Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
KETO COOKING FOR ONE (OR TWO)
I have never focused much on small-batch recipes, keto or otherwise. Some things, like omelets or chops, automatically come in single-serving sizes. But my husband and I are not averse to leftovers around here; I've never bothered trying to make, say, chili or meatloaf in small batches. Some things, such as pot roast, defy single-serving batches, while others, like baked custard, are just too much time and trouble to bother with single-serving batches.
So working on this book, I came to a new realization: Some things are made in big batches because that's the way the ingredients are packaged. You can buy a head of cabbage — heck, my grocery store offers half- heads — or a bag of coleslaw mix, but either one is going to make a lot more than one or two servings of slaw. If you're like me and will happily eat slaw on the side with every darned thing for four days straight, this will work out for you. On the other hand, if you want slaw now, but not tomorrow and Wednesday, you're going to have leftover cabbage, which means either making another cabbage dish within a few days, or having leftover cabbage age into a swampy microclimate in your refrigerator — and if you let the rest of an ingredient go bad, you've wasted money. Same thing with a 1-pound (445 g) package of ground beef, an 8-ounce (225 g) container of mushrooms, a bag of fresh cauli-rice, and so on.
I have made some assumptions about the keto single, chief among them that you are busy and want your recipes to be fairly quick and easy. I also assume that you would prefer not to heat up your oven if you can avoid it — it just seems silly to me to spend the time and the energy to heat up the oven for one serving. Accordingly, most of these recipes call for stove-top cooking, and especially for skillet-cooking. I have only used the oven when I couldn't work out a quicker and easier method of cooking.
Speaking of skillets: If you haven't tried the new ceramic nonstick skillets, you should. I recommend them highly, especially for eggs. A 7-inch to 8-inch ceramic nonstick skillet with a good heavy bottom will serve you endlessly.
Here are some strategies I've hit on in writing this book that will help you, too:
• Find a grocery store with a good salad bar. This allows you to buy just a cup (235 ml) of cauliflower, baby spinach, broccoli, sliced mushrooms; a tablespoon's worth of shredded carrot, enough sliced onion to make a tablespoon or two minced, a half dozen cherry tomatoes — in short, just what you need.
• Look for a grocery or specialty food store with a Mediterranean bar, one with a wide array of olives, marinated feta, marinated mushrooms, bocconcini (little balls of marinated high-quality mozzarella), roasted red peppers — all kinds of stuff that fits a keto plan. I have fallen in love with a blend of feta in ¼-inch (6 mm) dice, stuffed green olives, and kalamata olives, all marinated together in olive oil and spices. Useful in so many ways!
• Look for vegetables you can buy in small quantity. Does your grocery store carry cut-up cauliflower and broccoli that lets you buy only as much as you like? Can you buy a small tub of celery sticks so you don't have to buy a whole head of the stuff? (Sadly, my nearest salad bar lacks diced celery.)
• Buy a jar of minced garlic. Why? Because single-serving recipes often need only a half clove, leaving you with the other half. With jarred minced garlic you can simply use ¼ teaspoon.
• Stock up on plain frozen vegetables. (Skip the ones with sauces and other carb-laden additives.) You will be able to keep a few varieties in the house, use only what you need, and stash the rest for later. I was a very happy girl when I discovered my Aldi carries frozen cauli-rice, having had some fresh cauli-rice rot on me. Frozen pureed cauliflower, affectionately known to keto dieters as "fauxtatoes," is now widely available, and makes more sense for the keto single than making it fresh.
• Buy little vegetables. I've been buying bags of "baby" cucumbers; one sliced baby cuke makes about ½ cup (120 ml). I've also discovered Campari tomatoes, vine tomatoes that are about double the size of a cherry tomato, just the right size for a single-serving omelet or salad. They are also called cocktail tomatoes. (You can also grab a few cherry tomatoes from the salad bar and slice 'em, but these are better.)
• Don't miss out on enjoying asparagus, even though it is only sold in 1-pound (455 g) bundles; it's so wonderful and so low in carbs that it's a shame to skip it. Trim the very bottom of the stalks and "plant" your asparagus in a glass with an inch or two (2 to 5 cm) of water in it; it should stay crisp long enough for you to finish it.
• Plan a couple of meals using a particular ingredient within a few days of one another; for example, a mushroom omelet on Sunday and a burger smothered in sautéed mushrooms on Tuesday. Or have coleslaw at Saturday lunch and a stir-fry with cabbage for dinner on Monday.
• Look for meats that come pre-portioned — 6- to 8-ounce (170 g to 225 g) T-bone, pork shoulder steaks, packages of just six chicken wings. You may well pay a little more than if you bought in bulk, but throwing away food that has gone bad is expensive. Depending on your freezer space, things that come frozen in portions are very helpful. I keep a bag of 8-ounce (225 g), 100 percent beef hamburger patties in my freezer. Ditto individually wrapped and frozen 6-ounce (170 g) salmon fillets and frozen shrimp.
