lunch

Keto Steak N’ Shake Frisco Sauce – Copycat

| Jem Dawson

Recipe Notes

This recipe mimics the Frisco sauce you’d get on a Steak N’ Shake restaurant burger. It’s pretty spot on other than being a little bit thinner, probably because it lacks the sugar that normally thickens sauce. But the flavor is all there.

Nutrition 

Dirty Keto Alert – This recipe is largely about convenience, so I use the G Hughes brand of sauces even though the ingredients in them are not the cleanest. They contain soybean oil, canola oil, and natural flavors. Natural flavors is basically a mystery ingredient. Primal kitchen used to sell Thousand Island sauce but I haven’t seen it in quite a while.

Keto Steak N Shake Frisco Sauce Copycat 

Ingredients

Instructions

  1. Put all of the ingredients into a storage container and mix. Stores for quite a while, look at the earliest expiration date on your ingredients and that should give you a good idea.

🍕 Protein Power Pizza (Chicken Crust Keto Pizza) 🍕

| Jem Dawson

Recipe Notes

If you’ve ever wanted a pizza that you could eat all you want of on keto, this is it! With a chicken crust this pizza will fill you up quickly with almost ALL of the carbs coming just from the toppings. This isn’t your usual doughy, bready pizza crust, but instead the crust primarily serves as a vehicle for the toppings and helps fill you up. This is a great meal for meal preppers as it freezes well and just a little bit is very filling while not taking up too much freezer space. 

Short on time? Try my Microwave Pizza recipe instead!

Ingredient Notes

Ground Chicken & Eggs – Get what you can afford. Any meat is healthier than eating carby junk. Nice to haves are organic and humanely raised. If you want to go the extra mile, you can find a list of farms and stores that focus on high quality animal products on http://eatwild.com/

Bacon – Look for sugar-free bacon if possible. Bacon doesn’t usually have a lot of sugar in it, but it is needless carbs. I really like Applegate Organic’s No Sugar Bacon because it’s also humanely raised.

Pizza Sauce – Find a pizza sauce that doesn’t have sugar added. Know that sugar can come with a lot of different names. If you see an ingredient and you don’t know what it is, look it up or look for something with simpler ingredients. My favorite is Rao’s Pizza sauce.

Shredded Cheese – The most keto option would to be to shred your own cheese, as most store-bought cheese is coated in something like potato starch to keep the cheese separated. That said, it’s not really *that* many carbs, just know it’s there if you end up needing to try to cut your carbs down even more or trying to find ways to reduce inflammation further. The most common cheese for pizza is mozzarella, but I actually like some of the premade pizza blends too. My favorite is the Whole Foods Pizza Cheese which is a mix of Mozzarella, Provolone, and Asiago.

Sliced Ham – Don’t buy anything “honey” flavored. Most of the time it’s not even honey but sugar! Try to read the label and get something without sugar, high fructose corn syrup, honey, dextrose, or other sneaky words for sugar that mostly end in -ose. If you’re not sugar what an ingredient is, google it!

Equipment

  • Large pan with highish sides – I use a large 15.5inch  round pizza pan with no holes, but really any large baking pan with high enough sides to keep everything in will work. A deep dish pizza pan makes things easy if you have one, but most people will probably end up using a casserole pan. Look for glass or lead-free ceramic pans if possible, as the more common nonstick pans are often made with plastics (like silicone), which has a negative effect on your hormones. 
  • Parchment Paper – Maybe your pan is different, but I haven’t found a pan that’s truly nonstick. Line your pan with this and you’ll have no problem getting yourself a slice.
  • Pizza Cutter – You can definitely just use a butter knife, but if you want to make things quick it’s nice to have a pizza cutter on hand. 
  • Glass bowl – A plastic-free container for mixing your ingredients together and microwaving the butter.

