Yes, this meal is keto! I would not lie to you.
I don't usually post about food on Steemit, but I had to make an exception for this recipe. For anybody out there trying to stick to a low-carb, high-fat diet like Keto or Paleo, there are probably a few favorite foods that you greatly miss. For a lot of folks, it's pizza. For me, it was hamburgers and french fries. This is the meal that I crave more than any other, and sorry, but a bunless burger and crisped zucchini is not going to cut it.
So I did some research and found some more authentic tasting substitutes. For the burger buns, I tried a recipe for fathead dough rolls, and for the fries, I gave rutabaga a shot in place of potatoes.
Fathead dough is a keto recipe that has become popular in recent months as a pizza crust option. It's primarily cheese (mozzarella, cheddar, and cream cheese) with some almond flour, baking powder, and egg. I'd never tried it for pizza crust or anything else, but I'd heard good things, so I decided to use that as my hamburger substrate. I thought I might have to improvise on the pizza dough recipe, but luckily, someone else on the Internetz had already done that for me.
Rutabaga, if you're not familiar with it, is a large root vegetable that looks like a turnip, but tastes different. Apparently in the UK it is called a "swede". (Weirdos.) But 'round these here parts, we call it a rutabaga like god intended. I have to admit I've never actually tried rutabaga before, to my knowledge, so I wasn't sure what to expect. Since it looks like a turnip, I kind of expected it to have a turnip-y, root-y taste to it. In fact, the seasoned, baked rutabagas tasted to me just like french fries, except with a very mild sweetness. They weren't quite as crispy as potato fries, but they definitely did the trick for me. I served them with reduced sugar ketchup.
I took a trip to the grocery store last night to gather all the ingredients I didn't already have. Most of the ingredients are easy to find in my corner of the world. The only things that might be difficult to locate in some places are the rutabaga and the almond flour for the buns.
There was quite a bit of prep involved in making this meal, since there were three separate parts to it (the burgers, the buns, and the fries). All told, it took me about 2 hours to make this feast, and I was a little nervous that all my effort would prove futile, and I'd end up eating yet another cheap hamburger-and-fries imitation meal. But I was wrong. The whole meal was delicious, and the time prepping and cooking was so worth it!
Here are the recipes I found online:
Fathead Dough Rolls
Rutabaga Fries
And here's my own recipe for the burgers themselves:
Ingredients
- 2 lbs ground beef (I use 80/20 chuck)
- 1 large egg, beaten
- 1/2 onion, chopped
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 1/4 cup stone ground mustard
- 1/4 cup worcestershire sauce
- 1 slice of cooked bacon, shredded
Instructions
- In a large bowl, mix all of the ingredients well. (Don't be scared to use your hands!)
- Form patties from the meat
- Grill, or cook in frying pan on medium-high heat for about ten minutes per side
- Dress with spring greens, tomato, and onion, or your favorite burger toppings
**Note: I know I called them "cheeseburgers", but you really don't need cheese on them, since the buns are primarily made of cheese.
