I love carnitas! They are tender, wonderfully spiced and so delicious. You don’t need to go out to a Mexican restaurant in order to get these to enjoy. You can make them easily at home.
Carnitas are simply little bites of meat that have been cooked in seasoned liquid until it dries or you fry or bake them until they have a nice crisp exterior. Serve with sour cream, salsa and guacamole and you have a delicious meal. Luckily, not all recipes have to be adapted for a low carb lifestyle and this is one that requires no special ingredients. This also adapts well to a slow cooker. The picture at the top shows them with the standard condiments and a serving of my Tex-Mex Spanish Cauli-rice.
2 pounds pork butt or 1.5 pounds of cubed pork
1 medium onion, sliced
1 large clove garlic minced
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon herb seasoning
1/4 teaspoon cumin
1 cup chicken or beef broth
1 tablespoon olive oil
Salt or garlic salt, to taste
Cut pork butt into large cubes. In a three quart saucepan, combine pork, onion, garlic, seasonings and broth. Add enough water to cover. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for about two hours until the pork is tender and breaks apart easily. Check the water a couple of times to make sure it hasn’t all boiled out before the pork is tender.
If you are cooking in an oven, heat the oven to 300 degrees F. during the last 10 minutes of cooking. Remove the meat, draining any excess water off and place in an oiled roasting pan. Sprinkle with garlic salt or any other preferred seasoning.
Bake in the oven for about 20 minutes, turning the meat once. If your meat isn’t thick, it may take less time to brown and crisp, so check a couple of times. Remove from oven, cut large chunks into smaller, bite-sized pieces or pull apart with two forks for a shredded meat.
If you prefer to fry the meat, cut into bite-sized pieces (about 1″ cube) and heat the oil in a heavy skillet (I prefer cast iron for this.) Add preferred seasonings, then fry the meat until it is lightly crisped.
Serve carnitas with grated cheese, sour cream, salsa and guacamole. User a tortilla to make a burrito or to just pick up pieces for dipping in the condiments. I use La Tortilla Factory flour tortilla, which are 3 net carbs per tortilla, but you can use any brand you choose.
This recipe serves 6.
Nutrition for just the carnitas per serving:
Calories: 334 Net carbs: 1.3 g Protein: 28.9 g
Moved from my Live Journal blog where is was published July 26, 2012.
I love food, almost any food, but Italian is a real favorite. How can you go wrong with cheese and pasta? Oops, pasta. That’s the problem with Italian and a low carb lifestyle.
(Note from 05/06/14 – I have been using Dreamfields, which claimed to have a 5 nc pasta, however, those claims are apparently incorrect and the pasta is not low carb. All I can say is that I have been using it and it appeared to not impact my weight loss. Other people have had issues with it. So, use an alternative to pasta for this dish.)
My recipe this week is for Chicken Parmesan with pasta. But you don’t need to serve it over pasta. You can make zucchini noodles by slicing the zucchini into long, thin strips and dropping them in boiling water for three to five minutes before draining and putting them on the bottom of your casserole dish. You can also substitute in spaghetti squash, which has a slightly nutty flavor and is also a delicious pasta substitute.
Chicken Parmesan Over Pasta
Ingredients:
3 large skinless Chicken Breast halves, butterflied and pounded
1 large Eggs, slightly beaten
1 tablespoon Water
1 tablespoon Oil
1/2 cup Pork Rinds, crunched up to the consistency of flour
1/2 cup finely grated grated Parmesan Cheese
1/4 cup shredded Parmesan Cheese
1 cup Mozzarella Cheese
1 to 1 1/2 cups Pasta Sauce, to taste (I use a tomato basil sauce with around 3 net carbs per 1/2 cup)
Salt and Pepper to preference
1/2 teaspoon Italian Herbs
2 cups cooked Zucchini strips or 2 cups Spaghetti Squash
Oil
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cook whichever squash you are using for your pasta and keep it warm until ready to serve.
Combine eggs, water, 2 teaspoons of olive oil, salt, pepper and Italian seasoning and set aside. Combine crushed pork rinds and finely grated Parmesan cheese .
