Sometimes you make things that just aren’t all that photogenic. I try to beautify things as much as possible without going too far into staging, but there are times when this is a bit of a Sisyphean effort. This particular recipe is one of those times. It’s sloppy and unkempt, like the culinary equivalent of a hung-over businessman showing up to work on Monday with his shirt half-untucked and his tie askew. You know what I mean. Or maybe you don’t, and this is just me making use of my English major. The good news is that it’s easy and tastes good, and while I can’t figure out a way to appropriately extend that metaphor, what I can do is make food that’s yummy and that you’ll eat. Plus, it’s a fat bomb of a meal, which is nice.
Start with two packages of smoked sausage, the pre-cooked U-shaped variety that you can get at the grocery store. We’re not going fancy here today. Make sure to check the label, because some varieties might have hidden carbs. Slice them on the bias, approximately as thick as your index finger. In a large Dutch oven or similar, over medium-high heat, brown them until they’re nice and crispy on each side, then remove them and put them in a bowl. Into the same Dutch oven, dump a 16-ounce bag of pre-shredded coleslaw (just the cabbage and carrots, NOT the prepared kind!) and pour over 1/2 cup of chicken broth. Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until most of the chicken broth has evaporated. Break up or cube 4 ounces of cream cheese and stir it into the cabbage, allowing it to begin to melt. Add 1/2 cup of heavy cream and 2 tablespoons of a spicy mustard. I used the Dijon from Trader Joe’s because it has a nice strong horseradish kick to it, but spicy brown or stadium-style mustard would also work. Just don’t use the yellow mustard, because it tastes more like vinegar than anything else. Stir it around until it’s all melted together, then throw the sausage back in and let it warm back up while the sauce thickens. Once it’s thickened, taste it for seasoning and add salt and pepper to taste. I added 1/2 teaspoon of salt, but I like things REALLY salty, so you might want to add less. The more pepper the better, though.
This one is a bit high in calories. If you can’t eat that much, just do a single package of sausage. It’ll cut the calories considerably. Otherwise, enjoy your lunch for the week. It’ll get you to dinner without feeling the least bit hungry. This would be a great recipe for IFers, if you’re into that sort of thing.
Smoked Sausage with Mustard Creamed Cabbage
A quick and easy meal-prep recipe that's great for intermittent fasters.
Slice the sausage into approximately 3/4 inch thick pieces. Fry them in a Dutch oven over medium-high heat until they're crispy and browned on both sides. Remove and set aside.
Empty the bag of coleslaw into the pot and reduce the heat to medium. Add the chicken broth into the pot and cook until the broth is mostly gone. Add the cream cheese in chunks and stir until they begin to melt, then add the cream and mustard. Stir until the cream cheese is completely melted, then add the sausage back into the pot and simmer until the sauce thickens. Add salt and pepper to taste, then serve or put into meal-prep containers.
Macros per serving: 677 calories, 5 grams net carbs, 25 grams protein, 59 grams fat.
Keyword keto, low carb, make ahead, meal prep, pork, sausage
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A great keto substitute for potatoes is daikon radish, and in this breakfast recipe, you’ll learn how to make a veggie hash with it. Top with scrambled or poached eggs for a wonderful vegetarian keto breakfast!
This is one of those recipes where I knew I was going to have a busy day and would get home late, so I needed something I could just throw together relatively quickly. This is a very quick chicken salad that you can make in a matter of 20 minutes or so, even faster if you have the chicken pre-cooked and ready to go. And it tastes like sunshine. It’s hard to explain until you try it. You could take this to a potluck or a picnic and people will think you slaved over it. Your secret is safe with me. Also, you get a bonus recipe for a seasoning that will quickly become your go-to for any grilled meat.
