Recipe: LCHF Sausage and Bread Stuffing

I served this recipe last night with Roasted Chicken and Garlic Mashed Cauliflower.  Even my high-carb loving family members loved it.  This stuffing was a huge hit!  No one believed it was LCHF.

Note: my husband made the roasted chicken (not pictured).  It was his first-ever attempt, and he accidentally roasted the entire bird breast-side down. 

Guess what?  It was phenomenal: the skin was extra crispy and the breast meat was extra juicy.  

We will be roasting all of our poultry breast side down from now on!

Here's how to make the stuffing:

LCHF Sausage and Bread Stuffing

Ingredients:

• ½ package Jimmy Dean pork sausage
• ¼ stick butter
• 12 oz mix aromatic vegetables, diced (I used a package of soup mix veggies, which included 1 small onion; 1 carrot; 1 small leek; 1 very tiny turnip)
• 6 oz sliced mushrooms
• 1 tablespoon each chopped fresh parsley and fresh dill
• 8 LCHF Buttery Garlic Cheese Biscuits, torn into pieces
• ¼ cup chicken stock
• ¼ stick butter, cut into pieces

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375 F.
2. In a large frying pan set to medium high heat, brown sausage and break apart into crumbles.
3. Remove sausage from pan, leaving fat behind.
4. Add butter to pan, and when melted, add the aromatic vegetables and cook until the onion is translucent.
5. Add the mushrooms, and cook for approximately 5 more minutes, until they begin to soften.
6. Add the herbs, biscuits and stock to the pan and stir to combine.
7. Place the prepared stuffing into your baking pan of choice, and dot with butter. 
8. Bake for 30 minutes, or until the stuffing is well browned and crispy on top. 

Serve with roasted chicken and mashed cauliflower for a fabulous traditional dinner!

Recipe: LCHF Buttery Garlic and Sharp Cheddar Biscuits

Success! 

I made garlic and cheese biscuits on Sunday, and they turned out buttery, delicious and all-around amazing!  The recipe made exactly nine good-sized biscuits (using my 2 oz scooper).  Best part of all, these biscuits weigh in at about 1 net carb per biscuit. 

I used one biscuit to make a sausage, egg and cheese sandwich (which was great), and the rest I crumbled and set aside to use in a stuffing for roasted chicken.  The coconut flour gave the recipe a true biscuit texture, with plenty of body and good crumble.  Thanks to the copious quantities of butter, garlic, and cheese, you couldn't taste the coconut flavor very much - even my husband liked them (and he is not a coconut fan). Quite simply, these were to die for, and I consider this recipe one of my top LCHF recipes to date.  I am now trying to think of several recipes that I miss where I can switch them in for traditional bread.  Here's the recipe:

Buttery Garlic and Cheddar Biscuits

Ingredients

• ¼ cup butter, melted and slightly cooled
• 1/3 cup sifted Coconut Flour
• 4 eggs
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• ¼ teaspoon garlic powder
• ¼ teaspoon baking powder
• 1 cup sharp cheddar cheese, shredded

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. 
2. Line a cookie sheet with foil, and grease.
3. Whisk together eggs, butter, salt, and garlic powder.
4. Add coconut flour and baking powder and whisk until there are no lumps.
5. Fold in cheese.
6. Drop batter by the 2 oz scoop onto greased cookie sheet.
7. Bake for 15 minutes, or until lightly browned. 
8. Let cool in pan for 5-10 minutes before removing and serving.  Make sure that biscuits are completely cool before storage or they won't stay crisp!

It's Thanksgiving Somewhere...

Just the other day, I was reading a post on a low carb blog, and learned that Canadians have Thanksgiving, too.  And it's earlier than ours.  Who knew?

I was immediately filled with the desire for juicy turkey legs, dripping with gravy, served with stuffing.  Then it hit me.  OMG.  How do you make low carb stuffing without bread??!! 

I googled and found a couple of recipes for low carb stuffing bread, which you can use to make low carb bread cubes, which you then incorporate into your stuffing recipe. 

I also noodled over this for a little while, and thought that Wellness Mama's banana muffins (which are made with coconut flour) could be de-bananaed and made into a cheddar-bay type biscuit (the link is to the carby original recipe, where 2.5 cups of bisquick makes 12 biscuits at about 17 grams of carb each), which could then be used in place of regular bread in the stuffing recipe that I make (with oodles of butter, sauteed veggies, and succulent sage pork sausage).  I found a coconut flour cheddar biscuit recipe here:  

Cheese Biscuits

Ingredients

¼ cup butter, melted
1/3 cup sifted Coconut Flour
4 eggs
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon onion powder
¼ teaspoon baking powder
½ cup sharp cheddar cheese, shredded

Method
Blend together eggs, butter, salt, and onion powder. Combine coconut flour with baking powder and whisk into batter until there are no lumps. Fold in cheese. Drop batter by the spoonful onto a greased cookie sheet. Bake at 400F for 15 minutes. For a cheesier biscuit increase cheese to ¾ cup.

