Spicy Loaded Chicken Breasts

Spicy Loaded Chicken Breasts = Chicken breast + bacon + cheese topped with banana peppers.

Add your favourite toppings and BOOM you are good to go! 

I love loaded chicken breasts, they are so simple and they leave you feeling so full!

To cut carbs I like to use dry rubs on my chicken breasts for flavour, I then bake them while making the bacon. Once the bacon and chicken breasts are ready I put the oven on broil, place the bacon on the chicken breasts and add shredded cheese to the top. You can garnish the breasts with your favourite toppings, I like to add a little zip with banana peppers but you can also add chopped tomatoes and other toppings to make it your own personalized loaded chicken breast. :) 

Cheesy Jalapeño Low Carb Biscuits

Things have been crazy over the last couple of months. All of my boyfriend's hard work eating right and working out has payed off! He has dropped over 100lbs since we started keto and has now officially sworn into the military. He will be heading to basic training in less than two weeks so we have been cutting pretty hard and I have even been hitting the gym for moral support. We only get to workout together once a week, but it is nice to be on the same page. I have been back in the gym for 6 weeks now and I have worked our 34 times. Leaving little time for innovative cooking, while Kev is at Basic I will have more time to post.

I really like these biscuits. They are great to have in the fridge for a quick snack. I have been putting a little pizza sauce on them and melting more cheese on top for a pizza-style snack. 

Letting them sit really does make a HUGE difference. I tried them as soon as they came out of the oven but found that they needed that time to really finish melting together with the shredded cheese. 

Unfortunately biscuits will never be low calorie if you want them moist and flavourful. To save some calories you can use lower calorie cream cheese, nix the bacon grease and maybe skimp on the butter a bit. 

Ingredients:
-1 medium jalapeno
-1/2 teaspoon chili pepper
-1/2 teaspoon garlic salt
-3 eggs
-1/3 cup coconut flour
-(optional) 1/2 tablespoon bacon grease
-1 tablespoon of cream cheese
-1/2 cup shredded cheese (I used tex-mex)
-1/3 cup melted butter   
Procedure: 
1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Remove the seeds and chop up the jalapeno.
3. In a bowl combine dry ingredients. 
4. Blend the wet ingredients and the jalapeno. 
5. Mix the wet and dry ingredients until there are no lumps.
6. Fold in cheese. 
7. Spoon out the batter into nine equal units in greased pan.
8. Bake for 15 minutes. 
7. Brush tops of the biscuits with melted butter. 
8. Let sit for at least half an hour.
Nutritional Information:
Calories: 141
Fat: 12.3g
Carbs: 3.3g
Fibre: 1.8g
Sugar: 0.5g
Protein: 4.6g

Lettuce Wrapped Tacos

This is a super easy taco fix, perfect when you need to pig out and eat six tacos and not feel too guilty for cheating. Not much to tell on this one, not an original post (most people can figure this one out on their own).

Ingredients:
-1lb ground beef
-1 Head of Boston lettuce
-Shredded Cheese (I use tex mex)
-Sour Cream (optional)
-Salsa (optional)
-Seasonings for meat (to taste):
   -chili peppers
   -salt
   -pepper
   -cheyenne peppers
-Hot Sauce
-Toppings to taste

Procedure:
-Fry up the beef and then season to taste in the pan with seasonings and hot sauce.
-Remove from heat and let cool for 5 minutes.
-Grate cheese.
-Separate lettuce leaves on a plate.
-Add meat and your favourite toppings and sauces to the lettuce.

You can switch up the meat you use to, we have also made tacos with pulled pork (pictured below).
If you need a pulled pork recipe click here.

Cheese Stuffed Pork Chops

Pork chops and pork tenderloin are a staple in our diet. They are a cheap alternative to chicken and beef. We are poor new grads so saving a few bucks on meals is huge, I imagine this would be a perfect meal for a family. For $7 we bought 5 pork chops.

Ingredients
-Pork chops (I used 5)
-2 tsp of Mrs. Dash Garlic and Herb (you can also mix your own blend of herbs and garlic)
-a dash of salt and pepper
-1/2 tsp. of chili peppers
-coconut oil
-1 tsp. of hot sauce
-100-200g of your favourite cheese (we used marble)

The pork chops I used were rather thin, it was impossible to find thick cut chops at our grocer. If you can, use thick cut pork chops.