• Purchase cheese in single servings. Consider Babybel, Swiss Knight, and other individual cheese bites. You can buy shredded cheddar and often crumbled blue cheese or feta from the salad bar. This avoids moldy cheese. (Two Babybel cheese snacks, shredded, are just right for one omelet.)
• Look for single-serving guacamole in tubs with peel-off tops. These let you have guacamole any time you like without the worry of the leftovers turning brown.
• Find a friendly butcher. I swear, every butcher I've ever met has been cheerful and supportive — and a big help! A Nice Meat Guy will cut you a single portion of that salmon or trout fillet, sell you just a few slices of bacon — although if you eat bacon as often as most keto dieters, you might as well buy a pound — a single pork chop or chicken breast, just one or two feta-spinach chicken sausages or 6 ounces (170 g) of ground chuck. A supermarket with a full-service meat department is a better place for grocery shopping than a Target or a Walmart.
• Seek out packaged genuine bacon bits. I have called for them in several recipes. You can cook bacon fresh if you prefer, but if you just want enough for a topping, packaged bacon bits are easier. Refresh them by spreading them on a plate and giving them 20 to 30 seconds in the microwave.
• Choose rotisserie chicken if, like me, you are not a fan of the boneless, skinless chicken breast, preferring your chicken bone-in and skin-on. No, they're not single-serving. But you can have a leg and thigh on one night, then make a chicken salad or two later in the week, or just microwave a serving to reheat. Check the seasonings: "traditional savory" and "lemon pepper" are usually fine, but barbecue is likely to have added sugar. If you're not sure, ask at the deli counter.
• Find health food stores and big grocery stores that sell nuts in bulk, letting you scoop out only what you need.
• Buy tomato paste in a tube rather than a can. Tomato paste adds a nudge of tomato flavor to foods, but it is high enough in carbs that you're unlikely to use up a whole can at a time. If you buy it in a tube, you can use just a teaspoon or two, cap it, and throw it back in the fridge.
• Remember ice cube trays? They are great when you use only part of a can of coconut milk or tomatoes or the like. Unless you're going to use the rest up pretty quickly, your best bet is to freeze the remainder in an ice cube tray, pop them out, and store them in a resealable bag or snap-top container. Thaw as needed.
• Keep pork rinds from getting stale by buying only single-serving bags of pork rinds, or get a good chip clip and use it. (Unpaid plug: I buy Clancy's pork rinds, the Aldi house brand, by the case. They're excellent quality and the price is right.) Pork rinds are not only a zero-carb snack, they are a useful ingredient in keto cooking. They are also highly nutritious. While buying them in single-serving bags can be pricey, leftover pork rinds will as soon go stale as look at you.
• Use fresh parsley and cilantro for flavor. Parsley keeps reasonably well in the fridge; I usually use it all up before it goes bad. Cilantro, on the other hand, is ephemeral. If you're a fan, you'll probably have to resign yourself to discarding the last third or so of each bunch. It's worth it to me. Some people mince fresh herbs in oil and freeze them in ice cube trays. If you find yourself throwing away a lot of limp herbs, this might be an interesting avenue to explore.
• Don't make yourself crazy trying to plan a main course and a side dish. If you're sticking to just a few grams of carb per meal, it's hard to do. Plan a side dish when you're having a plain protein — a steak, a burger, a chop, rotisserie chicken, or the like. Or don't. I've eaten just a hunk of meat many times, with no apparent harm.
• Invest in a compact food processor. I have a big ol' professional-grade Cuisinart, but when writing this book, I found myself using the little Black and Decker Shortcut my mom gave me for Christmas in 1986 (and which still works nicely, thank you). The small quantities of ingredients we're using often don't make contact with the S-blade of a bigger food processor.
• Don't heat up the oven for just one serving. I use my skillets far more than any other pans. I also use the broiler a lot; it is quick and simple.
• Steam small amounts of vegetables in a microwave. I have had to relearn this skill for these small quantities. It takes only 1 to 2 minutes to cook 4 to 5 stalks of asparagus or 1 cup (100 g) of cauliflower. If you're anti-microwave, you can steam, warm, or melt things on your stove, of course.
A FEW INGREDIENTS
Although most of the ingredients used in this book are familiar, a few call for a bit of explanation.
While grass-fed meat and dairy, pastured eggs, and other premium ingredients are all well and good, they are not essential to a keto diet. You can and will get the benefits of being in ketosis with grocery store meats, eggs, cheese, and butter. If you have the money to buy the superior foodstuffs, consider them a worthwhile investment. But it would be a big mistake and a darned shame to decide you cannot go keto because you can't afford to buy all super "clean" ingredients.
Regarding Sweeteners
It is entirely possible to get into a state of dietary ketosis while consuming artificial sweeteners; people have been doing it ever since Dr. Atkins published Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution, commonly referred to in the community as "Atkins '72." Dr. Atkins was just fine with saccharin, then the only artificial sweetener available in the US. Come to think of it, the medical community was advocating for it before then — the ketogenic diet for seizure control was first used in the 1920s; saccharin had been around for decades by then and was used.
