300 15-Minute Low-Carb Recipes_ Hundreds of Delicious Meals That Let You Live Your Low-Carb Lifestyle and Never Look Back

Welcome to the world of 15-Minute Low Carb! I’ve known for a long time that, where cooking is concerned, I have a big edge over most of my readers. After all, I work at home. I can put something in the oven an hour or two before dinner and be here to tend to it if needed. I can simmer a pot of soup all afternoon. I’m here. Furthermore, at this writing I have no children—only an exceedingly good tempered and undemanding husband. In short, I never dash in the door at 6:15 p.m., after a long day at the office (and add a few errands on the way home into the bargain), to find people clamoring for me to get dinner on the table as soon as possible, and 5 minutes ago would be nice. I also never slog home after a 12-hour day, so tired and hungry that the very idea of having to spend an hour getting dinner on the table is enough to send me through the local fast-food drive-in, even without a family to feed. These are precisely the situations that this book is meant to help you cope with—all while keeping you on your low-carbohydrate diet and making your family happy. Just What Do I Mean By 15 Minutes? I mean exactly what I say—that from start to finish, these recipes take 15 minutes or less. I know this for certain because I set the stove timer when I started making them! Now, it is entirely possible to make these dishes take a little bit longer. For instance, thawing times for frozen foods are not included, so if you haven’t thought to take something out of the freezer in the morning, you’ll just have to tack on however long it takes your microwave to thaw your food. (This would be a good time to sit down and have a glass of dry wine or a light beer, and maybe put out a tray of veggies and ranch dressing for the troops.) For that matter, more than once I’ve run two or three minutes over my time limit because I couldn’t find the darned Worcestershire sauce or whatever. I take no responsibility for kitchen disorganization, and trust me, I know all about kitchen disorganization. However, once you have your ingredients located, the 15-minute count holds for these recipes, prep time included. This, of course, rules out a fair number of dishes. You’ll find no roasts in this book, no meat loaves—indeed, nothing that is cooked in an oven, because even if a dish requires less than 15 minutes in your oven, the preheating time is an obstacle. While there are wonderful soups, there are none of the traditional long simmered variety. Indeed, you’ll find that a few methods of cooking are used over and over, simply because they are speedy—sautéing, stir-frying, grilling, broiling, and microwaving. You’ll find that these recipes generally call for foods, especially meat and poultry, to be thinly cut, sliced, shredded, ground, or cubed. There’s no mystery why: The smaller the pieces, the faster the cooking time! Thinly cut pork chops —about 1/4 inch (6 mm) thick—will cook within our time limit. Inch-thick (2.5 cm) pork chops, however, will not, no matter how juicy and delicious they may be. So if you’re in doubt as you cut, chop, or slice your foods up, think “smaller is better.” You’ll also find that these recipes call for you to multitask. Quite often I’ll tell you to start one component of the dish cooking, then use that cooking time to cut up or measure and mix other ingredients. It’s not hard, really—it’s just making the best use of your time. Always give the directions a quick read before you go prepping everything in the ingredients list; you might find that there’s a perfect time for chopping up veggies and the like without adding a second to your overall preparation and cooking time. Low-Carb Menu Planning and One-Dish Meals In the vast majority of the dishes in this book, the biggest source of carbohydrates is vegetables. I trust we can agree that this is the healthiest possible source of carbohydrates, no? Vegetables, however, are more than that— they are the most flavorful source of carbohydrates in our diet, and by cooking our very low-carb proteins with a variety of vegetables, we can create a widely varied, delicious, exciting low-carb cuisine. However, this will sometimes mean that your carbohydrate allowance for a given meal is completely used up by the vegetables in your soup or skillet supper. This, then, becomes a classic one-dish meal, and a beautiful thing it is. What about My Carb-Eating Family? No reason not to serve a carbohydrate food on the side, if your family will be bereft without it. However, I must say that many of the quickest, easiest carbohydrate side dishes—instant mashed potatoes, quick-cooking rice, whackem-on-the-counter biscuits and rolls—are just as processed and nutrient- depleted as they can be and are also among the carbohydrates with the highest, most devastating blood sugar impact. Better to serve whole-wheat pita bread; corn