Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
hello and welcome to fit foods, the show that takes nutrition and taste
and combines them together into quick and easy, great-tasting meals for you to try at home,
I’m your host Rob Riches and on today’s show we’ll be looking at low-carb meals
now, when you take carbohydrates out of your daily meal-pack,
you basically search your body to search for fuel elsewhere
and where does it look, you’ve guessed it, in the body fat, but when you think of carbs you often think of bread,
your sandwiches, tortillas, your wraps, and potatoes to your meat, take those away and what are you left with
half a meal, so today I’ll show you how to make a complete, low carb, high protein meal
using two main ingredients: iceberg lettuce, and ground turkey
we’ll be making spicy turkey lettuce wraps, you ready? I am, let’s get started
now, the first thing we need to do is get the pan nicely heated so I’m gonna put it ona low heat,
pan down and put about a table spoon of extra *** olive oil
first off, we need to ground the turkey meat so I have about a pound of organic ground turkey meat
and I’m just gonna put this here, into the pan to slowly cook.
gotta spread that around, and get that cooked both sides….next up, our veg
now we can’t just have turkey and the lettuce wraps so what I have here is some shredded carrot, some shredded cabbage
and a few other goodies over here, got some white onion, a third of a red bell pepper,
about a quarter of half an avocado slice and a selection of cheese here
when it comes to low carbohydrates, we don’t want to drop the calories too much because if we drop the calories,
the body doesn’t have the necessary fuel to support muscle growth, and maintain just that normal level of metabolisms,
so by dropping the carbohydrates, I’ve always found it best to slightly increase the protein
and the fats as well, so with the fats we’ve got our avocado, and I’m also using a little bit of the cheese to add flavor
and fats in there as well, along with a little extra protein, so second pan here,
and a low heat, get some olive oil in there now when it comes to using oil to cook with,
I find olive oil’s ok as long as you use a really low heat, anything higher to cook, let’s see, patties or beef burgers,
I’ll probably use more of a coconut oil that has a much higher heat allowance than olive oil does
got about a cup here of shredded carrots, same for our cabbage here, get that in.
next up….move over to our veg,
now I’m going to take the red bell pepper, and at first we just slice it
really is rickiticks, 5 minutes to go from the main ingredients to the finished meal
I’m just gonna dice these really quickly
next up, to help add to that flavor, gonna take probably about a quarter of a large , yellow onion.
take off the two outer layers there,
gotta be quick, so I don’t start crying on camera, and I slice this again
just turn it 90˚ and slice the other way, there you go, that is finely diced
this along with the cheese reminds me of when I was little and I use to have cheese and onion sandwiches
except this time without the bread, so in goes the pepper along with the onion
now, this is basically like a stir fry that I’m making, and the main question with a stir fry and why we’re making it
why do we need the lettuce wrap if we can just make a stir fry and add the turkey in, well let me explain
often with low-carb meals, you’re left with pretty much with a salad and some form of meat or fish for that protein
now, this isn’t always easy when we’re out on the go, it’s not convenient basically
so with a lettuce wrap acting like a tortilla, we can put the turkey in with these stir fry vegetables,
and basically wrap it in the outer leaf to give us that (crunch) kind of burrito sense that we’re eating a meal,
so that’s cooking
so’s our turkey, start to break it up a little bit, and give it….
