes for you? Heck, no! I came up with theserecipes for me.Who am I? I’m a person who, through circ*mstances that surely could havehappened to anyone, has spent the past several years writing about low-carbohydrate dieting. In fact, I spent so much time answering questions for thecurious that I finally wrote a book, How I Gave Up My Low Fat Diet and LostForty Pounds! To supplement the book, I started an “e-zine”—an Internetnewsletter—for low-carb dieters, called Lowcarbezine! So for the past few years,through the wonders of the Internet, I’ve been writing and developing recipes fora growing audience of low-carb dieters around the world.I’ve always loved to cook, and I’ve always been good at it. My friends longago dubbed me “The God of Food.” So when low-fat, high-carb mania hit in the1980s, I learned how to make a killer low-fat fettuccine Alfredo, curried chickenand mixed grain pilau, black beans and rice, blue corn pancakes, low-fatcheesecake—you name it.And I got fat—really fat and sick and tired. Thank heavens, in 1995 I gotsmart and tried going low carb, instead. Within two days my energy levelsskyrocketed and my clothes were looser. It was overwhelmingly clear that this

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was the way my body wanted to be fed and that this was the way of eating thatwould make me well. I had set my foot upon a path from which there was noturning back; I was low carb for life.The only thing that nearly derailed me was a terrible sense of KitchenDisorientation. I had to discard the vast majority of my recipes when I droppedthe grains, beans, potatoes, and sugar from my diet. For the very first time in mylife, I’d walk into my kitchen and have no idea what to cook—and I had alwaysknown what to cook and how to put together a menu. It really was pretty scary,and it certainly was depressing. But I set out to become as good a low-carb cookas I had been a low-fat cook.What you hold in your hands is the end result of years and years of trial anderror, of learning what works and what doesn’t and of experimenting to find outwhich substitutes are yummy and which are just plain lame.This is not, for the most part, a gourmet cookbook, which means that therecipes you find here are recipes you’ll actually use. You’ll find a lot of fairlysimple recipes and a few more complex ones for special occasions. There’s lotsof family fare here—pork chops, meat loaf, burgers, and chicken. You’ll find lotsof meals you can cook on the stove top in a simple skillet and plenty of saladsyou can make ahead and stash in the refrigerator, ready to be pulled out andserved when you dash in the door at a quarter-to-dinnertime. You’ll find manyone-dish meals that are protein and vegetables combined, from main dish saladsto thick, hearty soups to casseroles. You’ll also find ethnic flavors from aroundthe world right alongside comfort foods you won’t believe are low carb!Why Is There Such a Wide Range of Carb Counts in the Recipes in This Book?If carbs are your problem, then they’re going to be your problem tomorrow, nextweek, next year, and even when you’re old and gray. You cannot think in termsof going on a low-carb diet, losing your weight, and then going off your diet—you’ll gain back every ounce just as sure as you’re born. You’ll also go back toblood-sugar swings, energy crashes, and nagging, insatiable hunger, not tomention all the health risks of hyperinsulinemia. In short, you are in this for life.So if you are to have any hope of doing this forever, you’re going to need toenjoy your food. You’re going to need variety, flavor, color, and interest. You’regoing to need festive dishes, easy dishes, and comfort foods—a whole world ofthings to eat.Because of this, I’ve included everything from very low-carb dishes, suitablefor folks in the early, very low-carb “induction” stage of their diet, to “splurge”dishes, which would probably make most of us gain weight if we ate them every

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day but which still have far fewer carbs than their “normal” counterparts.There’s another reason for the range of carb counts: Carbohydrate intolerancecomes in degrees, and different people can tolerate different daily carbohydrateintakes. Some of you, no doubt, need to stay in that 20-grams-a-day-or-lessrange, whereas many others—lucky souls—can have as much as 90 to 100grams a day and stay slim. This cookbook is meant to serve you all.Only you can know, through trial and error, how many grams of carbs you caneat in a day and still lose weight. It is up to you to pick and choose among therecipes in this book while keeping an eye on the carbohydrate counts provided.That way, you can put together menus that will please your palate and yourfamily while staying below that critical carb level.However, I do have this to say: Always, always, always the heart and soul ofyour low-carbohydrate diet should be meat, fish, poultry, eggs, healthy fats, andlow-carb vegetables. This book will teach you a boggling number of ways tocombine these things, and you should try them all. Don’t just find one or tworecipes that you like and make them over and over. Try at least one new recipeevery week; that way, within a few months you’ll have a whole new repertoire offamiliar low-carb favorites!You will, as I just mentioned, find recipes in this book for what are bestconsidered low-carb treats. Do not take the presence of a recipe in this book tomean that it is something that you can eat every day, in unlimited quantities, andstill lose weight. I can tell you from experience that even low-carb treats, if eatenfrequently, will put weight on you. Recipes for breads, cookies, muffins, cakes,and the like are here to give you a satisfying, varied diet that you can live withfor life, but they should not become the new staples of your diet. Do not try tomake your low-carbohydrate diet resemble your former Standard American Diet.That’s the diet that got you in trouble in the first place, remember?One other thought: It is entirely possible to have a bad reaction to a food thathas nothing to do with its carbohydrate count. Gluten, a protein from wheat thatis essential for baking low-carb bread, causes bad reactions in a fair number ofpeople. Soy products are problematic for many folks, as are nuts. Whey protein,used extensively in these recipes, contains lactose, which some people cannottolerate. And surely you’ve heard of people who react badly to artificialsweeteners of one kind or another. I’ve also heard from diabetics who get badblood-sugar spikes from eating even small quantities of onions or tomatoes.Yet all of these foods are just fine for many, many low-carb dieters, and thereis no way I can know which foods may cause a problem for which people. All Ican tell you is to pay attention to your body. If you add a new food to your dietand you gain weight (and you’re pretty certain it’s not tied to something else,