Pair With

Keto Protein Power Pizza

For the crust

  • 1lb Ground Chicken
  • 3 Eggs
  • 1 Cup Parmesean Cheese
  • 2 Tablespoons Italian Seasoning
  • 2 Tablespoons Butter

For the toppings

  • 8oz Bacon
  • Pepperoni
  • Ground Pork
  • Sliced Ham (Try to get sugar free)

You can top your pizza as you prefer it.

  • Sugar-Free Pizza Sauce (I use 1 jar of Rao’s)
  • Shredded Cheese – Mozzarella or Pizza Blend (I usually use 3-4 8oz bags for a very cheesy pizza)
  • 1 Pack of Sugar-Free Bacon
  • Pepperoni
  • Ground Pork
  • Italian Seasoning
  • Ham Slices
  1. Cook the toppings first. Start with the bacon. You’ll want it fairly crispy because it will need to be crumbled for the top of the pizza. You can cook bacon in the microwave to save some time while you cook the pork crumbles
  2. In a large pan cook the ground pork stovetop until browned. Add some italian seasoning to taste. This replaces the sausage crumbles you normally see on pizza.
  3. Set your bacon and ground pork in the fridge to keep it at a safe temperature while you cook the crust
  4. Preheat your oven to 400F
  5. Line your baking pan with Parchment Paper
  6. Microwave your butter until it’s fully melted. If you’re using a glass mixing bowl you can just microwave it in the bowl you’ll mix your crust up in to use less dishes.
  7. Add the rest of your crust ingredients to the mixing bowl with the butter. Ground chicken, eggs, parmesan, and italian seasoning. Mix it well until the seasoning is evenly distributed. It will feel somewhat doughy.
  8. Spread the crust mixture flat onto your baking pan and flatten it to fill the dish using your fingertips. Try to get it as even as possible.
  9. Bake in the oven for 10 minutes or until the chicken is done. The edges of the pizza will be browned. If you poke the pizza with a fork any juices that run out should be clear.
  10. While you’re cooking the crust, crumble the cooked bacon into pieces so you can spread it over the pizza. You can just tear the bacon apart by hand.
  11. Add your pizza sauce first and spread it evenly with the back of a spoon. I don’t recommend leaving room for a crust with this pizza, it’s not bready so it doesn’t taste as great to have a crust.
  12. Add your shredded cheese next, starting with a thin layer over the entire pizza to make sure you have enough cheese to cover it all. Add more cheese if you’d like.
  13. Spread your bacon over the entire pizza first, then your sausage crumbles. This is so it fits under the pepperoni and ham. If you’d like to do smaller ham slices also tear them and do them before the pepperoni. 
  14. Place the pizza with all it’s toppings back into the oven. Now you’re just looking to melt the cheese. Look for the cheese in the middle to be melted. This usually takes about 5 minutes for me, but keep an eye on the pizza because it will depend on how you did your toppings.
  15. Remove pizza from oven and turn the oven off. You can now cut the pizza and serve!

Keto Dragon Eggs / Keto Scotch Eggs

| Jem Dawson

Keto Dragon Eggs a.k.a. Keto Scotch Eggs

This is a great dish for any kind of fantasy-themed event and laid on a salad you can easily imagine a nest of eggs from some far-off land. The first time I saw this dish was actually at Harry Potter World. I knew there would be sugar and breadcrumbs in the mixture but they looked great and I’ve been wanting to make my own recipe of it ever since!

Seasoning: You’ll want to avoid regular pre-packed breakfast sausage for this recipe as they almost always have sugar in them, but it’s quite easy to make your own spiced breakfast sausage. The pork panko in this recipe lends the crispiness you’d normally get from caramelized sugar in the sausage,  although if you’re really craving some caramelized meat you could mix in some Brown Sugar Swerve into the pork with the spices. (However, I think it’s good to limit your sweetener, even keto ones.) There are onion flakes in this recipe, but a little goes a long way. Onions are fairly carby so if you decide to deviate from the recipe some don’t go too crazy with it. 

