Low Carb Cooking Tips

Hey, everybody. Chef Todd Moore back again. You can see why I wear a hat. Most of the time, I'm in my home kitchen. Why am I in my home kitchen once again? Because this is where everything happens for you in your home kitchen. People ask me all the time, hey, how come you're not in the commercial stainless steel kitchen? Because you don't have a commercial stainless steel kitchen, do you? That's unfair. I'm trying to show you quick and easy ways to get dinner done. Now you, if you really miss shiny metal, become a member of webcookingclasses.com you'll get all the stainless steel commercial kitchens that you desire. But I'm on a quest to try.

And increase my energy to try and.

Help myself feel better. It started at the beginning of the year when I asked my friend Ben Greenfield what I should do. And what came out of that conversation was try and substitute some of the carbohydrates in my diet. The pasta, the rices, the breads, the potatoes for protein items, things like beans and eggs, higher protein. And I'm going to try and do that again today. But again, you know, I don't cook with recipes. I just make stuff up. So how do you just make stuff up, you might ask? Because I can combine the knowledge of basic cooking methods along with the ingredients that I desire, the things that I want to cook with basic methods with my desired ingredients. Turns out to be a great meal. Quick and easy all the time. Let's make something up. High protein dish again.

Today starts over at the stove. We're gonna start this dish the same way that we did the other one. I've got my steamer pan and some string beans and sliced carrots in the steamer basket. Because string beans again in the saute pan, they're gonna get hard and tough before they'll get cooked. So steaming is the best and healthiest way to cook vegetables. We'll start the carrots and the string beans in one pan. And then what I've got is my stir fry wok here on the left side, my man pans with. With the cool handle. And we'll start the basic saute procedure by testing to see if the pan is hot yet. Little bit of water on my hand, little bit of sizzle. I know that water evaporates at 212 degrees Fahrenheit or 100 degrees Celsius. So then goes some kind of fat. This is sesame oil. Because again, we're going to do an Asian inspired stir fry kind of thing. There's not that much fat on the bottom of the pan because I want it to be a conductor of the heat. So it is going to take the heat from the bottom of the pan to the inside of the pan and then heat my protein product. So I'm going to heat this oil until just before it begins to smoke. And I can tell that when it starts to get ripply, when it goes from perfectly smooth to getting ripples in the oil, and I tilt it back and forth, and I start to see the changes in the appearance of the oil. Now comes my onions. I've got these stir fry sliced onions, and we're going to render some of the flavor of the onions into the sesame oil and some of the flavor of the sesame oil into the onions.

Let's check on the steamed string beans and carrots. While the onions are starting to get a little translucent, while they sweat a little bit, get my tongs. Pull one out. Feel it? Yeah. Feel soft. I think they're ready to go. And they're going to be cooked again. Don't forget these are par. Cooking, steaming these vegetables. So we'll just set them aside. Take another look down here at the onions, which are now translucent a little bit. And we've got some shrimp here, some peeled and deveined shrimp that I've gone ahead and cleaned. Put them in with the pan.

And now I've got a saute or a stir fry of sesame oil, onion, and shrimp.

How about mushrooms? So I had a bunch of sliced mushrooms.

And now toss all these ingredients together. The onions, the shrimp, the mushrooms. And of course, you can choose any ingredients that you'd like to. When we cook without recipes, I'm going to season with some dried ginger.

And of course, what goes along with this flavor profile is some soy sauce.

Because I'm just making this stuff up, I don't have any measurements for you. I start to put the flavors and the ingredients that I like together. But you'll notice the the similarities between this dish and the one I did earlier this week. It's the same procedure. And what we've been talking about is trying to add as much protein to my diet. And black beans are certainly great protein. This is better than serving rice with it or serving noodles if you're trying to lower the carbohydrates in your diet. So this is all happening in one pan now, building one flavor on top of the other, cooking one item on top of the other until all these flavors come together.

Now let's add a little chicken broth to the pan and start cooking under A moist method. So now that all my ingredients are in there, the lid goes on with the chicken broth, and I let it steam for a little bit.

A few minutes later, we take the lid off.

Toss everything around. Everything's heated through.

And we're going to start to think about how I can put more protein in here and add flavor and even thicken that sauce a little bit. But first we'll check on the vegetables, the string beans, and the carrots. They're done. I pulled one out. I felt it, I tasted it. Let's just go ahead and add that along with a little bit of the moisture that comes out to the pan.

Put that aside. We don't need that steamer anymore.

And now I've got a nice, colorful, flavorful protein, rich with my vegetables that are cooked perfectly this entire dish. And again, trying to put more protein in here, I'm going to add an egg white. This will help thicken my sauce a little bit, bind things together, help the flavors stick to the food. And just by pouring the egg white in there and stirring, I've added that much more protein, making this a more healthy dish with all this combination of ingredients.

Get that back in there. Now let's add an egg yolk. Separately, I've separated this egg and separated the yolk from the white. And this, I mean, certainly you can put the whole egg in this gives it a little more color contrast because I've got the bits of the egg white and. And now some yellow from the egg yolk. But along with the shrimp and the black beans, the egg gives me that much more protein in this dish instead of the carbohydrates that I might add.

After letting all these ingredients come together, it's just a matter of a simple plate up.

The string beans, the carrots, the. The shrimp, the onions, the flavor of ginger, along with mushrooms and white, egg white and egg yolk, makes this a delicious, Asian inspired, quick and easy stir fry dish that you can certainly do on your own. But again, the key here being I didn't have to go looking for a recipe. I actually cooked this in less time than it would take me to go find a recipe. But this stir fry dish doesn't have any rice, it doesn't have any noodles, and. And it is of a larger proportion because I need these calories. I need to fill myself up on things of a higher protein that are going to do me better throughout the day.

Let's add some black sesame seeds for garnish.

Some crushed cashews as well. And there you have it My Asian inspired shrimp, string beans, carrots, mushrooms. A quick and easy stir fry dish that you can make up at home without a recipe.