300 15-Minute Low-Carb Recipes (54 page)

Yield:
4 servings, each with 361 calories, 38 grams fat, 4 grams protein, 5 grams carbohydrate, trace dietary fiber, and 5 grams usable carb.

Salsa Nortena

This is my clone of a sauce I bought on a trip to Mexico. It's great on omelets, chicken, or pork chops and steaks.

8 fluid ounces (235 ml) tomato sauce

1/2 cup (130 g) natural peanut butter

1/2 teaspoon chopped garlic

1 teaspoon ground cumin

2 chipotle chiles canned in adobo

1/2 cup (120 ml) chicken broth or 1/2 cup (120 ml) water and 1/2 teaspoon chicken bouillon concentrate

salt to taste

Just assemble everything in your food processor or blender and run until it's smooth, scraping down the sides as needed. Store in a snap-top container in the fridge.

Yield:
8 servings, each with 106 calories, 8 grams fat, 4 grams protein, 6 grams carbohydrate, 2 grams dietary fiber, and 4 grams usable carb.

Mustard-Shallot Butter

This is great on steaks, burgers, chicken, or fish.

2 shallots

2 tablespoons (22 g) spicy brown or Dijon mustard

1 teaspoon lemon juice

1/2 cup (112 g) butter, softened

1/4 teaspoon salt (optional)

Put the shallots in your food processor with the S-blade in place and run until they're finely chopped. Add everything else and run until it's all well-mixed. The classical way to serve something like this is to chill it in a roll and then slice it. But for a fifteen minute meal, who's got that kind of time? Just scoop it into a little dish and let everyone spoon a dollop or two over their steak or burger.

Yield:
4 servings, each with 214 calories, 24 grams fat, 1 gram protein, 1 gram carbohydrate, trace dietary fiber, and 1 gram usable carb.

Bacon Butter

Take that, Dean Ornish! This is great on steaks or burgers, but try it melted over fried eggs, too.

4 slices bacon

1/2 cup (112 g) butter

1 teaspoon spicy brown or Dijon mustard

Lay your bacon on a microwave bacon rack or in a glass pie plate. Microwave on high for 4 to 5 minutes or until crisp.

In the meantime, throw your butter in your food processor and add the mustard. Pulse until well combined.

By now your bacon is done. Pull it out of the microwave and use your kitchen shears to snip it into the food processor in little bits. Pulse the food processor to mix in the bacon. The more you pulse, the finer the bacon bits will be; go by your own taste.

Yield:
4 servings, each with 120 calories, 13 grams fat, 1 gram protein, trace carbohydrate, trace dietary fiber, and virtually no usable carbs.

When you're pressed for time or just avoiding cooking, you're likely to use bottled salad dressing. No reason not to, so long as you stick to the low-carb varieties. However, I'm including two salad dressing recipes, the first because it's so unusual and it's used in a few recipes elsewhere in this book, and the second—a repeat from
500 Low-Carb Recipes
—because coleslaw is tremendously popular, yet so often sugary.

Guacamole Dressing

This is guacamole thinned out just enough to make a salad dressing—wonderful! Remember, the little black avocados are much lower in carbs than the big green ones. Do use this dressing up pretty quickly; you know how avocado changes color. If you must keep the leftovers for a day, store them in a tightly sealed container in the refrigerator.

1 ripe avocado

1/2 cup (115 g) plain yogurt

1/4 cup (60 ml) olive oil

1 tablespoon (15 ml) lime juice

1/2 teaspoon minced garlic or 1 clove garlic, crushed

1/4 teaspoon hot sauce

1/4 teaspoon salt

Cut the avocado in half, remove the seed, and scoop the flesh into a blender or food processor. Add the yogurt, olive oil, lime juice, garlic, hot sauce, and salt and blend until smooth.

Yield:
4 servings, each with 6 grams of carbohydrates and 2 grams of fiber, for a total of 4 grams of usable carbs (actually less if you use the
GO-Diet's
figure of 4 grams of carbohydrates per cup [225 ml] of plain yogurt) and 3 grams of protein.

A serving of this dressing packs more potassium than a banana!

Coleslaw Dressing

Virtually all commercial coleslaw dressing is simply full of sugar, which is a shame, since cabbage is a very low-carb vegetable. I just love coleslaw, so I had to come up with a sugar-free dressing! Make this up, pour it over a bag or two of pre-shredded coleslaw mix, and you'll have a great, versatile side dish in no time. Always try to make lots of coleslaw; it gets better over the day or two after it's made.

1/2 cup (115 g) mayonnaise

1/2 cup (115 g) sour cream

1 to 1 1/2 tablespoons (15 to 23 ml) apple cider vinegar

1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons prepared mustard

1/2 to 1 teaspoon salt or Vege-Sal

1/2 to 1 packet artificial sweetener, or Splenda

Just mix it all together, and you're all set!

Yield:
Assuming that you get 12 servings out of a batch, this dressing will add only 1 gram of carbohydrates to each serving, plus a trace of fiber and protein.

Cajun Dressing

This quantity is right for the
Cajun Chicken Salad
(see
page 174
), but feel free to quadruple it and keep it in the fridge. It would be good on a wedge of iceberg lettuce, for dipping shrimp in, or any manner of things.

1/4 cup (60 g) mayonnaise

1 teaspoon sugar-free ketchup (Make your own from the recipe on
page 309
or purchase, whichever you like.)

1 sugar-free bread and butter pickle slice

1 teaspoon Cajun seasoning

1/4 teaspoon onion powder

1/4 teaspoon chopped garlic

1 dash Worcestershire sauce

1 dash Tabasco sauce or other Louisiana-style hot sauce

Just run everything through the food processor until the pickle's chopped up. That's it!

Yield:
3 servings, each with 138 calories, 16 grams fat, trace protein, 2 grams carbohydrate, trace dietary fiber, and 2 grams usable carb.

Maple-Bacon Vinaigrette