Low Carb SHRIMP and GRITS – EASY Weeknight Keto Recipe!

Luscious, velvety, low carb “grits” get topped with garlicky shrimp and bacon for a true taste of the coastal South. I love grits, and I miss them a lot. Like, a lot a lot. But this dish helps to curb those cravings. It’s so easy, yet perfect for weeknight meals at home and fancy enough for company. A definite family favorite!

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LOW CARB SHRIMP AND GRITS

Makes 3 servings.

1 lb. fresh shrimp, peeled and deveined
1 lb. frozen cauliflower florets
4 oz. diced pancetta or bacon
1 diced shallot, or 2 Tbsp. diced onion
1 Tbsp. minced garlic
1/2 c. chopped scallions
4 oz. shredded smoked gouda cheese
3 Tbsp. heavy whipping cream
3 Tbsp. butter
squeeze of lemon
salt & pepper, to taste

MICROWAVE the frozen cauliflower for 10-12 minutes, stirring occasionally. Mash with potato masher until the consistency of grits. Add one tablespoon of butter, the heavy whipping cream and the smoked gouda cheese. Mix well and season with salt and pepper to taste. Keep warm.

SAUTE the pancetta or bacon on medium low heat until crispy. Remove and set aside. In the remaining bacon fat, add 2 tablespoons of butter and cook the shallots/onions until lightly browned. Add the garlic and stir until fragrant, about 30 seconds.

ADD the shrimp. Cook for 8-10 minutes or until the shrimp are just cooked and still tender. Remove from the heat and mix in the reserved bacon/pancetta and scallions. Mix well.

SERVE the “grits” in a shallow bowl and top generously with the shrimp and sauce.

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Nutritional Info (per serving)
Calories: 484
Fat: 28.4g
Protein: 32.6g
Total Carbs: 11.6g
Fiber: 3.5g
Net Carbs: 8.1g

