300 Low-Carb Slow Cooker Recipes (29 page)

No, no, that's not Kahlua; there's no coffee liqueur involved. Rather, it's a slow-cooker adapted version of a traditional Hawaiian dish. Super-simple, super-low carb, and utterly delicious—that Nice Boy I Married rated it a perfect 10. Feel free to use a 6 pound (2.7 kg) pork shoulder, more salt, more liquid smoke, and more cabbage and serve an army. Just increase the cooking times a bit.

3 pounds (1.4 kg) Boston butt pork roast

2 teaspoons sea salt

1 tablespoon (15 ml) liquid smoke flavoring

1 head cabbage, chopped fairly coarsely

1/4 medium onion, minced

Take a carving fork and stab your pork roast viciously all over. Do your best slasher movie imitation. You're making lots of holes to let the smoky flavor in.

Now sprinkle the salt all over the roast, getting every bit of the surface, and rub it in a little. Do the same with the smoke flavoring.

Lay your roast on the bottom of your slow cooker, cover it, set it to low, and forget about it for a good 7 to 8 hours, minimum. Then flip the roast, re-cover, and forget about it for another 7 to 8 hours.

An hour or 90 minutes before serving time, chop up your cabbage and onion.

Haul out your pork, put it in a big bowl, and shred it up with a fork. Scoop out a bit of the liquid from the pot to moisten it if it seems to need it. Then keep it somewhere warm (or you can rewarm it later in the microwave).

Throw the cabbage and onion in the remaining liquid and toss it to coat. Cover the pot, set it on high, and let it cook for at least an hour—you want it wilted but still a little crunchy.

Serve the meat and cabbage together.

Yield:
8 servings, each with: 384 calories, 27 g fat, 33 g protein, 1 g carbohydrate, trace dietary fiber, 1 g usable carbs.

Pork with Rutabaga

If you haven't tried rutabaga, you simply must. Also sometimes called a “swede” or a “yellow turnip,” rutabaga is similar to a turnip, except that it has an entrancing bitter-sweet flavor. Anyway, it's fun confusing grocery store checkout clerks who can't figure out what that big yellow root is! It's actually delicious to make this with half rutabaga and half a fresh, cubed pumpkin, but it's just not possible to find fresh pumpkin some seasons of the year.

2 1/2 pounds (1.1 kg) rutabaga, peeled and cubed

3 pounds (1.4 kg) boneless pork shoulder roast, tied or netted

1/2 teaspoon blackstrap molasses

1/2 cup (12 g) Splenda

1/4 teaspoon cayenne

1 clove garlic, minced

Put the rutabaga in the bottom of your slow cooker. Put the pork on top. Drizzle the molasses over the pork and rutabega.

In a bowl, mix together the Splenda, cayenne, and garlic. Sprinkle the mixture over the pork and rutabaga. Cover the slow cooker, set it to low, and let it cook for 8 to 9 hours.

When the time's up, remove the pork from the slow cooker, cut off the string or net, and slice or pull the pork apart. Serve the pork over the rutabaga with the pot liquid.

Yield:
6 servings, each with: 472 calories, 31 g fat, 32 g protein, 16 g carbohydrate, 5 g dietary fiber, 11 g usable carbs.

“Honey” Mustard Ham

You may wonder how to roast a ham when you're not going to be around for hours to tend the oven. The answer is in your slow cooker, of course. You'll need a big slow cooker for this.

5 pounds (2.3 kg) fully cooked, bone-in ham

1/3 cup (75 ml) apple cider vinegar

1/2 cup (12 g) Splenda

1 tablespoon (11 g) brown mustard

1/2 teaspoon blackstrap molasses

1 teaspoon water

Place the ham in your slow cooker.

In a bowl, mix together the vinegar and 2 tablespoons (3 g) of the Splenda. Add the mixture to the slow cooker. In the same bowl, mix together the mustard, molasses, remaining Splenda, and water and spread the mixture over the ham. Cover the slow cooker, set it to low, and let it cook for 7 hours.