Heat oil in a heavy skillet.
Dip chicken breasts in egg mixture, then into pork rind crumbs, then cook in the skillet for 6 to 8 minutes per side until lightly browned.
Drain pasta and pour over the bottom of a 9 x 12 baking pan, arrange chicken breasts over the top, then spoon pasta sauce evenly over the breasts and pasta. Top with mozzarella cheese and parmesan cheese.
Bake for 20 to 25 minutes until the cheese is melted and the sauce is bubbly.
Makes 3 to 6 servings depending on how hungry you are.
With the end of summer, I found myself with a decent crop of pears on my 12 year old pear tree… a very unusual occurrence. Normally the birds sample every piece of fruit on the tree as soon as it is fully formed. This year, only a few had holes pecked in them and I decided to pick them before they ripened on the tree. My pears are on a five in one variety of tree that produces small fruits, but it was a plentiful crop this year.
I brought them in, put them a bag to ripen and in due time, they began to turn colors and soften. Now I had way too many pears to eat before they began to turn rotten, so what to do? Pears are not an allowed food on the weight loss part of a low carb diet, although they are allowed when you reach maintenance. But I love the taste and decided to turn them into a jam or compote that would result in a low carb version.
LC Foods has a wonderful product for making cranberry sauce that is 0 carb and 0 calories, so the only thing you have to worry about is the actual carbs and calories in the fruit. Pears are very rich in natural sugars, which makes them high carb’d. While I don’t have a way to remove the carbs, I can use them sparingly and they make a wonderful topping on a low carb muffin.
So, I pulled out the LC-Cranberry Sauce, which uses “Inulin (chicory root) fiber, digestion resistant polydextrose fiber, sucralose, organic stevia rebaudiana leaf and natural luo han guo monk fruit” to make the powder, to make a delicious cranberry sauce. At $7.98, this makes several batches and I used this last year to make the sauce as instructed on the label for Thanksgiving, but also cooked it longer to make it thicker, put it in a jar in the refrigerator and used it as a cranberry jam for about four months. Wonderful!
I thought it would work well with the pears and I am very happy with the result. You can cut back a little on the amount of the LC-Cranberry Sauce powder since pears have a natural sweetness that cranberries don’t have.
With this success, I plan to try more fruits, such as peaches, apples and anything else that I can’t find already made into a jam. (LC Foods has strawberries, blueberries, peaches and blackberries for sale in pint jars for $7.98 a jar, which is really not unreasonable when you compare the prices at the grocery store for small jars of jam.) For now, here’s the recipe I used to make Pear Jam.
Pear Jam or Compote
3 cups diced fresh Pears
1 tablespoon Lemon Juice
1/2 cup Water
1 tablespoon Cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon Clove
1/4 cup LC Foods Cranberry Sauce Mix
Cook diced pears with lemon juice, water, cinnamon and clove until they are just tender and boiling. Add cranberry sauce mix powder and stir in well until it is completely dissolved. Cook on low heat for about 15 minutes so that the mixture begins to thicken. Turn off heat and completely cool.
Once cooled, put the pear compote in a jar, then in the refrigerator. It will keep several weeks in the fridge. Or you can bag the compote in a freezer bag and freeze them until you are ready for them. Thaw them out, then put into a jar and into the refrigerator.
Makes about 2 cups of pear compote.
Nutrition Info for 1 tablespoon
Calories: 13.1 Total Carb: 3.4g Fiber .7g Net Carbs: 2.7g Protein .1g
TIP: Pears ripen from the inside out, so when they are soft when pressed around the stem or the bottom indicates that the pear is ripe. Once the softness extends to the middle of the exterior, the pear is already over ripened.
