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How to Make Any Recipe Low-Carb

The first thing worth getting right is that low-carb and keto are not the same target, and treating them as one is why so many converted recipes come out joyless.

Keto aims for under roughly 10g net carbs per serving and is strict enough that most baked goods have to be rebuilt from almond or coconut flour. Low-carb aims for under about 30g, which is forgiving enough to keep a handful of beans in a chilli, a little honey in a dressing, or a small portion of whole grains. If you are eating this way for weight or blood sugar rather than for ketosis, low-carb gets you a much closer result with a fraction of the substitution.

The four places the carbs are

Nearly every recipe keeps its carbohydrates in the same four spots: the starch, the flour, the sugar, and the sauce. Deal with those and you are done.

The sauce is where people get caught

Someone swaps the pasta for courgette, does the arithmetic, and cannot work out why the numbers do not land. It is almost always the sauce. BBQ sauce, ketchup, teriyaki, sweet chilli, and most bottled marinades carry 10 to 15g of sugar per serving. Stock cubes often contain maltodextrin. Cured meats are frequently sugar-cured. Balsamic glaze is mostly sugar. Read the label on anything that came out of a bottle.

Do not forget to replace the calories

Removing 40g of carbohydrate from a meal removes roughly 160 calories of it, and a plate that is only protein and vegetables leaves people hungry an hour later. Add fat back deliberately: olive oil, butter, avocado, cheese, nuts, a richer sauce. Low-carb food that leaves you hungry is the main reason people stop.

Let RecipeFix do it

The low-carb recipe converter applies these swaps to any recipe, checks the sauces and marinades for hidden sugar, and gives you an estimated net-carb figure per serving so you can sanity-check the result instead of guessing.

Skip the manual work · convert the recipe automatically →