Slow Cooker & Low Carb Diets

Many low carb recipes can be made in the slow cooker - just add passata or bouillon to make the basis of sauces, and herbs and spices, and omit any carbohydrate heavy foods such as potatoes, carrots and peas.

To substitute potatoes, you could try cauliflower, yams, or celeriac, depending on the dish.

To substitute pasta, you could use courgette or aubergine, peeled into thin strips to make a faux tagliatelle, and these will work in the slow cooker better than pasta so you could make your entire dish in one pot.

To substitute rice, you could use grated cauliflower. This can be added to the slow cooker or prepared simply by steaming in a container in the microwave for six minutes.

Some delicious recipes which will be featuring in the blog in the coming days are:

• Moroccan Chicken
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• Diet Coke Chicken
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• Sausages and Cabbage
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• Gammon and Dijon Sauce
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• Fish In Butter Sauce

For more information, please see this article on cooking low carb dishes in the slow cooker.

Chorizo and Chickpea Soup

This is so versatile, healthy and tasty and can be adapted to many diets. Substitute the chickpeas for lentils, butter beans, black beans or even mushrooms.

You will need:
One or two vegetable stock cubes
200g chorizo
400g tin of chopped tomatoes
400g tin or jar of chickpeas, or dried equivalent with 2 litres of water
An onion
Half a cabbage
Tsp dried chilli flakes

The beauty of slow cooking is that you can just prepare everything and add it all in to the slow cooker. It may help to add the tin of tomatoes, stock cubes (dissolved in a little boiling water) and chilli flakes and heat these on high whilst chopping the onion and cabbage.

Fry the onion and chorizo for 5 minutes if desired, else add it all to the slow cooker and cook on low for 8 hours or medium for 6 hours.

Check before serving to see if added water is needed, but slow cooking is good at retaining liquid.

This is a s(o)uper speedy supper