Caffeinated Eggs

Who has time to make coffee and cook eggs!  Now, you can pre-make caffeinated eggs to make your breakfasts healthy as well as fast!  This recipe is simple to make, delicious to eat, and handy to take with you on the go. 

It’s actually a traditional Asian recipe and the recipe itself can vary depending on who you ask.  The crucial ingredients are:  (1) the eggs (of course!), (2) soy sauce (or coconut aminos), and (3) tea.  The spices also add quite a bit of flavor, but if you have those 3 crucial ingredients, then this will be a breeze!

Ingredients:

Note:  you can cook more eggs or fewer eggs in one go – the ingredients for the broth is the same.  You can scale the broth up or down as long as the broth will cover all parts of all the eggs.  My slow cooker is pretty big so I need a fair amount of broth to cover the eggs.

• 12 eggs
• 1.5 cups of soy sauce (or coconut aminos)
• 3 tablespoons of sea salt
• 4 cups of water
• 2 tablespoon of tea (I used loose green tea leaves as it was handy, but you can also use black tea).  I think loose tea works best, but if teabags is all you have, then I would use around 6 bags (if it’s an American brand like Lipton) or 3 bags (if it’s actually from the UK).
• 6 star anise (optional, but highly recommended)
• 2 teaspoons of cinnamon or 1 cinnamon stick (optional)
• 1/2 teaspoon of ground cloves or 4 cloves (optional)
• 1/4 teaspoon of ground peppercorn (or better still, 1 teaspoon of whole szechuan peppercorns) (optional)

Directions:

1. Place the eggs in a pot of cold water (choose a pot with a lid) and bring to the boil.  Time 2 minutes starting when the water starts to boil.  Then turn off the heat and put the lid on.  Sit it there for around 10 minutes so that the eggs are hard boiled.
2. While the eggs are cooking, prepare the the broth in a crockpot (slow cooker) or another pot with the other ingredients.  Pour the soy sauce, water, salt, tea and optional ingredients into the pot and mix.
3. When the eggs are done, sit the pot into the sink and run cold water into the pot for around 5 minutes – make sure the pot doesn’t block up the sink!  This will cool the eggs.
4. Once the eggs are cool, take a spoon and use the back of the spoon to break the shell.  Make sure large parts of the shell doesn’t fall off, but it’s ok if a few small bits of shell come off.  Break the shell all over.  Do this for each egg.  This will result in the eggs having that great marbling look.
5. Place the eggs (with the broken shell) into the pot with the broth.  If you’re using the crockpot (slow cooker), then cook on a high heat for 4 hours.  If you’re using a regular pot, then put the lid on and cook on the lowest heat on the stove for 2 hour (but check regularly to make sure the water isn’t boiling completely away – add more water if needed).  You can shorten the cooking time, if you need to, but the eggs won’t be as flavorful.
6. If you find the eggs are still not as flavorful as you’d like, then cool the entire pot down (don’t throw away the broth) and store the eggs overnight in the broth (in the refrigerator).  This will help the broth seep into the eggs even more!

Perfect Scrambled Eggs??

Ok, so you’re wondering what I could possibly say about scrambled eggs that you don’t already know!  And two days ago, you would have been correct to wonder!  But now that I’ve seen this video, I absolutely must share with you Gordon Ramsay’s PERFECT scrambled eggs. 

If you think you already know how to make perfect scrambled eggs….think again!  Apparently (according to Gordon Ramsay), even many of the most experienced chefs don’t know how to make good scrambled eggs!  This is definitely not your typical scrambled eggs.

As you’ve probably heard before, the key is don’t overcook the eggs.  But, this isn’t all that he does – with a few simple techniques, such as not whisking the eggs and not melting the butter prior to heating them, he creates scrambled eggs that are much creamier and much tastier. 

I’ve tried to summarize the technique below, but I recommend you also watch the video (although ignore the part about bread if you’re on a low carb diet). 

Who is Gordon Ramsay?  For those of you unfamiliar with Gordon Ramsay, he is a fairly famous chef from Britain (there’s some good food in Britain, I promise!).  He’s most famous in the US for the TV show, Hell’s Kitchen, in which he shouts and swears a lot (a lot!) in reaction to the mistakes made by aspiring chefs at the Hell’s Kitchen restaurant!  I personally prefer the British TV show, Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, where he visits various struggling restaurants and attempts to turn them around with varying degrees of success.

How to make PERFECT Scrambled Eggs:

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Ingredients:

1. 3 eggs (do not whisk! – this is very important!)
2. 2 tablespoons of butter (unsalted)
3. 1/2 tablespoon crème fraiche (or Crema Mexicana if you can’t find crème fraiche).  I think the recipe also works without this ingredient, but it’s better with it.
4. 2 teaspoons of finely chopped chives (optional)
5. 1/4 teaspoon salt (or to taste), and a small amount of pepper

Directions:

• Crack the eggs into a pot and and add the chunk of butter to the pot.
• Put the pot onto medium heat and start stirring so that the eggs get broken up.
• Keep stirring without stopping.  After around 2 minutes, the chunk of butter will have melted.
• Move the pot off the heat when you start to see some of the egg sticking a bit to the bottom of the pot.  Keep stirring off the heat for about 10 seconds and then put it back on to the heat for another 20-30 seconds, but always keep stirring.  Do this three or four times until you see that the mixture begins to become slightly more solid (but do not wait until it’s actually solid!). 
• Once the eggs have just begun to solidify, take the pot off the heat permanently.  Quickly stir in the 1/2 tablespoon of crème fraiche (or Crema Mexicana) and the chives. 
• Lastly, season with salt and pepper.