or whole-wheat tortillas; one of the less damaging pastas (Jerusalem artichoke pasta, widely available at health food stores, has a relatively modest blood sugar impact and tastes like “regular” pasta); or potatoes you’ve cut into wedges, sprinkled with olive oil, and roasted in your toaster oven for about 15 minutes at 400°F (200°C, gas mark 6). If your family loves rice, well, brown rice is hugely superior to white rice, let alone Minute Rice, but it’s nobody’s idea of a 15-minute food. However, it reheats beautifully in the microwave. You could make a good-size pot of it over the weekend, stash it in the refrigerator, and use it later in the week. When you need it, just spoon out however much your family will need for the meal at hand, put it in a covered microwaveable container with a tablespoon (15 ml) or so of water, and nuke it on 70 percent power for a few minutes. Anyway, the point is that if your family simply insists on a concentrated carbohydrate, serve it on the side. And because you love them, make it one of the less processed, less damaging carbohydrates. What’s a “Serving”? I’ve gotten a couple of queries from folks who bought 500 Low-Carb Recipes and want to know how big a serving size is, so I thought I’d better address the matter. To be quite honest, folks, there’s no great technical determination going on here. For the most part, a “serving” is based on what I think would make a reasonable portion, depending on the carbohydrate count, how rich the dish is, and for main dishes, the protein count. You just divide the dish up into however many portions the recipe says, and you can figure the carb counts on the recipes are accurate. In some cases I’ve given you a range—“3 or 4 servings,” or whatever. In those cases, I’ve told you how many servings the carb counts are based on, and you can do a little quick mental estimating if, say, you’re serving 4 people when I’ve given the count for 3. Of course, this “serving” thing is flukey. People are different sizes and have different appetites. For all I know, you have three children under 5 who might reasonably split one adult-size portion. On the other hand, you might have one 17-year-old boy who’s shot up from 5’5” to 6’3” in the past year, and what looks like 4 servings to me will be a quick snack for him. You’ll just have to eyeball what fraction of the whole dish you’re eating and go from there. I’ve had a few people tell me they’d rather have specific serving sizes—like “1 cup” or the like. I see a few problems with this. First of all, it sure won’t work with things like steak or chops—I’d have to use weights, instead, and then all my readers would have to run out and buy scales. Secondly, my recipes generally call for things like, “1/2 head cauliflower” or “2 stalks celery.” These things vary in size a bit, and as a result yield will fluctuate a bit, too. Also, if one of my recipes calls for “1 1/2 pounds (680 g) boneless, skinless chicken breasts” and your package is labeled “1.65 pounds (750 g),” I don’t expect you to whack off the difference to get the portions exact. In short, I hate to have to weigh and measure everything, and I’m betting that a majority of my readers feel the same way, even if some do not. So I apologize to those who like exact measures, but this is how it’s going to be for now, at any rate. What’s With the Info about Stuff other than Carbs and Protein? You’ll notice that in places in this book I’ve included notes regarding other nutritional components of some of the recipes. Most notably, I’ve included the calorie count if it seems quite low and the calcium or potassium count if it seems quite high. The reason for this is simple: Many people are trying to watch their calories as well as their carbs, and calling their attention to those dishes in this book that are particularly low in calories seemed helpful. Likewise, my email tells me that the two nutrients low-carbers are most concerned they’re not getting are calcium and potassium. So letting you know when a recipe is a good source of these nutrients also seemed helpful. All of the recipes do, of course, include the carbohydrate, fiber, usable carbs, and protein counts. On the Importance of Reading Labels Do yourself a favor and get in the habit of reading the label on every food product, and I do mean every food product, that has one. I have learned from long, hard, repetitive experience that food processors can, will, and do put sugar, corn syrup, corn starch, and other nutritionally empty, carb-filled garbage into every conceivable food product. You will shave untold thousands of grams of carbohydrates off your intake over the course of a year by simply looking for the product that has no added junk. There are also a good many classes of food products out there to which sugar is virtually always added—the cured meats immediately come to mind. There is almost always sugar in sausage, ham, bacon, hot dogs, liverwurst, and