Eggs: If you’re looking to save some time and effort you can buy hardboiled eggs from the store instead of boiling and peeling them yourself. My local Costco sells them in large packs. Egg boiling time can vary based on the type of eggs, size, altitude, and various factors. Play with the time if you need to in order to get them as you like and then write down that type for yourself. A slotted spoon will help you remove the eggs safely from the hot water. I’ve found a pound of ground pork covers roughly 8 eggs, but if you have a dozen go ahead and make them all so you have some regular plain hard boiled eggs. They’re a great keto snack on their own and can be used to make devilled eggs or egg salad. It also helps if you end up peeling an egg a little too forcefully and it falls apart, you can save the nicer eggs for the scotch eggs.

If you’d like to find GREAT eggs and pork I highly recommend www.eatwild.com to find local farms with focus on humane practices, sustainability, and human health.

This recipe is also a great one for those of you doing carnivore, though you may wish to leave out the seasoning depending on strictness. It’s really just eggs wrapped in meat and cheese. And of course, you’ll probably want to skip out on the salad.

Keto Dragon Eggs a.k.a. Keto Scotch Eggs

Equipment:

Ingredients

  • 8 Eggs 
  • 1lb Ground Pork (Unseasoned)
  • 1 tablespoon Paprika
  • 1/2 teaspoon Allspice
  • 1 teaspoon Salt (Recommend Redmond’s)
  • 1/2 teaspoon Red Pepper Flakes (Black pepper would work too) (Or more to preference)
  • 1 teaspoon Onion flakes
  • 2 teaspoons Italian Seasoning 
  • 1 tablespoon Brown Swerve (Optional)
  • 1/2 cup parmesan cheese
  • 1/2 cup Pork Panko

Hard boiling the Eggs

  1. Place the eggs into a saucepan or saute pan and fill with cold water until there’s about an inch of water above the top of the eggs.
  2. Place the pan on medium heat on the stove to bring it to a rolling boil (lots of big bubbles that come to the top). As soon as it comes to the boil cover it with a lid, turn off the stove but leave the pan there. Let it sit on the hot eye for 10-12 minutes. Remove eggs from hot water with a slotted spoon and put them into a bowl. Set the bowl in the sink and let cold water run over the eggs for a minute. This will make the eggs cool enough to peel.
  3. Peel the hardboiled eggs carefully and set them aside on a plate.

Turning them into Scotch Eggs

  1. Preheat the oven to 375F. 
  2. Line your cookie sheet with aluminum foil.
  3. Pour the parmesean cheese and panko pork rinds into a corner of the cookie sheet and mix them together. This will be the outside crust of the scotch eggs.
  4. In a large bowl mix the ground pork, paprika, allspice, salt, pepper, onion flakes, Italian seasoning, and (optionally) the brown swerve. Wash your hands thoroughly and use a hand to blend the meat with the spices until the spices are evenly distrubuted through the meat. 
  5. Flatten the meat in the bowl, then use your hand to draw a line down the middle. This will cut it in half. Do it again across to divide the meat into 4ths. Then again to divide it into 8ths. You’ll have a section of meat for each egg. 
  6. Take a piece of the divided meat and flatten it in your palm. Try to keep it evenly flattened. Then wrap it around a hard boiled egg. Carefully roll it between two hands to make a ball and evenly distrubute the pork around the egg. You can also use a pinching motion to pull the pork where it needs to go to cover the gaps. You shouldn’t be able to see any of the white hardboiled egg when you’re done, it will just look like a pork ball.
  7. Place the pork ball into the parmesean/pork panko blend and roll it around until it’s fully covered in the crumb mix. 
  8. If you’d like it to be a little more “egg” shaped instead of a ball you can roll it on it’s side a little to elongate the egg shape. (Not really necessary though, it’ll taste the same! I don’t bother.)
  9. Repeat for the rest of the eggs. If you have leftover crumb mixture you can try to roll the eggs in it with a little more pressure so it picks it up. And/or sprinkle it on top.
  10. Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes. Time will vary based on your oven but you’re looking for a nice toasted brown to the crumb coating outside.
  11. Enjoy on a bed of fresh salad. I really like a 50/50 salad with either mustard on the side to dip the eggs into or a nice sweetish dressing on the salad like Primal Kitchen Balsamic Vinegarette, Primal Kitchen Island Teriyaki, or even Primal Kitchen Honey Mustard (careful with carbs on this one).

