Keto "Pad Thai"

This is a very barebones recipe for a pasta dish in a peanut butter sesame sauce that works as a “pad thai” substitute that fits with a ketogenic diet. It could easily be improved upon, particularly if you are willing to be a bit less stingy with the net carbs than I am.

This recipe is scaled for a single person.

Ingredients Link to heading

Peanut Sauce Link to heading

• 32g (2 tbsp) Peanut butter (Unsweetened and/or Keto)
• 1.5 tsp Toasted Sesame Oil
• 2 tbsp Brown Sugar Replacement
• 1 tbsp Liquid Aminos
• 1.5 tbsp Rice Wine Vinegar
• 0.25 cups water

Main Dish Link to heading

• 0.25 lbs ground chicken OR 225g shrimp or other meat as desired
• 10oz Konjac Noodles
• Sriracha Sauce to taste (Optional)
• Lime juice to taste (Optional)

Directions Link to heading

1. Cut the chicken/shrimp/other meat into small chunks (maybe 1-2cm cubes), then sauté or otherwise cook as desired. I usually sauté in a small amount of butter and/or olive oil in a covered frying pan for 3-4 minutes on each side, then remove the cover and sear both sides.

2. Prepare the konjac noodles: Rinse 1-2 times with water; I find that konjac noodles are a bit hard to cut or bite in half and I prefer shorter noodles, so I usually use kitchen shears to chop up the noodles into roughly 4-5" lengths, but this is optional.

3. Mix the konjac noodles the meat in a 10" skillet, cooking on medium-high or high to boil off some of the water in the noodles and take on some of the flavor of the meat. This additional cooking step is not required since konjac noodles are ready-to-eat out of the bag, but I usually prefer them a little dryer.

4. Prepare the peanut sauce while the noodles are cooking: add all ingredients together in a medium bowl and stir or whip with a fork or spoon until thoroughly mixed.

5. When the peanut sauce is ready, add it to the warm skillet and mix thoroughly. If it seems too watery leave it heating until the liquid reduces somewhat.

6. Add additional sauces like sriracha, lime juice or white vinegar to taste, then serve.

Notes Link to heading

This is not super optimized and I’m not especially likely to make it many more times once my keto experiment is over. Feel free to send in suggestions for changes if you have a better way to do it. I liked it, but I was also in a caloric deficit at the time and as they say, hunger is the best spice, so take that with a grain of salt. I was also trying to watch calories at the time, so you may want more generous portions, or a different mix of oil and peanut butter. These are the brands I used:

• Peanut butter: Left Coast Keto Peanut Butter with MCT Oil and Macadamia Nuts — you may be able to find options with fewer net carbs per gram, though: e.g. Americano Classc Peanut
• Brown Sugar Replacement: Swerve
• Konjac Noodles: Yuho Konjac Noodles (I used two packets of the “spaghetti shape”)

Using these, the peanut sauce comes to 266 calories with 1.9 net carbs (5.6 total / 3.8 fiber), 10.5g protein and 23.9g fat (according to MyFitnessPal). The konjac noodles is another 10 calories with 0 net carbs (6g fiber), and the chicken adds 186 calories (0g carbs / 4.16g fat / 35g protein).

The total recipe is 462 calories with 45.5g protein, 1.9g net carbs and 9.8g fiber. I have been eating it alongside a small portion of asparagus and/or broccoli rabe.