the like. You will look in vain for sugarless varieties of these products. However, you will find that there is quite a range of carb counts because some manufacturers add more sugar than others. I have seen ham that has 1 gram of carbohydrates per serving, and I have seen ham that has 6 grams of carbohydrates per serving— that’s a 600 percent difference! Likewise, I’ve seen hot dogs that have 1 gram of carbohydrates apiece, and I’ve seen hot dogs that have 5 grams of carbohydrates apiece. If you’re in a position where you can’t read the labels—for instance, at the deli counter at the grocery store—then ask questions. The nice deli folks will be glad to read the labels on the ham and salami for you, and they can tell you what goes into the various items they make themselves. You’ll want to ask at the meat counter, too, if you’re buying something they’ve mixed up themselves—Italian sausage, marinated meats, or whatever. I have found that if I state simply that I have a medical condition that requires that I be very careful about my diet—and I don’t show up at the busiest hour of the week!—folks are generally very nice about this sort of thing. In short, become a food sleuth. After all, you’re paying your hard-earned money for this stuff, and it is quite literally going to become a part of you. Pay at least as much attention to your food shopping as you would if you were buying a car or a computer! Appliances for 15-Minute Meals There are a few kitchen appliances that you’ll use over and over to make the recipes in this book. They’re all quite common, and I feel safe in assuming that the majority of you have most, if not all, of these appliances. A microwave oven. Surely everybody is clear by now on how quickly these both thaw and cook all sorts of things. We’ll use your microwave over and over again to cook one part of a dish while another part is on the stove—to heat a broth, steam a vegetable, or cook the bacon that we’re going to use as a topping. It is assumed in these recipes that you have a microwave oven with a turntable; most of them have been made this way for quite a while now. If your microwave doesn’t have a turntable, you’ll have to interrupt whatever else you’re doing and turn your food a few times during its microwaving time to avoid uneven cooking. Also, be aware that microwaves vary in power, and my suggestions for power settings and times are therefore approximate. You’ll learn pretty quickly whether your microwave is about the same power as mine or stronger or weaker. One quick note about thawing things in the microwave: If you’re coming home and pulling something right out of the freezer, you’ll probably use the microwave to thaw it, and that’s fine. However, if you can think of what you’d like to eat ahead of time, you can thaw in the fridge or even on the counter. (Wrap things in several layers of old newspaper if you’re going to be gone for many hours and the day is warm. This will help keep things from going beyond thawing to spoiling.) A good compromise is to thaw things most of the way in the microwave and then let them finish at room temperature. You retain more juices this way, but sometimes there’s just no time for this. A blender. You’ll use this, or a stick blender, once in a while to puree something. You could probably use a food processor, instead. For that matter, while I use a standard-issue blender with a jar, there’s no reason not to use one of those hand-held blenders. A food processor. Chopping, grinding, and shredding ingredients by hand just doesn’t fit into our time frame in many cases. If you don’t yet own a food processor, a simple one that has an S-blade, plus a single disc that slices on one side and shreds on the other, shouldn’t set you back more than $50 to $75. An electric tabletop grill. Made popular by former Heavyweight Champion George Foreman, these appliances are everywhere. Mr. Foreman’s version is quite good, but you can buy a cheaper version for all of 20 bucks. The burger chapter of this book assumes you have one of these appliances, but you can cook your burgers in a skillet instead or in some cases under the broiler. However, since these methods don’t cook from both sides at once, you’ll spend a few more minutes cooking this way than you would with the grill. A slow cooker. What, I hear you cry, is a slow cooker doing in a book of fast recipes? Answering reader demand, that’s what! I’ve gotten bunches of requests for slow cooker recipes from readers. Obviously, none of the slow cooker recipes will be done in 15 minutes. Instead, they require 15 minutes or less prep time, and that’s including both the time to assemble the ingredients in the pot and the time to finish the dish and get it on the table when you get home. If you don’t have a slow cooker, consider picking one up. They’re not expensive, and I see perfectly good ones all the time at thrift shops and yard sales for next to nothing. Keep your eyes open.