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like a new medication), or you find yourself unreasonably hungry, tired, or “off”despite having stayed within your body’s carbohydrate tolerance, you may wantto consider avoiding that food. One man’s meat is another man’s poison, and allthat.What’s a “Usable Carb Count”?You may or may not be aware of the concept of the usable carb count, sometimescalled the “effective carb count”; some low-carb books utilize this principle,whereas others do not. If you’re not familiar with the concept, here it is in anutshell:Fiber is a carbohydrate and is, at least in American nutritional breakdowns,included in the total carbohydrate count. However, fiber is a form ofcarbohydrate made of molecules so big that you can neither digest nor absorbthem. Therefore fiber, despite being a carbohydrate, will not push up your bloodsugar and will not cause an insulin release. Even better, by slowing theabsorption of the starches and sugars that occur with it, fiber actually lessenstheir bad influence. This is very likely the reason that high-fiber diets appear tobe so much better for you than “American Normal.”For these reasons, many (if not most) low-carb dieters now subtract the gramsof fiber in a food from the total grams of carbohydrate to determine the numberof grams of carbohydrates that are actually a problem. These are the “usable”carbs, or the “effective carb count.” These nonfiber grams of carbohydrates arewhat we count and limit. Not only does this approach allow us a much widervariety of foods, especially lots more vegetables, but it actually encourages us toadd fiber to things such as baked goods. I am very much a fan of this approach,and therefore I give the usable carbohydrate count for these recipes. However,you will also find the breakdown of the total carb count and the fiber count.Using This BookI can’t tell you how to plan your menus. I don’t know if you live alone or have afamily, if you have hours to cook or are pressed for time every evening, or whatfoods are your favorites. I can, however, give you a few pointers on what you’llfind here that may make your meal planning easier.There are a lot of one-dish meals in this book—main dish salads, skilletsuppers that include both meat and vegetables, and hearty soups that are a fullmeal in a bowl. I include these because they’re some of my favorite foods, andto my mind, they’re about the simplest way to eat. I also think they lend a fargreater variety to low-carb cuisine than is possible if you’re trying to divide up

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your carbohydrate allowance for a given meal among three or four differentdishes. If you have a carb-eating family, you can appease them by servingsomething on the side, such as whole wheat pitas split in half and toasted, alongwith garlic butter, brown rice, a baked potato, or some noodles. (Of course, Idon’t recommend that you serve them something like canned biscuits, Tater Tots,or Minute Rice, but that shouldn’t surprise you.)When you’re serving these one-dish meals, remember that most of yourcarbohydrate allowance for the meal is included in that main dish. Unless youcan tolerate more carbohydrates than I can, you probably don’t want to serve adish with lots of vegetables in it with even more vegetables on the side.Remember, it’s the total usable carb count you have to keep an eye on.Complement simple meat dishes—such as roasted chicken, broiled steak, or pan-broiled pork chops— with the more carbohydrate-rich vegetable side dishes.There’s one other thing I hope this book teaches you to do, and that’s breakout of your old ways of looking at food. There’s no law insisting that you eateggs only for breakfast, have tuna salad for lunch every day, and serve some sortof meat and two side dishes for dinner. Are you short on both time and money?Serve eggs for dinner a couple of nights a week; they’re fast, cheap, andunbelievably nutritious. Are you planing a family video night or game night?Skip dinner and make two or three healthy snack foods to nibble on. You justcan’t face another fried egg at breakfast? Throw a pork chop or a hamburger onthe electric tabletop grill and you’ve got a fast and easy breakfast. Are you sickof salads for lunch? Take a protein-rich dip in a snap-top container and some cutup vegetables to work with you.Helpful General Hints• If you’re not losing weight, go back to counting every carb. Rememberthat snacks and beverages count, even if they’re made from recipes inthis book. A 6-gram muffin may be a lot better for you and your waistlinethan a convenience store muffin, but it’s still 6 grams, and it counts!Likewise, don’t lie to yourself about portion sizes. If you make yourcookies really big, so that you only get two dozen instead of four dozenfrom a recipe, the carb count per cookie doubles, and don’t you forget it.• Beware of hidden carbohydrates. It’s important to know that thegovernment lets food manufacturers put “0 grams of carbohydrates” onthe label if a food has less than 0.5 gram per serving and “less than 1gram of carbohydrate” if a food has between 0.5 gram and 0.9 gram.Even some diet sodas contain trace amounts of carbohydrates! These

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amounts aren’t much, but they do add up if you eat enough of them. So ifyou’re having trouble losing, count foods that say “0 grams” as 0.5 gramand foods that say “less than 1 gram” as 1 gram.• Remember that some foods you may be thinking of as carb-free actuallycontain at least traces of carbohydrates. Eggs contain about 0.5 gramapiece, shrimp have 1 gram per 4-ounce portion, natural cheeses haveabout 1 gram per ounce, and heavy cream has about 0.5 gram pertablespoon. And coffee has more than 1 gram in a 10-ounce mug beforeyou add cream and sweetener. (Tea, on the other hand, is carb-free.) Ifyou’re having trouble losing weight, get a food counter book and use it,even for foods you’re sure you already know the carb counts of.