Procedure
1. Preheat oven to 350. And spread enough coconut oil over aluminum foil on pan for each pork chop.
2. Slice cheese into strips.
3. Make a length-wise slit in each pork chop that will fit your cheese. Do not cut down the entire length.
4. Stuff each pork chop with cheese.
5. Tooth pick the pork chop shut.
6. Add all of the dry ingredients together in a bowl.
7. Add hot sauce to the dry ingredients.
8. Dip each side of each pork chop in the spices in the bowl.
9. Bake the pork chops for 20 minutes.
10. Remove pork chops from oven and each one over. If cheese is leaking out you can try to put it back into the pork chops (or on top of them).
11. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes.

Nutritional Information
(to come)

Spicy Jalapeño Butter Shrimp

We love to switch up our seafood mid-week. 'Spicy Jalapeño Butter Shrimp' is one of our favourite ways to prepare shrimp, it is SO quick and SO easy. Perfect to make when you get home from work in a hurry to eat. We have started throwing jalapeños into the pan when we make the shrimp, but they are optional.

We often use the shrimp as a side with other things like Flatout Mini Pizzas. 

Ingredients:

-1lb Bag of Shrimp

-1/4 cup of butter

-1/2 can of Jalapeños (optional)

-salt & pepper to taste

-1 tsp. chili flakes

-1-2 tsp. chili powder

-1 tbsp. coconut oil

*season to taste, if these seasonings are too much for you reduce them

Procedure

1. Thaw shrimp (if frozen).

2. Heat coconut oil in pan on stovetop at medium heat.

3. Add butter to the coconut oil.

4. Add thawed shrimp to the pan.

5. Add seasoning to the shrimp and butter.

6. Cook shrimp for 5-10 minutes (this may vary by stove/will be different if you are using precooked shrimp).

7. Add jalapeños (optional). Let sit for 2-5 minutes. 

Nutritional Information: 

(to come)

Pork Rind Breaded Chicken Bites

We made these amazing pork rind chicken bites on a night when we had run a little tired of our normal
grilled chicken breasts.

They are super easy and you can vary the recipe by using different sauces.

For this batch we used Guy's BBQ Sauce (0 carb) and cut it with hot sauce.

We wanted hot bites, if you are making 'salt and pepper' bite or garlic bites you may not want to spice the egge mixture with cayenne pepper and chili flakes.

Ingredients
1 Egg
1/2 Teaspoon of Cayenne Pepper
1/2 Teaspoon of Chili Flakes
2 Chicken Breasts
A Dash of Salt and Pepper
1/2 Bag of Pork Rinds
2 Tablespoons of Coconut Oil

Procedure
1. In a small bowl mix together salt, pepper, egg and spices.
2. In another small crush up half a bag of pork rinds for breading the chicken breasts.
3. Cut chicken breasts into bite sized portions or strips.
4. Heat one tablespoon of coconut oil at medium heat in pan.
5. Dip chicken in egg mixture.
6. Coat chicken with crushed pork rinds.
7. We make them in two batches, frying half the bites at a time. Fry for about five minutes. Flip and fry for an additional 2 minutes.
8. Plate the bites and then spoon sauce over the bites.


You may not want to use sauce at all for coating the chicken bites. You can alternatively just use a dipping sauce.

Nutritional Information 
(will be updated soon)

Low Carb Pulled Chicken

Step One: Root-beer and seasoning! 

I make pulled every week. It is the perfect meat ingredient to have kicking around the house, we put it click here to check out that recipe).  But, we wanted to switch it up a little bit and made the switch to chicken. Now, it is a bit more expensive, but it is just as tasty and a great way to change things up a little bit. 
in everything and eat it on its own for a quick lunch (

We did not buy a jumbo pack for this experiment, one family pack of boneless skinless chicken thighs made a of shredded chicken for two hungry adults. We used chicken thighs because they are cheaper than chicken breasts and hold the flavour better than chicken breasts.

This recipe is basically the same as pulled pork, we just switched up the meat and times.

Ingredients

Fully cooked!

-One can of diet or stevia root beer
-Seasonings (we used paprika, chilli powder, pepper, chilli flakes)
-Hot sauce
-One package of chicken thighs

Procedure
1. Place chicken thighs in slow-cooker set on low heat.
2. Pour root-beer over chicken.
3. Spice to taste.
4. Stir/flip chicken every 2 hours (not really necessary, if you are leaving it overnight)
5. After 7 to 8 hours drain the leftover liquid from the crock-pot.
6. Pull apart chicken.
7. Season and sauce to taste. 

-Depending on what taste you are going for you can use different sauces. We have used everything from 0 carb sweet Hawaiian sauces to salsa. You can mix it up, I tend to use chipotle sauce and Kraft low cal barbecue sauce.

It is pretty hard to make pulled chicken look pretty.
But, damn it is tasty.