As I was slathering my morning muffin with Pumpkin Butter this morning, I realized that I had not added this simple and delicious recipe for the low carb goodness of this butter to my blog. It simply needs to be shared. If you love the taste of pumpkin pie, this is just for you! This recipe is adapted from one I found on the web and I simply made it low carb and added a few more spices. This is a refrigerator jam, so you do need to eat it within a few months… if it lasts that long! In addition to putting it on toast or muffins, you can mix it with vanilla yogurt (I use Carbmasters) or mixing it with soft cream cheese and whipped topping for a quick pumpkin parfait.
Easy Low Carb Pumpkin Butter
15 oz. Canned Pumpkin
½ Cup Water
½ Cup Granulated Splenda or Ideal sugar (or 24 drops of liquid Sucralose)
1 tablespoon Cinnamon
1 tsp. Cloves
1/4 tsp. Allspice
1 teaspoon Pumpkin Pie spice
Put canned pumpkin into a sauce pan over medium heat. Add sweetener to water and stir into pumpkin. Add spices and cook for ten minutes stirring often.
Let cool, then spoon into a canning jar, put on lid and store in the refrigerator.
Makes about 30 servings – 1 tablespoon each
Nutrition Info (with Splenda)
Calories 6.7 Net Carbs 1.5 g Protein .2 g
(with liquid Sucralose and/or sugar alcohol)
Calories 6.7 Net Carbs 1 g Protein .2 g
Tip: This is a refrigerator butter. Keep pumpkin butter refrigerated and use within 6 months.
Maybe not quite all, but for those who count, namely the birthday boy, PK and me. By birthday boy, I mean Timmy Cat, who just turned nine years old. I wanted to celebrate with a special salmon cake for the cats, but only two of the four have any interest in people food. Timmy is one who never turns down a good meal and Milo enjoys most anything I eat, including spicy food. Hooligan may have eaten only a bite, but he definitely enjoyed the broth I poached the salmon in. So, for this special meal, I bought a pound of salmon and poached it in the oven until just cooked – about 20 minutes (350 F oven) in a pan with about a half inch of water in it. You can used canned salmon, but I prefer the taste of freshly cooked fish.
Are they appreciated? Timmy and Milo enjoy their salmon cakes. They may need a little help getting started so cut it in half or quarters to make it easier. Our dog, Flynn, also enjoyed a little of cake even though he isn’t a fish-lover. Must have been the cheese…
Like many cat parents, I thought a special treat on the cat’s birthday would be great and although there are lots of goodies at the pet store for dogs, there isn’t anything special for cats. I suppose it’s because cats aren’t into biscuits, cakes and cookies so much. So I went hunting on the web and found a recipe for tuna cake, which can be easily made with salmon. The simple recipe first is the one for the cats, then on to the one for people. Actually the cat one is perfectly edible by people, just not as tasty as the people recipe. My cats prefer bacon to shrimp, so I used bits of bacon to top it. You can also spread a little mayonnaise over the top as an icing if your cats like it.
Salmon Cakes for Felines
Ingredients:
1 Egg
3/4 cup Salmon
2 tbs Flour
4 tbs shredded or grated Cheese
Baby Shrimp or pieces of Bacon, to garnish
Sprigs of fresh Cat Nip and/or Cat Mint for garnish
Preheat oven to 350˚F.
Prepare cupcake tin or 4 silicone cupcake molds by lightly spraying with cooking spray.
Kitty birthday cakes – pre-bake and after. Yum…
Break up salmon in a medium bowl, checking for bones as you go. Lightly beat egg in a separate bowl, then combine with tuna. Add in flour and cheese. Stir to combine.
Makes 4 small cakes.
Scoop batter into cupcake tin or silicone cups. Bake for 15 minutes. Allow to cool completely before serving.
Salmon Cakes with Dill Sauce
Yes, this is the one for the humans. This recipe was originally for Carab Cakes and is adapted from EatingWell.com. I have adjusted it to a low carb version. The main changes are to replace the bread for the bread crumbs with a low carb bread and the original recipe called for yogurt in the dill sauce, which I’ve replaced with lower carb sour cream. Use the flax meal sandwich roll recipe to make the bread (you can omit the oat fiber, buttermilk and onion flakes for this). Or you can buy low carb bread and use two slices of that. or you can just use whole wheat bread if you aren’t concerned about the 20 net carbs in it, which breaks down to about 4.5 additional carbs per serving.