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Carefree by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1400037
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low carb shrimp and grits I’ll be the judge of that welcome to highfalutin low-carb the almost weekly web series where we find test and sometimes create the best low carb recipes this crazy Internet has to offer today we’re going to tackle a coastal southern favorite a dish that is near and dear to my heart shrimp and grits stay tuned folks I love shrimp and grits it’s a dish that’s equally at home at a fancy dinner party as it is on the weeknight dinner table so today I’m going to show you how we can convert a delicious coastal southern favorite like shrimp and grits into something that we can enjoy on a low carb meal especially on a weeknight one of my tricks here is frozen cauliflower and yes fresh cauliflower is great but for the price for what we’re going to do when you’re usually ricing it you know ricing your cauliflower or mashing your cauliflower or what we’re going to do something in between to create the texture of grits why spend the money for fresh cauliflower when for about a dollar seventy nine you can get a frozen pound from there from the freezer section and I say fresh because well I’m in the south so it’s August there’s not cauliflower growing within about 1,500 or 2,000 miles of where I am so any fresh cauliflower that is standing in my grocery store has traveled cross-country to get here and they pick it weeks before it’s ready to go and then ship it to our grocery store shelves where we say Oh fresh cauliflower it’s summer no actually no that’s a cold weathers cold season vegetable so oftentimes the fresher option is frozen because this is usually taken within a couple of days of harvesting when it’s ripe and ready to pick and take into a processing facility and flash frozen and packaged and stored and been shipped so you know in the grand scheme of things sometimes if you don’t have to worry about texture like we’re going to do we’re going to mash it anyway then sometimes frozen is best what I put a colorful out like what I put a vegetable tray out with dips and stuff frozen Colville hell no but this is a pretty good option to specially for a weeknight so that’s we’re going to start here all right medium heat pan over medium heat what we’re going to do is i’m i’ve got some pancetta here and this is a pretty easy recipe and I’ve kind of fancied it up I guess you could say because I want to have pancetta and and shallots and some other things that you may not think about but guess what that’s just bacon and onions all that is just uncured version of bacon and a little bit slightly different onion so just modify this as you see fit this is just a template a guideline so all right pound of frozen cauliflower and we’re just going to throw that in a microwave-safe bowl I love a little casserole dish for this get out of the way and don’t even add water to it this goes in the microwave for four minutes be sure to put a lid on it if you don’t have a lid put a plate on top okay so now while that’s happening and that’s in the microwave we are going to sautee our pancetta or our bacon whichever you prefer this is about four ounces this package of Boar’s Head I think it was pancetta but if you don’t have pancetta then about six slices of bacon just diced up and we’re going to put that in a medium-high skillet we don’t need this screaming hot there’s no need you know that all this is going to be really sort of low heat okay so we’re just going to render this down just a bit now this looks kind of lean to me so in the case of at least this pancetta I might add a tablespoon of bacon fat to this as we can go along here so what we’re going to do is try to get everything ready at the same time this is so going to happen so quickly it’s all about 15-20 minutes total but the shrimp needs to be eaten preferably to me I like it best when it’s fresh when it’s just come off of off the heat and meanwhile the grits are cauliflower that can sort of wait for just a minute so if you have to do one thing and then the other get the Brits made first and then attend to the shrimp so that’s pretty easy all right so I was at the fish market earlier today wondering what I was going to film knowing I needed to film and we have a wonderful fish market here in the town that I’m in and I found some beautiful gulf shrimp now a lot of people don’t have access to fresh shrimp and that’s fine you can use frozen I would prefer frozen uncooked get raw not frozen cooked shrimp for this get the frozen raw shrimp they come in a one-pound package and this was a one pound of gulf shrimp that I have here these are 16 20s that means there’s 16 to 20 shrimp per pound ok that’s what those numbers mean you often see 24 25 shrimp I mean there’s 24 to 25 shrimp in a pound this is 16 20 there are nice size I think they’re pretty they look pretty good for them for what we need them for here and I prefer kalon that’s sort of I guess you could say the locals way to do it you kind of want to get your fingertips a little bit greasy and a little bit buttery because there’s a lot of butter and cream in this from picking up your shrimp tails to eat your shrimp by hand it’s generally not a knife and fork kind of kind of food but that’s up to you alright so we’re going to get this bacon or pancetta in my case get this sauteed it might be a little bit hot I’m going to turn it down just a skosh and we’re going to leave this in the panel until it gets crispy and then we’re going to take it out and leave the bacon fat or pancetta fat pork fat behind for us to add a little bit of fat to and cook our shrimp in so and then at the end we’ll add this crispy bacon crispy pancetta to the top for final garnish so just let this render and while that’s working let’s check on our cauliflower it’s in the microwave this our cauliflower spinning for 4 minutes probably just need to stir yeah it’s nowhere near done all right we’re good it’s going to take about 10 minutes mostly in the microwave for this back in microwave mother five minutes okay so we’re almost here with this pancetta we need to pull this up now yeah that looks pretty good you don’t want to go too far with this you want too crispy but you certainly don’t want to burn it and all that beautiful pork fat stays behind and does its job here in a minute so let’s begin to pull this up here check it out with a slotted spoon leave the fat behind okay from here we’re going to take one shallot and brown this in the pork fat just one shallot or about two tablespoons of onion if you have an onion this doesn’t take long at all this happens pretty quickly so don’t let this get ahead of you keep your eye on the ball okay so once it gets a little bit of color on it we’re going to toss in this is a 1 tablespoon of garlic minced garlic I use a jarred product sometimes I really do on a weeknight meal like this heck yeah so this only needs literally this only needs about 30 seconds because if you burn this you’ve ruined it you got to start over truthfully burnt garlic will ruin a dish instantaneously and that is not what we want today so to that 3 tablespoons of salted butter okay and then again you don’t want this pan screaming hot this is not you’re not searing meat here but we’re going to put this some put the shrimp in once this buttermilk oh yeah it’s ready to go so here’s a pound of peeled deveined tail on shrimp I like tail on you choose what your family likes and in it goes and just leave it alone for a minute put it in and I’ll leave it alone let it sit I’m gonna move this up to a little bit more a little more heat okay so this has been sitting here for 10 or 15 seconds after a few minutes seconds just move it around you don’t want the garlic to burn and you don’t necessarily want to sear the shrimp you’re basically making what you would probably know is a scampi sauce right shrimp scampi and that’s another thing this is this beautiful shrimp once you’ve done this you know we’re going to put it on our grits you could definitely put this on some shirataki noodles so if you like those zoodles zucchini noodles anything like that heck you could just eat it along them if you wanted to but with the rice cauliflower taken down to grit territory and seasoned appropriately you really get a pretty decent approximation of shrimp and grits truthfully okay at this point this has been in for about eight minutes now whoo all that steam and I use a potato masher all right that’s how I can kind of Judge the texture of what’s happening so let’s see nope still needs three four more minutes and you’ll just you’ll you’ll know how this works if you’re making mashed potatoes you’re going to cook it a little longer than if you’re making grits if you’re making rice you’re going to cook it a little less and if you’re making grits so you sort of learned get out of there all right this guy’s going back in for about four more minutes okay let’s see our shrimp is doing you don’t want to overcook these shrimp does not take a long time to cook so that’s why you really just kind of want to get your cauliflower in the microwave first if you want to do your cauliflower on the stovetop that’s fine too just put it in the stock pot but you’ll need to add about a quarter cup of water to that because the heat from the direct heat will obviously make that a little harder to cook but I do it all the time if you’re using fresh cauliflower just do the exact same thing into the microwave or you can do it in on the stove in a pot just be mindful of the way you’re cooking it in the method all you got to do easy-peasy okay our cauliflower is almost done we’re going to this is ready we’re going to turn this off shut it down take it off the heat or I can just leave it here this is an induction burner so it’ll stay off the heat but from here we’re going to add a few things this is about a 1/2 cup of scallion you can use more than this this gets now this is where we get into like you add in some heavy carbs so you got to be careful with how much of this you add and then we’re also going to add our bacon in this case it was pancetta which is just Italian uncured bacon the same thing one’s just usually smoked and cured and ones not ones fresh so that’s all there is to that so we just leave this and it’s going to wait on us for us to finish the cauliflower and then we’re going to plate and devour this AHA probably needs a little bit of salt as well a little bit of salt little kosher salt black pepper give that one last stir three looks beautiful girl now this makes about four this size makes about three servings it depends on if you’re going to have other things if you’re going to have another side like generally shrimp and grits is is a meal into itself so it’s not served with another side but if you do that you could probably get four servings out of this it just depends on how hungry you are in our household this is probably for two people but just know that your carb count is going to be adjusted from there okay so our cauliflower is now out of the microwave whoo and all that steam and it’s probably going to be just right at perfect and the way I can tell is by my trusty potato masher that’s just the way oh yeah so from here what I forgot to put out earlier was a tablespoon of butter for that grit that grit flavor here you know we don’t have the corn I’ma be honest with you here’s the truth about these grits now and I’ma be straight up with you god I love grits I really do I don’t want to mash this too much while I’m talking I love grits and the one of the things I love about them is the corn flavor I mean it’s made out of hominy or corn and that’s one of the things that people who love grits love and that’s what I love but I also love the texture and the soft luscious velvety texture of grits so the good thing about this is you can get pretty close to that texture with this with the cauliflower you can get pretty close but you’re never going to match I hate to say it to all of us grit lovers out there in the south we’re never truly going to duplicate the corn grit taste right but the benefit of that is also for those who inexplicably I do not understand do not like grits those of you many of you are this is a nice in-between because you get some that texture but you don’t get the grit flavor that might be what’s turning you off so you know it’s sort of the best of both worlds and the worst of both worlds we have something pretty close but not all the way so all right to this we’re going to add he’s going to steal my spoon here we’ve got to add some three tablespoons of heavy cream to our grits this is going to help us work this and generally there’s a cheese added a lot of times and a lot of times it’s smoked gouda you know it smoked guta so this is smoked gouda about four ounces of shredded smoked gouda all right so let’s just work on this for a minute to get it to the texture we like I’m going to also add some salt not much and some black pepper because truth it okay if you’re from the south and you do enjoy grits unit if you’re like me you love them with a lot of black pepper that’s part of the fact that’s just part of it you know so we’re going to try to get close to that see what we can do here for you so just give this a whirl it’s our spoon and try to do some back spoon mashing here you know we don’t want mashed potatoes right so this is the same recipe that we all use for mashed potatoes and rice but it’s about how you work with it texturally so some of this needs to be mushed but there still needs to be a little bit of a bite in it think oatmeal if you’ve never had grits think some texture of maybe oatmeal so that’s annoying right alright so that’s it let’s plate watch this nice little bowl of grits that might be a tad thick if I were to I might put a little cream in that to thin that out if I felt to like that was just too much oh yeah now I need another spoon now let’s come in here and you just want some of this scampi type buttery goodness get you about six crimp on there oh oh my god y’all have if you could smell it in here what is wrong crazy and you know what I forgot at the store with a lemon this needs a lemon squeeze on top like nobody’s business so I might oh it makes me so mad that I forgot a lemon likes just girl but you just have to imagine it with lemon it should have a beautiful squeeze a lemon on it so oh my god y’all – yah ah ah that looks amazing so low-carb shrimp and grits let me show you what the numbers run on this I ran the numbers on this earlier it’s about 28 grams of fat about 8 net carbs there’s eleven and a half total and there’s three and a half carbs in fiber so eight net carbs and about 32 and a half grams of protein so it’s really quite doable in a low-carb diet so let’s see what it tastes like that is gorgeous I mean I’ll be honest with you I am in love right now let’s see oh yes ma’am mmm-hmm yeah the bacon in the pancetta and the butter and the onions the shallot the garlic all of that really is just fantastically flavored and the cauliflower is such a really worthy alternative to grits it really kind of is in this instance especially with smoked gouda cheese right shrimp is cooked perfectly it’s just gorgeous I have some friends down here who think the same way give them a shrimp tail all right guys so to me this is a delicious worthy alternative to low carb shrimp and grits it has all of the flavor and all of the texture of shrimp and grits so as far as I’m concerned this is a winner this took all of 20 minutes total start to finish but it’s something you can do for a weeknight meal at home that’s fast and easy but it also holds up well to a nice dinner party just increase the portion sizes if you’ve got six or eight people to feed and it looks pretty fancy and it’s easy to do when we know the secret so Cheers thank you for watching if you’re new to my channel check out the other stuff we do a lot of recipe battles and pit a lot of low carb recipes against one another and taste them here to find out which we love and which is the best so I appreciate you watching you know as well as I do I’ve said it a thousand times these videos are a way for me to stay on a low-carb eating plan and looking at the end of this camera every week is a way to keep me honest and I appreciate it so thank you for all you’re doing if you’re new here please like this video and subscribe if you’re not a subscriber if you are a subscriber hit the little bell icon down below and that’ll let you know when I release new videos I’m trying to do it almost every week sometimes it’s a couple of times a week but anyway love you guys stay tuned more to come you