Steak

Hubby's keto friendly steak with side salad and cheese chips, which are homemade and super easy to make if you have the time. 

Le hubby always cuts up my steak for me. Yum! Also, strawberry salad is quite delicious. I should add fruit to my salads more often!

Salami Sandwich

Om nom nom nom :D (for ME!)

For le hubby!! Kind of like a decontructed sandwich without the carbs..
There's roast beef, salami, cheddar, tomatoes, pickle, fried eggs and a dollop of may topped with ground black pepper.... keto friendly!

KBBQ at home!

Instead of hot pot day, we tried to do our own makeshift homemade korean bbq via cast iron over portable gas station. For side dishes, we have spicy daikon and spicy cucumber (store bought), sliced mushrooms, baby squids (the white stuff on the plate), chopped lettuce for salad but without the amazing sauce that usually accompanies it at restaurants and lots o sliced meats. Mmm-mmmmm.

Coconut Flour Biscuits

Le hubby was getting tired of the same old keto friendly foodies that I'd make for him to munch on, which was pretty much coconut bread and more recently the time-consuming custard. I felt bad for him so I surfed the net until I found something that had the potential to be delicious yet keto friendly. They are Coconut Flour Cheddar Drop Biscuits! Only, I made a couple of substitutions so it's more like Monterrey Jack Biscuits. heh.

All you need are 4 eggs, 1/4 cup melted butter with 1/4 tsp salt and 1/4 tsp Penzey's Bouquet Garni (or onion powder if following the original recipe), 1/3 cup coconut flour with 1/4 tsp baking powder and 3/4 cup shredded Monterrey Jack cheese. Yields 8 small biscuits.

Mix the melted butter/salt/spice with the scrambled eggs.

Stir in the coconut flour and baking soda mixture into the egg mixture. (If it looks kind of dry, feel free to add in 1 tbs of water).

Then, fold in the cheese.

Looks like dough.

I placed our biscuit dough in a muffin pan instead of dropping them on a cookie sheet. You want to spray or oil down any tin you are using really well...

Bake in preheated oven of 400°F for 15-20 minutes. When I first bit into the biscuit, it totally tasted like breakfast sausages. I think it was because I subbed the onion powder with the penzey's bouquet garni spice. It was kind of interesting at first, but easily grows on you. It was definitely a savory biscuit and le hubby enjoyed them! 

Homemade Custard

This is another one of hubby's creations where he likes to just "wing it." The custard is made with egg yolks, heavy whipping cream, sugar/splenda, a pinch of salt and vanilla extract. However, it takes a while to make for such a small serving... :( Welp, at least the hubby likes it and it comes out pretty darn good.

1 whole egg and 4 egg yolks, scrambled. Continuously stirred in a double boiler over medium to high heat. Add a pinch of salt. 

Continue to stir until slightly thickened as shown above.

Slowly stir in 1 cup of heavy whipping cream. Add in your sugar to desired sweetness. (We used about 2 tsp of splenda for a keto friendly version or 4 tsp of granulated white sugar). Add in 1 tsp vanilla extract. Stir, stir, stir until it's like super thick gravy.Then let it set in the fridge.

Comes out to be like pudding consistency, only it tastes like custard! :D Now we just need to figure out how to get rid of the lumps... maybe a hand blender or even a whisk? Btw, this is a 2 cup glass tupperware. And it took about a 1/2 hour of stirring to make this!!

Monterrey Jack and Spinach Quiche

I finally made a quiche with fresh spinach and let me tell you, it is just as delicious as the other quiches. You can truly sub the cheese with any you happen to have on hand! And I just love that it comes out wonderfully without a crust! It's also keto-friendly.

Here's what you need:
4 eggs
1 cup heavy whipping cream
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1 tablespoons coconut flour
1/4 tsp kosher salt
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/3 cup minced onions
7.5 ounces shredded monterrey jack cheese

0.5 ounces shredded parmesan cheese (we had a small block leftover)
6 ounces freshly chopped spinach

1. First off, preheat your oven to 350°F.

2. In a mixing bowl, mix the eggs, whipping cream, mayo, coconut flour, salt and garlic powder.

3. Then add each of the remaining ingredients, stirring each time.

4. Pour the egg mixture into your pan. (9-inch pie pan works super well too.)

5. Bake for 45 minutes - 1 hour or until top is golden brown.

Needless to say, it was DEE-licious!!

Turkey Stew

What to do with our turkey leftovers as we are getting pretty sick of turkey these days? Our answer: turkey stew.

First, we made a turkey broth by placing any turkey meats still attached to bone in a slow cooker and pretty much cooked it all day. Once the stock was ready, I strained out all the bones and meats so it was just soup in the pot. It was delicious and definitely tasted like turkey. I don't know why, but I guess I assumed all stock soups taste the same. 

Then, I separated all the turkey meat from the bones and threw the meat pieces back into the pot. I also added more turkey pieces (now all we have left are the two drumsticks), chopped onions and chopped carrots. (I would've added chopped celery but we didn't have any on hand and le hubby doesn't like'em).

Just cook in slow cooker until everything is soft and delicious. Serve with rice or pasta if not on a keto diet. Topped with spinach. It was mm-mmm good, especially on a cold night!

Keto friendly cheesecake

This is one of my favorite cheesecake recipe and le hubster really enjoyed it too when he was off keto, so I thought I'd try out a keto friendly version. It came out wonderfully. It's also crustless, but if you insist on a crust, the only keto friendly version I know can be found here (with a different cheesecake recipe).