I used a small food processor to chop the onions and the celery. Just be sure to trim off the pithy parts and the strings on the celery. Unfortunately, the blades just slide right over the parsley and dill. Chop those with a knife.
For the salmon cakes:
3 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil, divided
1 small onion, finely chopped
1 stalk celery, finely diced
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
15 ounces canned salmon, drained, or 1 1/2 cups cooked salmon
1 large egg, lightly beaten
1 1/2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
1/2 teaspoon Old Bay spice or other seafood spice
1 1/2 cup flax bread rolls (2 rolls), processed to crumbs
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
For the Dill Sauce
1/2 cup mayonnaise
2 tablespoons sour cream
2 green onions (scallions), thinly sliced
1 to 2 tablespoon lemon juice, about 1/2 a lemon
1 to 2 tablespoon finely chopped fresh dill*
Freshly ground pepper, to taste
Chopped ingredients for the sauce and the cakes. From the top clockwise, chopped celery, parsley, onions, and dill. On the right, sliced green onions for the sauce.
Prepare Creamy Dill Sauce first and put in the fridge to allow the flavors to chill and blend together.
Combine mayonnaise, sour cream, chopped onions, lemon juice, dill and pepper in a small bowl and mix well. Taste and adjust lemon juice, dill and pepper to your preference. I used about 1 tablespoons of lemon juice and dill in my sauce.
• You can use dried dill if fresh isn’t available. Or you can substitute parsley, but then it isn’t a dill sauce.
Prepare the salmon cakes
Preheat oven to 450°F.
Coat a baking sheet with cooking spray or use a silicone mat and lightly coat with cooking spray.
Heat 1 1/2 teaspoons oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add onion and celery; cook, stirring, until softened, about 3 minutes. Stir in parsley; remove from the heat.
Break the bread into pieces and put in your food processor. Pulse until it is reduced to fine crumbs. Set aside.
Place salmon in a medium bowl. Flake apart with a fork; remove any bones and skin. Add egg and mustard; mix well. Add the onion mixture, breadcrumbs and seasonings; mix well. Shape the mixture into 8 patties, about 2 1/2 inches wide.
Heat remaining 1 1/2 teaspoons oil in the pan over medium heat. Add 4 patties and cook until the undersides are golden, 2 to 3 minutes. Using a wide spatula, turn slide them onto the prepared baking sheet, uncooked side up. Repeat with the remaining patties.
Bake the salmon cakes until golden on top and heated through, 15 to 20 minutes. Serve with dill sauce. Elegant and delicious!
Makes 8 – 2 1/2 inch cakes, two cakes to a serving, so makes 4 servings.
Nutrition Info Per serving for Dill Sauce
Calories: 209.3 Fat: 22.8 g Net Carbs: .9 g Protein: .5 g
Nutrition Info Per serving for Salmon Cakes
Calories: 227.6 Fat: 11.4 Net Carbs: 2.7 g Protein: 25.6 g
Tip: If you’re like me, you buy a bunch of fresh parsley or fresh dill, make one thing and throw out the icky green sludge a couple of weeks later. Plan to make a pesto with the parsley or use it on plates as garnish. Failing that, dry it. Same thing with the dill. I use an inexpensive dehydrator, but you can put your parsley or dill on cheese cloth and set it in a sunny spot to dry out. Once dry, put it in a plastic bag or a jar and use whenever you need it.
When preparing the salmon cake recipe, you can mix it up earlier in the day, stopping before shaping into patties, cover and refrigerate until 40 minutes before you want to serve them. Then shape them and cook as instructed. The dill sauce can also be made in advance. You can actually go through the shaping and putting on a baking sheet step, but if your ‘fridge is like mine, there’s no place for a baking sheet in it.
I’m pretty confident this salmon cake recipe will work equally well with tuna, crab and shrimp. As I try them out, I’ll let you know. Or if you try them before I do, let me know. Deal?