We’ll start off with the recipe for the Green Stuff. I’m sure it has a name in Portuguese, but my family always just called it the Green Stuff, so that’s what it is. When my great-aunt came from Rio to visit my grandfather, the first thing she’d do is make a batch of the Green Stuff, because she puts it in and on almost everything she cooks. It keeps for a couple of years as long as you keep it refrigerated, because it’s full of salt. A little goes a long way with it, too. The recipe makes enough that you can give away a little bit to a friend. Every time I make it, I end up with a big Mason jar for me and a smaller one for a friend, and sometimes a bit of overflow as well.
You’ll need a food processor for this one. Cut three large white onions into chunks, peel an entire head of garlic, and wash a bunch of flat-leaf parsley (basically what you get when you buy parsley by itself in the grocery store, not the clamshell containers), and a bunch of chives. For that one, the clamshell container is fine. Put them all in the food processor and process until it’s a smooth liquid. Make sure you push down the sides so that it all gets blended. You don’t want chunks in this.
Pour the contents of the food processor into a large bowl and begin adding Kosher salt and stirring. I don’t know exactly how much salt to add, because it depends on how much moisture was in the onions. It’s a texture thing. You want this to be the consistency of wet sand, the kind you could make a sand castle with it if you want to. If it doesn’t hold its own shape, add more salt. You’ll want at least two cups to start with, and you’ll almost certainly end up adding more. Once you get that nice sand castle texture, scoop it into Mason jars and refrigerate immediately. This is great for burgers, steaks, pork chops, and even shrimp. About the only thing I wouldn’t put it on is fish, because the taste can be a little strong. But if you do and it works, let me know!
For the chicken salad, you’ll want to rub the chicken with the Green Stuff. Use about a half teaspoon per chicken breast, a little more if you’re like me and are addicted to salt. Make sure to get both sides. Heat up a grill or a grill pan to medium-high and grill the chicken for 6-8 minutes per side, depending on thickness, until they’re cooked all the way through and have nice grill marks. Chop them into small chunks, put them in a bowl, and put the bowl into the refrigerator.
While the chicken chills, finely dice onion and celery until you have 1/4 cup of each. Red onion is a good addition here, but yellow or white would be just fine. If you want, add some chopped walnuts as well. This is completely optional, but I did this when I made a bulk version of this for the 4th of July, and it was definitely nice to get a bit more crunch. Toss those in with the chicken, and add 6 tablespoons of mayonnaise, along with the zest of one lemon. I use a microplane zester. It’s a nice addition to your kitchen tools, because it’s much easier to get the zest out than it is when you use the fine side of a box grater. Once you finish grating the lemon into the bowl, add white pepper to taste and stir to combine everything.
I served this in a NuCo coconut wrap with some lettuce leaves. I like the coconut wraps for sandwiches like this, where the combination of sweet, salty, and savory works. If I need a quick bite, I’ll often make one with ham, brie, and my low-carb honey mustard dressing. I would not try to make a Reuben wrap with one of these, though. And if you don’t like coconut, don’t even bother trying them. Just make your favorite wrap or low-carb bread to serve it on.
Lemony Grilled Chicken Salad
A bright and flavorful chicken salad perfect for a summer picnic.
Rub the chicken with the Green Stuff. Grill over medium-high heat for 6-8 minutes per side, until cooked through. Chop the chicken into small pieces and put into a bowl. Refrigerate the chicken while you work on the other ingredients.
Finely chop the celery and onion. Sprinkle them, along with the optional walnuts, into the bowl with the chicken, which should be lukewarm by now. Add the mayonnaise and zest the lemon directly into the bowl. Grind white pepper into the bowl to taste. Stir and serve in a wrap, on low-carb bread, or over salad greens.
Macros per serving, without the walnuts: 264 calories, 1 gram net carbs, 25 grams protein, 19 grams fat.