The ingredients:
24 oz cream cheese
1/2 cup splenda (use less if you don't like really sweet cheesecakes)
3 tbs coconut flour
1/2 tsp finely grated lemon zest
1/2 tsp orange extract
3 large eggs
1 large egg yolk

Prepare a water bath for your cheesecake by filling a pan (that's bigger than your cheesecake pan) with water about a third to half way and place in oven of 275°F.

In a standing mixer, beat together cream cheese, splenda, coconut flour, lemon zest and orange extract until smooth. Add eggs and yolk, one at a time, beating on low speed until each ingredient is incorporated. Scrape bowl down between additions to ensure everything is mixed. Pour filling into pan.

Place your cheesecake into the now hot water bath and let it bake for 1-2 hours. It should look beautiful like this:

Le hubster really really really loved it. :D

Keto friendly munchies

Le hubster was busily working on New Year's Eve so when he came home, I thought I'd cheer him up with some delicious keto friendly munchies. :) There's sliced avocados, sprinkled with kosher salt, sliced smoked gouda, liverwurst, white cheddar, a small dose of hummus in the right bowl and a small dose of super flavorful whipped cream cheese with garlic and other spices in the left bowl. Needless to say, he was very happy and very full after. :D

Keto friendly Fried Chicken

We recently bought a small deep fryer. One of the things we've been wanting to try is frying our own version of KFC. Hubby decided to just give it a go and attempted a keto-friendly breading using coconut flour as the base. You'll need brined chickens to fry (we had thighs this time around), 1-2 egg whites, 1 cup coconut flour, 1 tbs kosher salt, 1/2 tbs chili powder, 1/2 tbs smoked paprika, ground pepper to season and lots of canoloa oil.

Dip chicken into scrambled egg whites. Set aside.

In a bowl, mix the coconut flour, salt, chili powder, smoked paprika and ground black pepper.

Dredged the chicken into your breading and ensure full coverage.

We saved the yolk to try and deep fry as well.

Breaded yolks.

Pour oil into fryer. Preheat to 375°F. Fry the chicken thighs for 10-12 minutes or until golden brown.

(We fried the egg yolks for 20-30 seconds. Cool before attempting to eat.)

Our fried chicken was totally amazeballs! Super juicy and super tender with a delicious crunch! Best of all, it is keto-friendly!!

Side note: We might need to look into how to get the breading to adhere better to the chicken. A lot of the breading fell to the bottom of the fryer. :(

Tangy (and Sweet) Flank Steak

We've got two flank steaks that have been slowly defrosting in the fridge (from the freezer) for about two days.

We used 1 cup light soy sauce and 1 cup apple cider vinegar.

For future use, I would use 1 cup light soy sauce and 2/3 cup apple cider vinegar OR 1 cup regular soy sauce and 1 cup apple cider vinegar.

(L-R) Black pepper, homegrown chilies and garlic powder.

Seasoned the flank steaks with garlic powder and freshly ground black pepper.

Poured in the soy sauce-apple cider vinegar marinade and added sliced chilies. (We removed the seeds so 1. it wouldn't be too spicy and 2. we're not cooking and eating the seeds.) If you prefer a sweet and tangy flank steak like most people, I would add about 1/4 cup of brown sugar into the marinade. 

The flank steaks were marinated overnight. 

Hubby cooked the flank steaks one at a time over a grilled cast iron pan. On high heat, he cooked one side for one minute, then turned the steak about 85 degrees and cooked it another minute to get a nice sear on the steak as it cooked. 

Cook the same way as above for the other side. Let rest for a couple of minutes.

Served with salad and messed up fried rice. (I messed up the fried rice by adding way too much red bell peppers. Erm, my bad.). The steaks were not bad at all. Just a bit too tangy, which is why I mentioned lowering the amount of apple cider vinegar earlier. And definitely tender and juicy! Bubby added brown sugar on our steaks afterwards and it was even better sweet and tangy for me and my pops.

Here is bubby's keto-friendly version. Sliced tangy flank steaks over a bed of garden salad and topped with chili paste. Mm-mmm good!

Perfected Coconut Bread

I finally took pictures of the coconut bread that's been perfected according to my hubby's liking; soft and moist. It's the same recipe as Coconut Bread #2 because I've been updating the amounts as I tweaked along, but never updated the pictures.

Here's the 6 scrambled eggs in a food processor.

This is what the mixture looked like when I mixed in the 1/2 cup butter (melted works fine too so long as it isn't warm/hot enough to cook the eggs), 1/2 tsp sea salt, 3 tsp splenda (optional) and the 3/4 cup coconut flour. It looked smooth and very wet.

This is what the mixture looked like after I mixed in the 1/2 cup of water. It looked kind of dry. 

Just spoon the batter into a loaf pan and bake in a preheated oven of 350°F for 40 minutes, then 250°F for about 15-20 minutes or until done.

A beautiful loaf comes out. I really should try doubling the loaf to see if I can get a full sized bread to come out.... one day.

A simple delicious joy for those on a keto diet. 

NY Strip Steak

It's been awhile since the hubby and I had a chunk of meat medium rare. We had food poisoning and it wasn't fun. We saw a pretty decent looking meat (a bit too lean, not enough marbling) for a pretty good price and decided to eat some steaks tonight all while in the back of our minds, we're praying not to get food poisoning again. 

We patted our steaks dry with a paper towel. Then seasoned the steaks with salt and pepper.

In a cast iron pan, on high heat, we melted about 2 tbs of butter. Then we placed one steak at a time to cook for a couple of minutes on each side. 

When the steak is flipped, we added just a touch more butter. Once the steak is done to your liking, simply place the steak on a wooden board, cover with foil, and let it rest for 10 minutes before cutting into it.

Serve with salad on the side :D Twas delicious!