Delicious dishes that happen to be Keto-friendly

A trick for feeding a crowd when one or more guests has a dietary restriction is to focus on what they can eat rather than what they cannot. Instead of substituting for forbidden ingredients, I make dishes that use only permitted ingredients. Take the trendy, rather controversial ketogenic (keto) diet, for example. Rather than focus on no grains, no legumes, no sugar aspects of the diet, I concentrate on yes meats and poultry, yes fat, yes seafood, yes cheese and dairy, yes vegetables and yes nuts and seeds. Truth is, there are wonderful dishes in our archives that meet the requirements of the keto diet (and others) without even trying — and you don’t have to include all of the yeses in one recipe.

You probably already enjoy many delicious keto-friendly foods such as ribeye steak and pulled pork. If you serve a summer squash chowder, for example, and salmon — slow-roasted with charred garlic aioli or with green curry and yogurt sauce or pan-roasted with crispy skin, brown butter and chile vinaigrette — nobody will accuse you of kowtowing to a specialty diet and depriving other diners of appetizing, delectable food. Likewise, brine-braised chicken thighs with kale and avocado and pork chop paprikash are tasty, savory keto-friendly preparations that appeal to most carnivores and do not scream or even hint at “special diet food.”

One hardly thinks “diet food” when contemplating a crackling roast pork shoulder with fennel and chile or mustardy meatballs and cauliflower gratin. The term “cauliflower rice” may elicit a raised eyebrow but serve flavorful cauliflower and kimchi “fried rice” and your guests might not even guess that the “rice” is actually cauliflower.

While the benefits of the keto diet may be debated, there is nothing contentious about delicious food that happens to adhere to the tenets of a particular diet. Whether you are a keto dieter looking to add to your repertoire or merely looking for a keto-friendly dish to feed to your keto guests, these recipes are sure to please most everyone at your dinner table.