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I do my meal planning for the week on Thursdays or Fridays, because that’s when the sales at my grocery store update. I try to use ingredients that are on sale whenever possible, because who wants to spend extra money? This makes meal planning somewhat interesting, though, as I never know what I’m going to do until I open the grocery store website and take a look at their sale flyers. This week, both organic eggs and sausage were on sale. I had some great shelf-stable heavy cream in my pantry, and a bunch of extra cream cheese from the last time it was on sale, so the idea of biscuits and gravy popped into my head. But I’ve never been able to find a keto biscuit recipe that I really liked, and try as I might, I’m terrible at inventing baking recipes. It involves way too much precision. So I started brainstorming an idea about how I could incorporate the flavors of sausage gravy into some other sort of breakfast, and these egg cups were born.
Start with a one-pound tube of breakfast sausage of your choice. I prefer the sage variety, but hot or traditional would work here as well. Just don’t use maple, because carbs and also yuck. There’s a place for sausage and syrup, it’s just not in this particular recipe. You’ll also need some muffin tins. This recipe makes 8 servings, so you’ll probably need two. I use silicone muffin tins, which I like because they don’t stick as much as metal, and they are bendy so it’s easier to get the finished product out. But if you only have a metal tin, it’ll be fine for this case, because the sausage won’t stick at all. Divide the sausage into 8 equal pieces. Roll a piece into a ball, then flatten it out into as thin of a circle as you can make. Put it into one of the compartments of the muffin tin (is there a better word for that?) and press it tightly against the sides and bottom, making sure that the bottom is as flat as you can get it. The sausage will shrink when it bakes and change shape, so these will turn out to be less cups and more bowls, but if you don’t make sure they’re thin, they won’t be able to hold the eggs.
This is what the sausage looks like when it’s in the tin.
When you’re finished making all the sausage cups, put the tins in a preheated 350-degree oven for 15 minutes. At this point, most of the fat will be rendered from the sausage and it will have pulled away from the sides of the tin. Using a fork, tip the sausage cups over to allow any fat to drain into the muffin tin compartment, then place each one on a sheet pan lined with aluminum foil and pop them back in the oven.
While they’re in the oven, make the eggs and cream. Beat six eggs, adding a pinch of kosher salt. Melt a tablespoon of butter in a large non-stick skillet. While the butter is melting, measure six tablespoons of your cream in a separate small saucepan and set it to medium-low. Add two ounces of cream cheese and let it simmer, whisking occasionally, as you scramble the eggs in the butter to a soft scramble. Don’t scramble them too hard, because they won’t stick together as well, and they’ll be rubbery when you reheat them. When the eggs are scrambled, remove them from the heat and remove the sausage cups from the oven. At this point, your cream cheese should be mostly incorporated into the cream. If not, keep whisking until it does. Add a pinch of salt and as much black pepper as you can tolerate into the gravy. The more pepper the better, honestly. Stir the gravy into the eggs, mixing thoroughly. They should be a nice scoopable texture. Drain any extra fat from the sausage cups, then divide the eggs evenly into the bowls, sprinkling them with additional pepper. Store in the fridge in a shallow rectangular meal prep container.
Divide the sausage into 8 equal balls. Flatten each ball into a circle, then press each circle into a compartment of the muffin tin. Make sure that the bottom is as flat as possible and that the sides come as close to the top as you can get it. When you're finished with all of them, put them in the oven for 15 minutes. After that time, remove them, drain any accumulated fat, put them on a foil-lined cookie sheet and put them back in the oven.
Put the cream into a small saucepan and add the cream cheese. While it heats, melt the butter in a non-stick skillet. Beat six eggs with a pinch of salt, then scramble them to a soft texture in the skillet, making sure to also whisk the gravy frequently while the eggs cook. When the eggs are finished, remove them from the heat and remove the sausage cups from the oven as well.
If the cream cheese hasn't melted into the cream at this point, keep whisking until it does, then add as much pepper as you can stand and a pinch of salt. Stir the finished gravy into the eggs, then scoop the egg mixture into each sausage cup. Sprinkle with more pepper before serving or storing.
Macros per serving: 295 calories, 1 gram net carbs, 16 grams protein, 26 grams fat.
Keyword breakfast, easy, eggs, keto, low carb, make ahead, sausage
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