it’s starting to get that turkey look on the outer part so make sure it’s thoroughly cooked
of course we’re not just limited to turkey here, if you wanted to make beef, you could do that
even fish……
if you were to cook some white fish, let’s say some tilapia or cod, you can then break it apart in a skillet or a pan
added to a variety of different vegetables,
mostly end up with a whole range of different low-carb, high-protein lettuce wraps
the two works great especially if you’re caught without any food
and you only have a grocery store or a supermarket close by
iceberg lettuce, a tad of tuna, may not be the greatest tasting meal you can get but
it’s low-carb, high protein and it will save you from becoming catabolic
until you’re back home and you can have a protein shake, or a bigger high-protein meal
ok with the turkey nicely browning on both sides now, let’s move over to the final portion of the ingredients
cut some squares of low-fat cheese here,
you can use normal cheese if you want, it just adds a little bit of extra calories to that, so we got some
cheddar in there too, just kind of break them up, this is gonna help them melt into that turkey,
also help bind in all of the ingredients that it kind of sticks together with our lettuce wraps,
ok next llet’s get some spices in there, two main spices are going into this turkey,
a sprinkle of this paprika,
and a bot of cayenne pepper, which is also great for increasing your metabolism
about a teaspoon, if that, this is powerful stuff we don’t want to make it too strong,
pinch of sea salt now once again I’m using this Himalayan sea salt, great super food, high in anti-oxidants
once again if you just have normal table salt this will work fine as well,
and then as always,
a bit of freshly cracked black pepper there to really bring out all of those aromas and flavors within the wrap
talk about all of the ingredients coming together, cheese melting in there, just gonna give it a final stir
make sure all of those spices, peppers and salts nicely distributed throughout the pan.
ok so turn that right down to a simmer,
turn our veg off that’s just cooked, and go into the final portion of this recipe
and that’s our iceberg lettuce
key to taking apart this is to remove the stalk section here,
twisting out and now we’re left with these nice, full, lettuce leaves that effectively become our wraps
so we’ve got a few big ones there, and then they become smaller….that’s a great size there
it’ 1, 2, 3, we’ve got a couple more, 4…
and five, and then these are used as though a kind of a snack,
if I got any turkey left over from these five main outer layers, I can just scoop them up in here
and have it as kind of quick snack between meals,
so we have our lettuce leafs to one side, final thing is to get our good fats
and take apart this avocado
now I’m gonna be using a little bit of this because you’ve also got fats from the cheese in there too
and this is a low-carb meal so I don’t wanna add too much fats to it, pushing off that calorie.
it’s probably about 10 grams of healthy fats here,
now I’ll just scoop these up, I’m actually going to add these to the turkey
now the final stir...
and just bring it off the heat
allowing it to cool before we merge everything together in our lettuce wraps.
Now for the final step: bringing everything together, so let’s start with our largest lettuce leaf first
let me take a clean spoon, scoop up some of this veg, just put it into the middle there…
now the key to this is not to add too much, just the same as a tortilla wrap
you don’t stuff it with all of the veg and meat and then find you can’t wrap
the flour tortilla wrap over it, so just a small amount there
same goes for our turkey and cheese,
serve it and there goes one, and two,
you can see now why we need five of these, it makes a great snack
or adding several of them together lemme add a couple more into the plate,
so let’s take another large lettuce leaf there
scooping in some of our stir fry vegetables, remember we put the shredded cabbage in here,
shredded carrots, red bell pepper, and white onion
scoop that into the middle
now let’s get some of that turkey meat in there too
put the extra lean ground turkey in with a mixture of low-carb cheese, avocado and spices…
now you can eother eat these as kind of open as they are or what I like to do Is
wait until everything’s cool and then just start to fold them in
being careful not to snap the spine of the lettuce leaf
kind of folding like you would an envelope, tuck the sides in, wrap it down
and roll
and the same with this one, we’re gonna tuck the sides in,
and the basically roll it so that one end meets the tip of that lettuce leaf kind of like a hammock
now I’ll need these here to cool for about 10 minutes and then put them into the fridge for at lest 30 minutes,
that way all of the cheese in the avocado that we melted in the pan will slowly start to harden
and fix these lettuce wraps as they are now, and when you bring them out of fridge
you’ll see that when you cut them,
you are left with these high protein-packed, great tasting, amazing flavor lettuce turkey wraps
so there we have it, spicy turkey lettuce wraps,
give these a try if you’re struggling to loose the body fat and you want to cut your carbohydrates down
forcing your body to look for fuel elsewhere,
join me next time on fit foods where I’ll be showing you more quick and easy,
great tasting recipes that you can make in the comfort of your own home, see you then