Keto And Low Carb Diet Foods - Basic Cooking Skills You Need

When you go on the journey toward the keto and low-carb lifestyle, you will need to learn to cook. A keto and low-carb diet or lifestyle are about returning to eating whole and fresh foods.

If you are going on keto, low carb, or healthy eating, you will need to know and understand some basic cooking skills. Most of your foods should be fresh and homemade. You will need to be able to do some basic things such as chop vegetables and meats along with sauteing and cooking food.

Most homemade recipes require you to cook, not just open a can, reheat the food in the microwave or eat a frozen tv dinner.

Basic Cooking Skills You Will Need
Related Question
- What Will Be The Effect Of Exercise If I Don’t Change My Diet?
- Being On A Keto Diet Without Exercising

Basic Cooking Skills You Will Need

When you go on a keto and low-carb lifestyle, you need to have some basic skills to cook fresh and homemade food; below are some basic cooking and food skills you need o to learn to master.

Know How To Chop Vegetables and Meats

You need to know how to chop vegetables and meats. I do most of my chopping by hand, but if you hate to chop vegetables, you can consider getting a vegetable chopping machine.

We love the Breville Sous Chef Peel & Dice Food Processor available at William and Sonoma; you can find out more by clicking here.

I find that by the time I get the vegetable chopper out, set up, and cleaned, I can usually have most of my vegetables already cut up. When I am home helping my mother, we often sit down, chop vegetables and talk. So if you have a partner, make the vegetable chopping time a time to talk and be social.

If you are like me and do not mind bringing out the cutting board and chopping vegetables, here are a few things to consider:

Have Two Cutting Boards – Have two cutting boards, one for the vegetables and one for the meat. We like to color code them. We have a red cutting board we use only to chop meat and white for vegetables.

Have Good Knife – Good knives are essential. My favorite is the Chinese Cleaver knife or the Shun Kaji Chef’s Knives from Williams Sonoma; you can learn more about these knives by clicking here. Having good knives are essential tools to have in your kitchen.

Chopping fresh vegetables and meat is a skill many people have lost as they are used to processed foods. Only about 50% of the American population knows how to cook.

One of the best ways to get the chopping skill is to practice. At first, it may take a while, and you may feel it is a slow process, but once you start practicing chopping, you will be surprised at how quickly it will go.

Making Cooking Fresh A Priority

I have learned many basic cooking skills from living and working in Asia. The Asians have always understood how to cook some foods, and in particular, what is known as the quick fry method.

Here are some things to learn to master the quick fry method.

Sauté Vegetables — When you saute vegetables, you put oil or butter in the pan and let it heat. I will first add the garlic and onion and allow it to sauté. This makes for all the flavor to come out.

Brown Any Meat – I will add any meat I want to brown and cook. Usually, I cook it part way, and then If the recipe has other vegetables, I will add them.

Cook The Vegetables That Take The Longest Next – Not all vegetables will cook at the same pace, rate or time. So put those in plain it will take longer. Stir them up together. Things like cauliflower, broccoli, peppers, and celery usually take a longer time to cook.
Add in other vegetables that you are cooking. I usually add in the rest of the vegetables I am cooking.
Mix in spices and sauces and then any nuts.

I will use this primary method a lot for my cooking. Even something like soup, I know, will be simmering on the stove all day; I will use this same method before I add water. I will mix the onion and garlic with the sautéed vegetables before adding water to the soup. It just helps to bring out all the flavors of the food.

Listen To Our Podcast About Basic Cooking Skills You Need When You Are In Low Carb And Keto Diet by clicking here.

Understand Basic Substitutions For Cooking

You can eat most of your favorite foods when eating Keto or Low Carb, but you need to learn how to make them fresh and use substitutes for food you can not eat. We will look at it in many regular recipes and then substitute foods to make them keto or low carb.

Here are some of my favorite substitutes:

Cauliflower Rice For Rice – I will use cauliflower rice if I want a rice dish. Cauliflower rice is the item I may also buy frozen, but we often buy fresh cauliflower to make rice.

Coconut, Olive, Or Avocado Oil Instead of ›Vegetable Oil – I use a lot of Coconut oil for many foods. I happen to like it for many of the foods I may cook. But there are lots of oils you can use instead of vegetable oil.

Monk Fruit Sugar For Sugar – If a recipe calls for sugar, I will use Monk Fruit Sugar. It is sweeter than regular sugar so use less of it, but I find it works in most recipes.

Almond Flour For Flour – I will use almond flour instead of regular flour in many recipes.

Do not be afraid to substitute or experiment. Some recipes will work out, and others will not. One of the things I love about cooking is the creativity that cooking affords you. This is an area of your life where you can experiment and change things up, along with trying new things.

Reluctant Low Carb Life explores all aspects of keto and low carb lifestyle, fitness, health, wellness, and aging gracefully. At the Reluctant Low Carb Life, we strive to give honest and accurate information from people trying to live the low carb and keto lifestyle while improving their fitness and health.

We have a free monthly newsletter that is filled with information and helps you remain updated. Subscribe to the Reluctant Low Carb Life newsletter by clicking here.

Listen to our weekly podcast, Reluctant Low Carb Life, on all the major podcast platforms by clicking here.

What Will Be The Effect Of Exercise If I Don’t Change My Diet?

We can all choose to maintain and keep a healthy lifestyle. There are many reasons why this is important, but one of them is that we will live a more prosperous whole life if we choose to maintain and keep a healthy lifestyle. We have listed out ten reasons why we feel maintaining a healthy lifestyle is essential.

Being On A Keto Diet Without Exercising

You can lose weight on a keto diet without exercising, but there can be many added benefits if you add exercise to your keto diet. Being on a keto diet is about changing and improving your lifestyle for good, and adding exercise to this will help you change and improve your overall lifestyle.

You can read more about Being On A Keto Diet Without Exercising by clicking here.