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Recipes FAQ
, medical review by Dr. Andreas Eenfeldt, MD
- Where can I find the nutritional information for your recipes?
- How come there are moderate and liberal recipes with fewer carbs per serving than in some keto recipes?
- Where can I find the number of calories for each recipe?
- Can I combine a vegetarian or vegan diet with a keto diet?
- I don’t like/can’t eat a certain ingredient, can I substitute it for something else?
- What can I use to substitute dairy in a recipe?
- Why do some of your dairy-free recipes list butter in the ingredients?
- Why do you limit the use of sweeteners in your recipes?
- Do your recipes show net carbs or total carbs?
- What is your nutritional information based on?
- Why are most of your side dishes marked as moderate or liberal low carb and not keto?
If you want to learn more about our thoughts on different ingredients, please see our food policy.
1. Where can I find the nutritional information for your recipes?
In all recipes we have a section called nutrition. It’s located directly underneath the ingredients. Click the plus sign and you will find the amount of carbs, protein and fat in percentage and in grams per serving. There you’ll also find the number of calories per serving.
2. How come there are moderate and liberal recipes with fewer carbs per serving than in some keto recipes?
Here’s how we define different levels of low carb at Diet Doctor:
- Ketogenic low carb <20 gram carbs per day. This is a ketogenic diet (if protein intake is moderate). This level is defined as below 4 energy percent carbs in our recipes, where we also keep the protein level low or moderate (excess protein is converted to carbohydrates in the body).1 In our ketogenic recipes the amount of carbs per serving is shown in green balls.
- Moderate low carb 20-50 grams per day. This level is defined as between 4-10 E% carbs in our recipes and the amount of carbs per serving is shown in yellow balls.
- Liberal low carb 50-100 grams per day. This means 10-20 E% carbs in our recipes and the amount of carbs per serving is shown in orange balls.
Because the levels are defined by percentage, you can sometimes find a small serving of a liberal recipe with fewer carbs per serving than a large serving of a keto recipe.
Please see our guide How low carb is low carb? to learn more about our categories.
3. Where can I find the number of calories for each recipe?
All nutritional information, including calories per serving, can be found in the section underneath the ingredients in all recipes.
If your aim with calorie restriction is to lose weight, please see our guide: How to lose weight
Read more about our thoughts on calorie counting here:
Isn’t weight loss all about calories?
The top videos about calories
4. Can I combine a vegetarian or vegan diet with a keto diet?
If you are a vegetarian who eats dairy and eggs, known as lacto-ovo, it’s not a problem to combine that with a low-carb or keto lifestyle.
A strict vegan diet can be complicated to combine with keto and is not something we recommend in the long run because of the problems of getting enough essential protein and vitamins. For individual meals it’s usually not a problem, a great example is this recipe for vegan kale and spinach soup.
If you’re vegan and you want to follow a more liberal low-carb diet, where beans and lentils may have a place, that could in theory be possible. Due to our hesitation about how healthful this is long term we’ve chosen not to make this our focus.
Guide: How to follow a healthy vegetarian keto diet
5. I don’t like/can’t eat a certain ingredient, can I substitute it for something else?
Yes! We think of our recipes as guidance for your inspiration and assistance in making low-carb and keto simple. We absolutely love it when people change ingredients in our recipes and make them their own.
There are a few things to consider though from a food safety perspective. If you substitute your protein you need to make sure it’s cooked until safe to eat. This goes especially for poultry, pork and eggs. If you feel uncertain about how to tell when it’s done, we recommend using a food thermometer.
When it comes to vegetables it’s usually easier to substitute for something that resembles the vegetable you’re swapping. By that we mean resemblance in texture and size. That way you can use the same cooking procedure and estimated cooking times.
In order to keep the macros in the recipe in the same range we recommend using our guide to low-carb vegetables.
6. What can I use to substitute dairy in a recipe?
For information on when to use butter, and how to substitute it if you don’t want to use it, see FAQ #4.
When it comes to products like milk, heavy whipping cream or créme fraiche we suggest substituting for coconut milk or coconut cream. Make sure the one you buy doesn’t have any sugar added to it.
Cheese is a trickier thing to replace in a recipe. Many who limit dairy still enjoy cheese made from goat or sheep milk because they contain a type of milk protein (A2 casein) that humans tolerate better than the milk protein from most modern cows (A1 casein).
7. Why do some of your dairy-free recipes list butter in the ingredients?
In some recipes we have butter as an alternative source of fat. Many people who limit dairy can still enjoy real butter which, despite being made from milk, contains only trace amounts of milk protein and sugar. In recipes where the butter can’t be substituted for another source of fat, we do not label them as dairy-free.
Excluding dairy from your diet can be an effective way to speed up your weight loss and help reverse type 2 diabetes. Dairy products contain not only milk sugar (lactose), but also milk protein (casein), which stimulates insulin secretion more than other types of protein. This is why milk is great for a growing baby, but not that great for an adult who wants to lose weight.
In recipes where you want to exclude butter, here are our recommendations for substitution:
- In general, we recommend substituting butter for ghee (homemade versions may still have traces of milk protein in them so if you’re allergic we don’t recommend that), coconut oil or olive oil.
- For frying, we recommend using ghee or coconut oil.
- When adding to the finished dish as a sauce or flavor enhancer, we recommend ghee or olive oil.
Low carb, keto and dairy free recipes
8. Why do you limit sweeteners in your recipes?
Sweeteners are often used in low-carb and keto recipes as a substitute for sugar since they don’t raise blood sugar or cause insulin release as regular sugar does. So why do we feel a need to limit them?
Our recommendation is to not consume sweeteners. They are problematic for a number of reasons – for example they’ve been shown to potentially increase appetite and maintain cravings for sweet foods.
We do allow some natural sweeteners in dessert recipes. Please read more about our use of sweeteners in our food policy.
That being said, if you feel comfortable using sweeteners and wish to continue doing so, you can alter our recipes as you see fit to better suit your needs and preferences.
9. Do your recipes show net carbs or total carbs?
We use net carbs throughout this site. Net carbs means digestible carbs, i.e. the total amount of carbs minus fiber. Since fiber passes through our bodies without affecting blood sugar in most people, we believe that this is the easiest way to calculate.
10. What is the nutritional information based on?
To the largest extent possible we use the USDA database for nutritional information (US Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, Nutrient Data Laboratory. USDA National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference, Release 28. Current version: September 2015, slightly revised May 2016.).
If an ingredient isn’t listed there we use a Swedish equivalent (Livsmedelsverket) and if we’re not successful finding it there either we use the nutritional information provided on the product used.
11. Why are most of your side dishes marked as moderate or liberal low carb and not keto?
Most of the side dishes on our site are marked as moderate or liberal low carb (yellow or orange ball). That’s because they, by themselves, often contain a percentage of carbs too high to be labeled keto.
In practice this means that a “moderate” or even “liberal” side dish, together with a “normal” portion of protein of your liking and a generous dollop of sauce or flavored butter (fat) most likely will become a delicious keto meal.
If using unprocessed protein and fat they won’t add many, if any, carbs to the plate and the number on the side dish will be true for the entire serving.
So feel free to indulge in all of our side dishes and combine them with your favorite meats and condiments for the perfect keto meal.
Visual low-carb guides
Here are more detailed visual guides to the amount of carbs in common foods. Is a specific food item low or high in carbs? Click to find out:
Vegetables 
Fruits 
Nuts 
Snacks 
Alcohol 
Fats & sauces 
Drinks 
How many carbs? Comments
If you couldn’t find the answer you were looking for above, please ask your question here and we’ll do our best to answer it.
The limit of four energy percent means that you’ll stay below a maximum 20 grams of carbs on a 2,000-calorie diet, even if you only choose our very most carb-rich keto recipes.
In most cases you’ll end up with far fewer carbs than that, as some of the keto recipes you use are likely to have significantly less than the maximum amount of carbs.
Our keto recipes are also limited in protein. Our rule is that for keto recipes with 4 energy percent carbs we accept a maximum of 25 energy percent protein. For lower carb levels we accept slightly more protein:
- 3 % carbs = max 27 % protein
- 2 % carbs = max 29 % protein
- 1 % carbs = max 31 % protein
- 0 % carbs = max 33 % protein
If there’s too much protein in a recipe to classify it as keto low carb, we instead classify it as moderate low carb. ↩
140 comments
Recipes
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The given weight should be the amount after coring - the amount actually used in the dish. For the ground beef, you can use whichever you prefer. Some people prefer the fattier ground beef while others find it too greasy.
We do not have a tikka masala recipe. If you mean the garam masala recipe, steps 6 and 7 directs you to add ingredients to the remaining mix and then to pour it over the chicken.
Because we have visitors from all over the world, we try to leave the ingredients as generic as possible since specific style and brand will vary widely. For pepperoni, look for a brand with the cleanest ingredients possible. For the ground beef, you can use whichever you prefer. Some people find the higher fat too greasy.
That would depend on the specific recipe. In some you can omit it entirely and in others you may wish to try beef or turkey bacon.
Yes, you can use fresh if you prefer. 1tsp onion powder is roughly equal to 1 medium onion and 1/8tp garlic powder equals one garlic clove (there are many conversion sites that can be found through your browser's search engine). We use the dried powders because they are fewer carbs than their fresh equivalents.
You may be interested in this recipe collection.
https://www.dietdoctor.com/low-carb/recipes/meals/lunch
That's going to depend on the recipe. Coconut oil can be replaced with butter or olive oil in most cases and coconut milk can be replaced with unsweetened almond milk.
You may find this article helpful!
https://www.dietdoctor.com/low-carb/fruits-and-vegetables
Unfortunately there is not a good substitute for psyllium in most of the bread recipes.
There is not going to be a set chart as different brands of sweetener have differing levels of sweetness.
Crushed pork rinds can work well in sausage recipes, or it can be omitted entirely.
Thanks
You may well have all of the ingredients on hand to make your own ranch seasoning!
https://www.dietdoctor.com/recipes/ranch-seasoning
ml is a volume, gram is a weight. The same volume of different ingredients can have different weights.
If you’re a woman consuming foods that increase estrogen levels, it’s going to increase your risk of breast cancer, cervical cancer, PCOS (polycystic ovary syndrome) and other hormone imbalance-related disorders.
That’s the main issue with most soy products today — avoiding excess estrogen — when you’re consuming a general processed soy. It’s a big issue.
Another big deal is that 90 percent (!) of soy today is also genetically modified. Genetically modified foods are linked to many health problems because they kill off good bacteria in your gut, known as probiotics benefits, and also damage the working of your digestive system.”
Have you seen our article about the reasons behind the change in our food policy when it comes to soy? We link to evidence and articles. Eating soy or not eating soy is always a personal choice.
You can use leftover egg yolks in ice cream!
https://www.dietdoctor.com/recipes/low-carb-peppermint-mocha-ice-cream
Unfortunately the lactose free milks still tend to be higher carb and lower fat than we would recommend.
please help as we are at a loss.
That frequently is included if a recipe includes a baking dish size or baking time. If you make fewer or more servings of a dish, you will need to adjust that as needed. The amount of ingredients called for will automatically scale as you drop that 8 servings down to 4.