Chicken with Bacon, Cream and Thyme

We decided to try a chicken recipe from the low carb gourmet cookbook. This time we selected Chicken with Bacon, Cream and Thyme. This is a lovely moist recipe where the chicken is wrapped in bacon and cooked in cream. 

Ingredients: 

4 Chicken Breasts

8 Bacon Rashers

8 small thyme sprigs, or you can use dried thyme. 

120ml chicken stock

240ml Double Cream

Wrap 2 bacon rashers around each chicken breast. Tuck in the thyme, if using sprigs. Fry off the breasts until browned. 

Place chicken in a roasting tray and pour over the cream and stock. If using dry thyme then sprinkle this in at this stage. 

Place in the oven, 180oC, for 20-25 minutes until the chicken is cooked through and the chicken has thickened. 

As with all dishes we serve this with low carb vegetables like green beans, cauliflower or broccoli. 

We enjoyed this dish as it was nice to have moist chicken with a built in sauce, which was delicious. The carbs in this will depend mostly on which stock you use but ours came in at around 2g carbs per serving. This serves 4. 

Unfortunately I don't have a photo of this at the moment but next time I make it we will be sure to add one. 

Butter Chicken

One of the recipes we've recently tried from the Low Carb Gourmet Cookbook is "Butter Chicken". I'm not really sure why it's called this as it doesn't seem very butter chicken to me but it is tasty. It's basically a chicken curry recipe. 

Ingredients: 

680g Chicken breast cut into pieces

2 tbsp tandoori paste, or whatever flavour you can find, we had madras. 

180ml Double Cream

1 tbsp butter

Fry off the chicken until it's golden brown. Add the paste and the cream and stir it all together. Cook for around 20 minutes until the chicken is cooked all the way through and the sauce has thickened. Stir in the butter. 

We serve this with cauliflower but you could make cauliflower rice or mash if you prefer. 

We really enjoyed this as it was very quick but produced a lovely flavoursome dish. It is relatively low carb and this figure will depend on the paste that you use. Ours was around 2.7g Carbs per portion. The above should serve around 4 people. 

At the moment I don't seem to have a picture of this one so I'll have to remember next time we eat it. 

I feel like chicken for lunch, like chicken for lunch…

Chicken is great, it allows you to get some fat and protein into you and none of the carbs, I have found it to be my perfect lunch. We normally get frozen chicken from Tesco, sure it is probably not the best chicken in the world but for now it will do.

Get the chicken out of the freezer, cover in oil, sprinkle on some salt and then you are ready to get creative. You can really make whatever flavour you like, here are some of the ones that I have done so far.

Chilli - Just don’t pour straight from the tub as it can get a tad spicy, I should know I have done it (twice!).

Five Spice - Really nice this one, give you the feel of having Chinese and tastes great.

Herby - Get some mixed spice and bang it on.

Bacon - Put some cheese (or not) on the chicken and then wrap in bacon. Chicken in a blanket.

Ok so that isn’t much but I have been having this for lunch for 5 months and I am still not bored of it, still manage to mix it up and it keeps me going. When you have the bacon on it you feel like you are having a great treat and this is just for you lunch. Feel free to have it with some lettuce, spincach, watercress or cucumber and the odd tomato, you can mix up the cheese to get different flavours and textures.

Making low carb easier- planning

One of the tricky things on this diet can be making life easy. Think about some of the easy meals you make in life.

Pasta - Can’t have ever again.

Jacket Potato - Nope

Cheese / Beans on Toast - You can have cheese - no bread

Cereal or toast for breakfast - Really you shouldn't even be having much milk 0 no bread

Sandwich for lunch - Again you can’t have bread

Above are just some of the example, but there are many other things. If you have stews, or chilli etc you have them with rice? Can’t have rice…. You can start to get to the point where you want something a bit easier.

For breakfast I really recommend either bacon or turkey rasher and if you are vegetarian I would go for egg, feel free to add an egg to any meal you like anyway. This are simple, only take 10 minutes or so and keep you full, plus I remember the days when bacon used to be a treat.

Lunches are slightly more problematic but this does depend on what you like. I like chicken and so we get bags of frozen chicken, then I cook enough to last me a few days, I tend to cover them in spices or herbs and really mix it up, this means I am sorted for the week and can have variety. Typically add some lettuce or cucumber, the odd splash of mayo. Another alternative here for simple is just some cold meat wrapped in lettuce, again stick some mayo in there. May not be inspiring but mix up the meat, get the garlic mayo (you colleagues with love you for it), with the chicken occasionally stick some cheese on it and wrapped in all in bacon.

Dinners are tricky… we have found a great way to solve this problem is to cooked lots of meat. So buy a chicken and a gammon joint (or lamb we love lamb) and portion them out. Alternate between the 2 for a week and you just have to make veg and reheat the meat. Very simple. You can use some stock as gravy, this is normally very low carb and goes well. You can still make other things for dinner, meatballs in a tomato, spinach and herb sauce, it is still fairly low in carb, taste great and you can make in bulk, just don’t eat it with pasta.

There are some ideas of how to make your life a bit easier. If you have any suggestions then let me know.