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Six ways to stay low carb or keto when you don’t want to cook
, medical review by Dr. Andreas Eenfeldt, MD
The options below show you how to stay low carb when you don’t feel like cooking at all, or only have time for minimal cooking.
1. Drink tea or coffee
Tea or coffee is the simplest suggestion and may be just enough to curb your appetite, especially if you add plenty of heavy cream or melted butter. This may take you to your next planned meal, with no cooking.
2. Eat low-carb snacks
Fill your pantry with low-carb essentials and make a platter with 1 or 2 low-carb snacks instead of cooking.
- Canned fish (tuna, salmon, sardines)
- Variety of cheeses
- Beef jerky, pork rinds (with no sugars or wheat)
- Avocado
- Nuts (Which are the best? Check out our guide.)
- Frozen berries
- Cream
- Pate
- Deli meat (off the bone)
- Full-fat yoghurt
- Olives
- Mayonnaise
- Healthy oils – like olive oil – to drizzle over snacks such as mozzarella
3. Reheat leftovers
Get in the habit of making double, or even triple meals and vegetables. Freeze the leftovers. A meal is waiting, ready to reheat, when you don’t want to cook. Leftovers are superb for lunches too.
4. Do minimal cooking
Boil an egg, fry a steak or buy a hot cooked chicken (without bread stuffing or sweet sauces). Add a bag of salad, a selection of cheeses and homemade mayonnaise. Dinner can be ready in 10 minutes. Get creative with salads and use your low-carb pantry essentials.
You could also use our simple keto plates, here is some inspiration:
5. Learn to love your slow cooker
If you know you will be home late but have time in the morning (or even the night before) use your slow cooker. Slow cookers are a fabulous way to cook cheaper cuts of meat into tender meals. This is easy ‘set and forget’ cooking.
What can you prepare in your slow cooker? Here are some great ideas to cook up:
6. Fast intermittently
Are you really hungry? Learn to understand your appetite and eat only when hungry. This may not be an option for a family but is great for individuals. And there is no faster (pun intended!) or simpler option.
Intermittent fasting for beginners
Summary
Whilst these are simple ideas, try to be prepared so you’re not in this position very often. Plan meals for the week or even few days at a time. Try to set time aside each evening to cook, or batch cook once a week.
Please leave a comment below on how you stay low carb when you don’t want to cook.
About
This Diet Doctor guide was written by Libby Jenkinson, a registered pharmacist, mother of 3 children, and the founder of ditchthecarbs.com, the leading low-carb website in New Zealand and Australia. Editing by Dr. Andreas Eenfeldt.
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What are your best tips for how to stay low carb when you don’t want to cook? Please let us know below.
No time to stop for lunch? Just take a vew neatly cut pieces....
Flavor and smooth cream cheese with olive oil, garlic and salt - or any strong flavor you like - and when you're famished, roll it up in hard salami slices, spread it on celery, etc.
Keep hard-boiled eggs in the fridge to make deviled eggs with extra mayonnaise, or to chop up and add to tuna or green salad.
* Keto friendly snacks: olives, almond, macademias, crudite with a mayo or sour cream based dip
* Once a week, I make oopsie bread. Grab some and make a sandwich.
* Meal replacements: several websites sell keto friendly protein powders. Search around for your sweetener of choice; I use True Nutrition because they use stevia and let me build a custom blend with protein, fiber, and vitamins. Mix with a little heavy cream, some water, and shake/blend thoroughly.
* Know the keto friendly restaurants in your area. A few local Chinese places are happy to do "no rice, extra vegetables", and a nearby Thai restaurant will swap out rice for shredded cabbage. Yeah, it's probably got some corn starch and a touch of sugar, but not enough to break my low carb diet.
* I'm considering this but haven't done it yet: making savory "fat bombs" ahead of time, then consuming throughout the week.
Second, make sure your keto-friendly options are good enough to have even when you feel like cooking. This reduces food waste and minimizes the temptation to break your diet.
Finally, make sure to have multiple options including sweet and savory choices. If you only have one option, it will get overused and you'll get tired of it.
My recommendation would be to look towards Hemp Seed Hearts (mild, nutty flavour & loaded with "complete" protein, 3 tbs has 10 g protein), hemp protein powder, and chia seeds (3tbs has 5 g protein and 11g of the 13g carbs are fibre) for additional protein sources. The Hemp hearts would be good on salad or stir fry, in savoury fat bombs or some sort of "bread", the powder added to smoothies, and the chia seeds make an awesome pudding with heavy cream or coconut milk (I usually put them in some water first to make a thick paste as I've found they don't swell up in fatty liquids so well) and flavoured with cocoa and/or vanilla. Try red chard for colour in stir fries or omelets instead of peppers. Not so much "no cook", but you could prep ahead of time. The occasional (half?) serving of pulses probably wouldn't hurt too much either.
Also, I‘d like to ask one question regarding sweeteners…what is the rap on erythritol? Tks and Brgds
Meal 1 idea -- Grab one of each and head out to work - the meal is done and ready to go! I eat this for lunch over a salad if you like:
1. Hard-boiled and shelled eggs comes 2x in a pack with 10 packs
2. Fully cooked bacon - no pre-cooking needed just heat in microwave or eat it cold
3. Wholly Guacamole in to go pouch sizes
4. 2x baby bell cheeses
Meal 2 idea:
1. Buy mushrooms, asparagus and cabbage and add two tablespoons of butter. Portion these out in raw form to meals sizes. I use a food saver vacuum seal to keep in the fridge for the week. Microwave for 5 mins or so when ready to eat. No cooking.
2. Costco sells cooked chicken skewers. Combine this with a salad and the veggies you microwave. Top with olive oil, a bit of lemon juice and avocado or your fav salad dressing.
I buy things like cottage cheese,sour cream,salsa, cheese sticks which I can put in my purse..hard boiled eggs, olives, celery, romaine lettuce,cream cheese with herbs, coffee, eggs with cheese..
Gloria, not sure what you mean when you say low carb food is mostly garbage....it's just real, whole food. If you want processed, pre-packaged prepared food....well, yeah, that's mostly garbage, and usually NOT low carb, Maybe you're looking for something like http://www.realgoodfood.com ?
While I'm at it... Egg cartons promoting 'organic vegetarian feed' is ludicrous. Chicken are not vegetarians. They are primarily meat eaters. They eat mostly worms and insects but will really go after lizards and snakes if the opportunity is there!
This website is a good source. The visuals (plates of food, types of veggies etc) are my favorite tool to help overcome 48 years of bad habits.
Or I do the chorizo cabbage thing - not sure what it's called... fry chorizo, remove from pan, fry sliced white cabbage in butter, add cream replace chorizo. I know you said no cooking but this is so quick it barely counts as cooking...