You know how I love me some kitchen experimentation!! 
Biscuits tonight...turkey on Sunday.  I will report back!!

LCHF Coconut Flour Brownies Produce So-So Results

I tried the Coconut Flour Brownie Recipe on the back of this bag of coconut flour, swapping out faux sugar for the real stuff, but otherwise staying true to the recipe. 

Honestly, the texture was okay, but the flavor just wasn't chocolatey enough.  I've read that 1/4 cup of coconut flour can be swapped for 1 cup of regular flour in a recipe, so I may try to recalibrate my Brownies #2 recipe by deleting the flax seed and vital wheat gluten flour (which I am avoiding these days), and adding in coconut flour. 

For what its worth, here's how I made the ho-hum brownies.  In my humble opinion, they need more fat and more cocoa.  Do you have any good LCHF brownie recipes?  **Whine**

Ingredients:

• 1/3 cup coconut oil (should be liquid, if it is solid at your version of room temp, warm it slightly)
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder
• 6 eggs
• ½ cup xylitol
• 24 drops liquid splenda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 cup sifted coconut flour

Directions:

1.      Blend coconut oil and cocoa powder, making sure to get all the lumps out.

2.      In a bowl, beat together eggs, faux sugars, salt and vanilla.

3.      Stir in cocoa mixture.

4.      Add sifted coconut flour and whisk the batter well until there are no lumps.

5.      Pour batter into a greased 8" square baking pan.

6.      Bake at 350' for 30-35 minutes.

Recipe: LCHF Coconut Vanilla Custard Ice Cream

Last week, I purchased a Cuisinart ice cream maker from Amazon.com. 

I had two reasons: first, my daughter has exhibited some lactose intolerance in the past months and there is really not much out there for lactose-free ice cream; and second, I have had good experience with store bought low carb ice cream but thought I could probably make my own tastier version, using high quality and healthy materials.  Plus, the low carb ice cream on the market is pretty much all low-fat.  I thought I could fatten mine up, and add in some coconut to make it feel healthy.

This recipe was my very first attempt at ice cream making.  I have made several batches since, including sugar-free for me, and sweetened dairy-free for my daughter.  This LCHF coconut custard ice cream recipe remains the best of all my efforts.  Each 1/2 cup serving contains 6.4 grams of net carbohydrate, and 24.2 grams of healthy, mostly saturated fat from the coconut oil and milk.  Enjoy!

UPDATE: This is an incredibly versatile recipe!  Check out this post for other delicious ways to use this ice cream base...

Dark Chocolate is Good For You…

…and it can fit into your LCHF lifestyle.  Surprise!

I admit that I am a chocolate fanatic.  Always have been and always will be.  When I restarted strict LCHF in early August, I made some promises to myself.  One of those promises was that I would find a way to make regular, decadent chocolate consumption compatible with LCHF. 

Guess what I found out?  30-40 grams of dark chocolate, eaten every day, is ridiculously good for you.  Plus, if you are choosy with your chocolate, you can easily find bars that contain 30-40 gram servings containing 10 or fewer grams of net carbs. 

Let's discuss, shall we?

LCHF Chocolate Coconut Candy Cups

Check out this recipe!
Each candy cup contains less than 2 grams of net carbs, and just over 1 gram of dietary fiber; each candy cup contains 6.5 grams of nourishing** fat (predominantly medium chain triglycerides - see why this is important**) from the coconut alone. 

Best of all, the only sweetener is that used in the chocolate that you melt.  There is no additional sugar or faux sugar added.  This is an unbelievably decadent treat. 

Recipe: DIY Coconut "Manna"

Make it yourself! A friend of mine enjoys this product called Coconut Manna, which she gets from Whole Foods ("Whole Paycheck").  I'd heard about it on some of the blogs that I follow, so when she mentioned how much she likes it and offered me a try, I said sure, checked out the nutritional information (1 gram net carbs per tablespoon), and dug in with said tablespoon.  It was really good: coconutty, creamy... delicious.  Turns out that it costs about $10 for a 15 oz jar.  There is another, similar product on the market, by Artisana, but that is even more expensive. 

I checked out the ingredient list, and the only item on there is Organic Coconut.

It was time for kitchen experimentation.  I made my own pureed coconut product, and I am very happy with the results.  The yield was exactly 2 cups (16 oz).  The cost was a mere $3.99 for 1 pound of the pricey, organic-y shredded coconut they sell at Whole Foods.

The taste was great.  Here's what I did: