Here is the first of the lowcarb vegetarian "meat" recipes I have come up with in the last few months. I have also come up with a good meatball recipe and a passable veggie burger (that doesn’t taste like a burger, lol!) and will post those eventually.
The Taco "Meat" comes to 70 net carbs for the equivalent of a pound of taco meat and the "Veg Ground Beef" comes to 41 net carbs for one pound, or 4-6 servings and there are ways to tweak slightly to lower the net carb counts. If you read through the recipe, I indicate where the carbs might be cut, etc.:
Vegetarian TVP Taco Meat
Approximately 4 6 servings = 1 pound ground beef in recipes
Ingredients:
small onion chopped (6 net carbs)
1 green pepper chopped (4 net carbs)
2 tbsp olive or vegetable oil
2 cups TVP (24 net carbs)
2 2.5 cups hot boiling water
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp worcestershire sauce **
1 package taco seasoning (24 net carbs)
1/2 cup salsa (5 net carbs)
** Worcestershire sauce is not vegetarian, but there are vegetarian worcestershire sauces available or you can use something like nutritional yeast, or extra soy sauce for flavor.
Preparation:
Measure out the 2 cups of tvp into a large bowl.
Now, Pour 2 2.5 cups of hot water into your measuring cup, and add the soy and worcestershire sauce directly to the water. You want to soak the tvp so that it gets reconstituted, so pour the water mixture right into the tvp and mix well. This should now sit for a few minutes.
Sautee chopped onion and green pepper in the olive oil until soft. Add the TVP mixture to the onion / pepper mixture and stir well. Add in the taco seasoning and allow to cook for another 5 minutes on low heat.
Just before using, stir in ½ cup of salsa. You are now ready to use in any mexican-style recipe that calls for ground beef with taco seasoning.
Entire Recipe: Calories: 963, Net Carbs*: 70, Fat: 14.7 grams, Protein: 99 gm
*24 of the net carbs are from the taco seasoning, so if you choose to make this as plain ground beef, you decrease the net carbs considerably!
Notes:
My favorite way to use this is in Linda Sues recipe for Mexican Spinach Lasagna here:
Linda’s Low Carb Menus & Recipes
I skip the onion in Linda Sues recipe since the Veg TVP Taco Meat already includes it. I also skip the homemade lowcarb taco seasoning because I am at Maintenance and am a lazy cook, but a lowcarber could always use that recipe of Lindas as well in order to bring the carb count down.
Other ideas:
Ground Meat – Do not use the salsa or taco seasoning in the recipe (so the net carbs for the entire recipe come down to 41) and sautee/brown in oil in the last step. Use as a substitute for ground beef in any of Linda Sue’s recipes calling for ground meat.
Taco Salad- eat over a bed of salad with chopped tomato, shredded cheddar, avocado or guacamole
Burrito - Wrap ingredients from Taco Salad into a lowcarb pita or other lc wrap or tortilla product
Mexican Omelette – Omelette with Taco Meat, cheddar and chopped tomato filling
One important thing to note is that anytime a vegetarian protein source is substituted for meat in a recipe, the carb count will be higher for the total recipe.
) advised me that it may be beneficial to start a thread to find others that are going Low Carb Vegetarian..