Keto Hot Roast Beef Reuben Sandwich

| Jem Dawson

Ingredients

  • 2 slices Base Culture Keto Bread
  • Primal Kitchen Thousand Island Dressing
  • Sauerkraut 
  • Butter
  • 2 slices Swiss Cheese
  • 4 slices thick-cut Roast Beef (try to look for a brand with no sugar/coloring if possible)

Directions:

  1. Heat a large pan on the stove on medium. While it’s heating you can add the butter, as soon as it’s melted lay the bread down in the butter, soak it up on one side, and then flip it over with a spatula so both sides are coated in butter.
  2.  Allow the buttered toast to sit until one side is toasted.
  3. Once one side is toasted flip the bread over and remove pan from heat. 
  4. Make sure the lid is tight and shake the thousand island dressing bottle, it tends to separate a lot.
  5. Carefully pour the thousand island dressing onto the toasted side of both slices of bread, covering each slice.
  6. Lay a slice of swiss cheese on top of the dressing on both pieces of toast
  7. Put the pan back on the heat.
  8. Lay the roast beef slices onto one of the slices in 4 different directions and fold the extra over. That way it all lays out evenly.
  9. Carefully use the spatula to flip over the slice of toast that has meat on it so that the meat is down against the pan and can begin to heat.
  10. Use a spoon to get some sauerkraut out of the jar, pressing it against the side of the jar to drain the liquid. Cover the piece of toast without the meat with sauerkraut. 
  11. Once the meat is warmed up you can use the spatula to lift the meat part of the sandwich on top of the sauerkraut part. Try to line up the toast shapes. Press down with the spatula to hold the bread together, it will allow the cheese to melt together and hold the sandwich together better.
  12. Allow the sandwich to toast a little longer(1-2mins) so the cheeses melt together better. If the bread is already toasted you can remove it from the heat so it doesn’t burn but still melts the cheese.
  13. Place the sandwich on a plate and use the spatula to cut the sandwich into triangles.
  14. Enjoy! Great with a side of pork rinds.

Image Recipe

1. Heat a large pan on the stove on medium. While it’s heating you can add the butter, as soon as it’s melted lay the bread down in the butter, soak it up on one side, and then flip it over with a spatula so both sides are coated in butter.

2. Allow the buttered toast to sit until one side is toasted.

3. Once one side is toasted flip the bread over and remove pan from heat.

 

4. Make sure the lid is tight and shake the thousand island dressing bottle, it tends to separate a lot

5. Carefully pour the thousand island dressing onto the toasted side of both slices of bread, covering each slice.

6. Lay a slice of swiss cheese on top of the dressing on both pieces of toast

7. Put the pan back on the heat.

8. Lay the roast beef slices onto one of the slices in 4 different directions and fold the extra over. That way it all lays out evenly.

9. Carefully use the spatula to flip over the slice of toast that has meat on it so that the meat is down against the pan and can begin to heat.

10. Use a spoon to get some sauerkraut out of the jar, pressing it against the side of the jar to drain the liquid. Cover the piece of toast without the meat with sauerkraut.

11. Once the meat is warmed up you can use the spatula to lift the meat part of the sandwich on top of the sauerkraut part. Try to line up the toast shapes. Press down with the spatula to hold the bread together, it will allow the cheese to melt together and hold the sandwich together better.

12. Allow the sandwich to toast a little longer(1-2mins) so the cheeses melt together better. If the bread is already toasted you can remove it from the heat so it doesn’t burn but still melts the cheese.

13. Place the sandwich on a plate and use the spatula to cut the sandwich into triangles.

14. Enjoy! Great with a side of pork rinds.