Yield:
6 servings, each with: 683 calories, 41 g fat, 68 g protein, 6 g carbohydrate, trace dietary fiber, 6 g usable carbs.

Ham with Rutabaga and Turnips

If you're roasting a ham in your slow cooker, you may as well roast your vegetables, too, right?

4 turnips, cubed

1 1/2 pounds (680 g) rutabaga, peeled and cubed

6 1/2 pounds (3 kg) shank half ham

Put the turnips and rutabaga in the bottom of your slow cooker. Place the ham on top, flat side down. Cover the slow cooker, set it to low, and let it cook for 5 to 6 hours. Again, you'll need a big slow cooker.

Yield:
10 servings, each with: 674 calories, 51 g fat, 43 g protein, 9 g carbohydrate, 3 g dietary fiber, 6 g usable carbs.

Creamy Ham Casserole

I made this up to use the end of a ham I'd slow cooked, and it was a hit with my husband.

1 head cauliflower

1 medium onion, chopped

1 large stalk celery, with leaves

2 cups (475 ml) Carb Countdown dairy beverage

1 cup (235 ml) chicken broth

6 teaspoons guar or xanthan

1 teaspoon dry mustard

1 teaspoon salt or Vege-Sal

1/2 teaspoon pepper

8 ounces (225 g) Gruyère cheese, shredded

Run the cauliflower through the slicing blade of your food processor. Transfer it to a bowl and replace the slicing disc with the
S
-blade. Chop the onion and celery fine in the food processor.

With a hand blender or regular blender, blend the Carb Countdown and broth. Add the guar or xanthan and blend it until there are no lumps. Pour the mixture it into a saucepan and heat it over medium-low heat. (If you do have a hand blender, you may as well just dump the Carb Countdown and the chicken broth in the saucepan and use the hand blender to blend in the thickener in the pot to save a little dishwashing.) Stir in the dry mustard, salt or Vege-Sal, and pepper. When the sauce is hot, stir in the cheese, a little at a time, until it's all melted. Turn off the burner.

Spray your slow cooker with nonstick cooking spray. Put in a layer of cauliflower, a lighter layer of onion and celery, and then a generous layer of ham. Repeat these layers until everything's gone and the slow cooker is full. Pour half of the sauce over the top. It won't immediately flow down into the food in the slow cooker, so poke down into it several times with the handle of a rubber scraper or spoon, piercing the layers to the bottom. The sauce will start to seep down. When there's more room on top, pour in the rest of the sauce and poke down through the layers again. Cover the slow cooker, set it to low, and let it cook for 6 to 7 hours.

Yield:
8 servings, each with: 287 calories, 19 g fat, 24 g protein, 5 g carbohydrate, 1 g dietary fiber, 4 g usable carbs.

Creamy Ham Hash

This is really wonderful. You'll thank me the day after a ham-roasting holiday, when you're trying to figure out what to do with all those leftovers. Throw this in the slow cooker and take all those holiday guests out to a movie or something, knowing that supper is taken care of. This would make a good brunch dish, too, if you made it ahead and then warmed it up.

2 large turnips

1 medium rutabaga

1 medium onion

1 medium red bell pepper

1 medium green bell pepper

2 pounds (900 g) cooked ham

2 packages (8 ounces, or 225 g each) cream cheese

1 1/2 cups (355 ml) half and half

1/2 cup (120 ml) heavy cream

1/2 teaspoon pepper

3 tablespoons (33 g) brown mustard

This involves a lot of cutting things in little cubes. If you prefer, you can use a food processor, but you won't get the nice, even texture that you get from turning on some music or the television and just giving yourself over to dicing things.

Peel the turnips and cut them in 1/4-inch (6 mm) dice. Do the same with the rutabaga. You'll want to start dumping these in your slow cooker as you go, or you'll run out of space on your cutting board long before you're done dicing. Dice the onion and peppers and throw them in, too.

Now cut your ham in 1/4-inch (6 mm) cubes, too—I got about 5 cups (750 g) of ham cubes. Add to the slow cooker and stir everything together.