With the holidays right around the corner, it’s time to start planning your dinner menu. But how can you stay on track when most classic holiday dishes aren’t keto-friendly?
We’re going to show you how you can transform your classic holiday recipes to make them keto-friendly.
Make Your Stuffing Low-Carb
Stuffing is a classic holiday dish, but its key ingredient is bread – not exactly a keto-friendly food. Here’s the good news: you can transform your classic stuffing recipe into a low-carb side dish that will please everyone.
First, you’ll need to choose a replacement for the bread. You have two main options:
- Keto bread
- Cauliflower
Keto bread is typically made with a combination of almond or coconut flour, egg, fat and baking powder. Once cooked, it resembles regular bread in texture and taste. You can find several keto bread recipes online.
Regardless of whether you choose cauliflower or keto bread, you will use the bread replacement the same way you use bread crumbs when making stuffing.
Alternatively, you can omit the bread (or bread replacement) and use turnips, carrots and mushrooms instead. These vegetables combine perfectly with sage, rosemary and thyme.
Switch Out Potatoes for Cauliflower
Mashed potatoes is another classic holiday side dish, but it’s not exactly a keto-friendly food. Transform this classic holiday side dish by replacing the white potatoes with cauliflower.
Cauliflower takes on whatever flavors you add, so it’s an excellent choice for a potato replacement. Simply steam or boil the vegetable, and mash as you would regular potatoes. Add salt, butter and cream for a keto-friendly side dish that tastes just like the real thing. Feel free to add roasted garlic and fresh herbs to kick the flavor up a notch.
You can use cauliflower in place of potato (and even sweet potato) in any side dish. For example, whip up a cauliflower casserole loaded with bacon and cheese.
Whip Up Some Keto-Friendly Gravy
Gravy is a staple at most holiday tables, but some of the ingredients aren’t exactly keto-friendly – primarily flour. Most of the other ingredients, like pan drippings, stock and butter, are perfectly fine to eat on the keto diet.
So, how can you thicken gravy without flour?
You have a few different options:
- Egg yolk
- Cream cheese
- Xanthan gum
Xanthan gum is the most effective thickener, but if you don’t mind a thinner gravy, egg yolk is a great option and will help create a richer flavor.
Use Keto-Friendly Flour for Desserts
Many holiday desserts call for all-purpose flour, but in most cases, you can substitute these ingredients for keto-friendly flours, like coconut and almond.
When baking non-yeast treats – like cookies, muffins, biscuits, etc. – substitute almond flour for 25% of the flour called for in the recipe.
Coconut flour goes a long way. For every cup of all-purpose flour, you only need about 1/4 cup of coconut flour.
Whether you’re using almond, coconut or a combination of the two, you’ll probably need to use more eggs than the original recipe calls for.
With just a few simple substitutions, you can make most of your holiday dishes keto-friendly, and most of your guests won’t be able to tell the difference.