Because many of my readers prefer it, I mostly use stevia, monk fruit, and erythritol — natural sweeteners — in my recipes. But if you like sucralose and products containing it, it certainly can be part of a keto diet, as can other artificial sweeteners.
Sugar Alcohols
ERYTHRITOL AND MALTITOL
Erythritol is part of the sugar alcohol or polyol class of sweeteners: long-chain carbohydrates difficult for the human gut to digest or absorb. Maltitol is the polyol most commonly used in commercial sugar-free sweets, and the manufacturers like to suggest on their labels that you may discount it entirely from your net carb count. This is optimistic, at best. Roughly half of maltitol is, indeed, absorbed and must be considered part of your daily carb count.
Maltitol is also notorious for causing digestive upset, from what we will delicately call social embarrassment to severe diarrhea, depending on the dose. I know that I can get away with one to two sugar-free Reese's cups in a day, but more will make me unpleasant to be around.
These two drawbacks have caused many people to shun the sugar alcohols entirely. However, there is one sugar alcohol that is passed through the human body unchanged and has little-to-no gut effect: erythritol. This has made it a real comer on the sugar-free sweetener market.
However, erythritol comes with its own challenges. It is endothermic, meaning that it absorbs energy when it gets wet, creating a cooling sensation in your mouth. It is only 70 percent as sweet as sugar. Also, used in quantity, it can taste harsh.
Still, erythritol lends textural effects that can't be achieved with stevia, sucralose, or monk fruit.
ERYTHRITOL BLENDS
For quite a while, I have combined erythritol with liquid stevia, monk fruit, or sucralose. Happily, there are now blends of erythritol with stevia or monk fruit available; I like Virtue Sweetener and Natural Mate, both blends of erythritol and monk fruit. (Natural Mate also makes an erythritol-stevia blend and an erythritol-sucralose blend.) The most widely available blend is Truvia, made of erythritol and stevia. All three of these blends are roughly equivalent in sweetness, about twice as sweet as sugar. (Virtue Sweetener's label says that it is three times as sweet as sugar, but this is not my experience.) I call for these blends extensively in this book; Truvia is available in grocery stores, while Virtue and Natural Mate are, like everything these days, available online.
If you prefer, you can use straight erythritol and combine it yourself with liquid stevia, monk fruit, or sucralose. Because the blends are sweeter than straight erythritol, if you do this, you must use the same quantity of erythritol as I have called for of the blended products, then use the liquid stevia, monk fruit, or sucralose to equal that same quantity of sugar. To illustrate: I use liquid stevia that runs about 6 drops = 1 teaspoon sugar in sweetness, and about ¼ teaspoon = ¼ cup sugar in sweetness. So, if a recipe calls for ¼ cup of Natural Mate, Virtue, or Truvia, you would use ¼ cup of erythritol plus ¼ teaspoon of liquid stevia. Please note that this requires you to know the sweetness equivalence of your liquid sweetener!
Because, unlike the other sugar alcohols or polyols, erythritol passes through the body unchanged and completely unabsorbed, it is the one carbohydrate other than fiber that I consider legitimate to omit from net carb counts. Accordingly, the nutritional stats for this book do not account for erythritol.
LIQUID SWEETENERS
In recipes where all that is needed is a little sweetness, I use liquid sweeteners alone, because they are carb-free. Often I use flavored liquid stevias; I keep NOW and SweetLeaf brands on hand in chocolate, vanilla, English toffee, orange, and lemon. Again, these brands run 6 drops = 1 teaspoon sugar, 18 drops = 1 tablespoon sugar, ¼ teaspoon = ¼ cup sugar. If you dislike stevia, you can use an equivalent amount of liquid sucralose or monk fruit and add a few drops of flavoring extract.
Yes, you can use sucralose on a keto diet. Use the liquid instead of the granulated version, which contains maltodextrin filler. I like EZ Sweetz brand. You can also get plain liquid stevia, liquid monk fruit, and stevia/monk fruit blends, all carb-free.
It is imperative that you know the sweetness equivalence of your sweetener! If you're not sure, check the manufacturer's website, or call and ask. (EZ Sweetz liquid sucralose comes in two concentrations; check the sweetness equivalence if you purchase it.)
Chia Seeds
Chia seeds are widely touted as a "superfood." I don't know about that, but they're nutritious, with good fats, a bit of protein, and the vast majority of their carbohydrates in the form of fiber. They're also a good source of calcium, iron, thiamin, niacin, and zinc.
Because of all their fiber, chia seeds swell up when put in liquid, acting as a thickener. I've used them in a couple of pudding recipes. Those puddings have little "pearls" in them, much like tapioca pudding.
Chia seeds are available at any health food store and many grocery stores. Aldi is carrying them now! Keep 'em dry, and they'll keep for months.
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Excerpted from "The Keto for One Cookbook"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Dana Carpender.
Excerpted by permission of The Quarto Group.
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