300 15-Minute Low-Carb Recipes (2 page)

All of the recipes do, of course, include the carbohydrate, fiber, usable carbs, and protein counts.

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 them-selves—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!

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.

There are just a few techniques that will help you get these recipes done in 15 minutes or less.

The Tilted Lid.
Many of these recipes are cooked in a skillet. Covering the skillet will speed up cooking, but it also holds in moisture, which is not always what we want. Therefore, I sometimes use the “tilted lid” technique: I put the lid on the skillet but tilt it slightly to one side, leaving about a 1/2-inch (1.3 cm) gap. This allows steam to escape, while still holding some heat in the pan. When I refer in a recipe to putting a “tilted lid” on the pan, this is what I mean. This is a good technique to use any time you want to speed up a skillet recipe without holding in moisture.

Pounding Meat.
It takes only a half a minute or so to beat a boneless, skinless chicken breast or a piece of pork loin until it's 1/2- to 1/4- (13 to 6 mm) inch thick all over, and it cuts a good 5 to 10 minutes off the cooking time—a worthwhile tradeoff. Pounding meat is very easy to do. You just put your chicken breast or piece of pork loin or whatever in a heavy zipper-lock plastic bag, press out the air, and seal it. Then, using any heavy object—a hammer, a dumbbell, or an actual meat-pounding device—you pound the sucker all over
with barely controlled ferocity (you want to use a tiny bit of control, or you'll pound right through it) until it's a thin sheet of meat. This technique also tenderizes the meat nicely. Once you've done this a time or two, you'll wonder why you haven't been doing it all along.

Guar or Xanthan Shaker.
You'll find a description of these ingredients a little further on—they're thickeners, and they're very useful for replacing flour and cornstarch in gravies and sauces.

In
500 Low-Carb Recipes
, I recommended always putting guar or xanthan through your blender with part of the liquid to be thickened, so you could avoid lumps. You may now happily forget that technique. Instead, acquire an extra salt shaker and fill it with guar or xanthan. This will live next to your stove. Whenever you want to thicken a dish, simply sprinkle guar or xanthan over the top of the dish to be thickened, a little at a time, stirring madly all the while (preferably with a whisk). Stop when the dish is just a little less thick than you'd like it to be, as these thickeners will thicken a little more on standing. This works nicely, is worlds easier than transferring stuff into the blender, and doesn't leave you with a blender to wash!

Ice Cube Preservation.
This isn't a cooking technique, it's a money-saving technique. A lot of these recipes call for small quantities of things which, in large quantities, would make the dish too high-carb for us—1/2 cup (123 g) of spaghetti sauce, 1/4 cup (60 g) of canned crushed pineapple, 2 tablespoons (32 g) of tomato paste, that sort of thing. I don't know about you, but I'm not about to let the leftovers of those ingredients grow fur in the back of my fridge, only to be thrown away. So I spoon the remainder of the contents into ice cube trays, freeze the resulting spaghetti sauce cubes or pineapple cubes or whatever, pop 'em out, and store 'em in zipper-lock bags in the freezer. That way, the next time I want to use that ingredient, I can thaw just the little bit I need.

In this book, I have made more liberal use of convenience foods than I normally do. As to the availability of these ingredients, I figured if I could get it in Bloomington, Indiana—a southern Indiana town of 65,000 people—it would be available to a majority of my readers, at least in the United States. You will find that these recipes call for all of the following.

Bagged salad.
Where in
500 Low-Carb Recipes
I would have told you to shred half a head of cabbage, in this book I tell you to use bagged coleslaw mix.
Instead of washing fresh spinach (which can often take three or four washings), I've used bagged baby or triple-washed spinach. Mixed greens, European blends—all kinds of bagged salads show up in this book.

Bottled salad dressings.
I've used bottled vinaigrette, ranch, Italian, blue cheese, and Caesar dressings in these recipes. These varieties of salad dressings are pretty reliably low-carb, but read the labels to find the brand with the lowest carb count. And this may be just my bias, but I think Paul Newman's salad dressings are excellent.

Chili garlic paste.
This is actually a traditional Asian ingredient, consisting mostly, as the name strongly implies, of hot chilies and garlic. This seasoning saves lots of time when we want a recipe to be both hotly spicy and garlicky. Chili garlic paste comes in jars and keeps for months in the refrigerator. It's worth seeking out at Asian markets or particularly comprehensive grocery stores.

Crushed pork rinds.
You can make crushed pork rinds very easily: Simply pour a bag of pork rinds into your food processor with the S-blade in place and run it until you have something the consistency of bread crumbs. Store in a tightly closed container in the refrigerator. I like to have both plain and barbecue-flavor crushed pork rinds on hand.

Frozen vegetables.
Because they're already prepped and ready to go, frozen vegetables save a great deal of time in some of these recipes—for instance, trimming and cutting up green beans would take up most of our 15-minute time limit, while you can pour a bag of frozen green beans into a microwaveable container and start them cooking in less than a minute.

I've also used some vegetable blends in this book. This is a great way to get a variety of vegetables in a dish with no extra work.

Jarred Alfredo sauce.
This is a nice ingredient for making simple meat and vegetables into a skillet supper, and it's usually lower carb than tomato-based spaghetti sauce. Read your labels, of course, to find the lowest-carbohydrate brand.

Jarred, grated gingerroot.
Grated gingerroot is an extraordinary spice. Dried, ground ginger is no substitute, and for this reason I have long kept a gingerroot in a zipper-lock bag in my freezer, ever-ready for grating or mincing. However, this does take at least a few precious minutes. Fortunately, grated gingerroot in oil, put up in jars, is now widely available. I have used this prepared grated gingerroot in testing these recipes and like it so much that I may keep on using it now that this book is done!

If you can't find grated gingerroot in jars, I see no reason not to buy a fresh gingerroot, peel it, run it through the shredding blade of your food processor, are then chop the resulting shreds still further with your S-blade. (Don't grate up more gingerroot than you can use in a few weeks, though; it's best when it's fresh.) Spoon the resulting paste into a jar with a tight lid, add enough canola, peanut, or sunflower oil to cover, and store in the fridge. This will give you grated gingerroot at your fingertips.

Jarred minced garlic.
Truth to tell, I greatly prefer fresh garlic, freshly crushed, over any possible substitute. But jarred, minced garlic in oil is very popular and widely available—and it is, no doubt, quicker than crushing fresh garlic, by at least a minute or two. Therefore, I have used jarred, minced garlic in these recipes. I have, however, always given the equivalent measure of fresh garlic, should you, like me, prefer it enough to be willing to take the extra few seconds.

Low-carbohydrate tortillas.
La Tortilla Factory makes these, and they're becoming easier and easier to find—I know of at least a few stores here in Bloomington that carry them. (For you locals, they include Bloomingfoods, Marsh, and Kroger.) If you can't find these locally, you could ask your local health food store to special-order them for you. There are also a reasonable number of “e-tailers”—online retailers—who offer these.

Low-sugar or no-sugar barbecue sauce and ketchup.
There are a number of these on the market; look around or check the e-tailers. However, I have also included recipes for both of these in the
Condiments, Sauces, Dressings, and Seasonings
chapter of this book (see
page 289
). They're very useful to have on hand.