How do the eggs taste?  Delicious with a very creamy texture and taste.  I also like how the chives add an extra dimension to the flavor.  Can’t wait to try it with some smoked salmon like Gordon suggested in the video.  Let me know how you like it!

Apple Cinnamon Muffins

It would be wrong of me to go on about these delicious low carb muffins (gluten-free and grain-free) without giving you the recipe for them!  So, it’s below…  The muffins are 2g net carbs each and are really moist and full of flavors because of the spices and apple chunks in them.  I keep them in the fridge and microwave one for 10 seconds on high to warm it up.  They’re really convenient to take with you as breakfast or as a quick snack.  You can try making them with other flavors, but I’ve generally found that apple and cinnamon go really well with artificial sweeteners (i.e. you can’t tell that it’s not real sugar!), whereas chocolate is really bad at hiding artificial sweeteners. 

These muffins are flaxseed meal and almond meal based.  You can either buy bags of flaxseed meal and almond meal (Wholefoods and a lot of larger grocery stores and health stores generally carry Bob’s Red Mill brand pictured below or you can buy it online at Amazon.com) or you can make your own by placing flaxseeds/almonds into a food processor or blender (the almonds can wear down the blade in your blender/food processor quickly).  I generally make my own as it’s much cheaper to buy flaxseed and almonds unprocessed, but if you’re just starting to try low carb baking, then you might want to start with a small bag of flaxseed meal and of almond meal and see how you like the muffins before buying them in bulk.  The other essential ingredient in low carb baking is coconut flour, and my next muffins post will on that!

Ingredients (makes 12 muffins)

• 1 cup of flax meal
• 1 cup of almond meal
• 1 tablespoon of black sesame seed (optional)
• 1 tablespoon of baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon of salt
• 1 and 1/4 teaspoons of nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon of sugarfree vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon of cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon of orange zest (optional)
• 1 cup equivalent of artificial sweetener
• 1/2 cup of butter, melted
• 4 eggs, beaten
• 1/3 cup of almond milk (can substitute water)
• 1 small apple, diced

Equipment: muffin/cupcake pan

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350F (175C).
2. Grease muffin/cupcake pan with coconut oil or butter (ignore this step if you use muffin cups).
3. Mix ingredients together and whisk well.
4. Fill each muffin/cupcake cup to around 3/4 of the way.
5. Bake for 20 minutes and cool before removing.

I’ve noticed that the muffins do shrink a bit once they cool, and they don’t look as fluffy as regular muffins, but they are deliciously moist even on reheating and much much healthier.  In fact, I think these are better than many regular full carb muffins!  Let me know what you think of the recipe and what variations you’ve tried.

Low Carb Breakfast – Coconut Pancakes

Low Carb Coconut Pancakes

I’m actually more of a fan of the French crepes (which I once heard an American call “creeps”) rather than the thick pancakes that you’re used to finding at brunch and in diners, but they start to taste super good when you can’t eat cake or any other desserts! I’m sure the low carb diet would never have taken off if the wonders of coconuts hadn’t been discovered. We drink the milk, make cookies from the flesh, and now make pancakes from the flour! And these pancakes sure seem popular with low-carbers! I found an abundance of different recipes, but I thought this recipe from nourishingdays.com was pretty easy and tasted super good! I made a batch of 10 pancakes and stored them in the fridge – delicious for breakfast!

Ingredients (makes 10 small pancakes):

• 4 eggs
• 1/2 cup coconut flour
• 1 cup coconut milk (from the cans, not the cartons – make sure it doesn’t have added sugar and it isn’t the “light” stuff. Also shake the can before opening as the cream and the water separates.)
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract (make sure you buy a brand that has no added sugar)
• 3 drops of liquid sucralose or 1/2 teaspoon of Stevia
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon (sea)salt
• coconut oil or butter for cooking

1. Beat the eggs; add in the coconut flour, coconut milk, vanilla, baking soda, salt, and sucralose/stevia. Mix well.
2. To cook these pancakes, you can use a griddle, or if you don’t have one like me, you can just use a frying pan. Put some coconut oil or butter to grease the pan and put the pan on a low heat.
3. Ladle some of the batter into the pan (to form a 3 inch diameter circle). The pancake should be thick so don’t try to make the batter spread out. If you’re using a large enough frying pan, you can cook 3 or 4 pancakes at the same time.
4. Cook for 2 minutes and then flip. Continue cooking and flipping until both sides are brown.
5. The pancakes are a bit dry by themselves, so have it with some butter or coconut oil or else some fruit.

Low Carb Coconut Pancakes Batter in Mixing Bowl and in Frying Pan

Nutritional Information

For one pancake: Calories = 151 Fat = 11g Carbohydrate = 9g (5g fiber, 0.4g sugar) Protein = 4g

Bacon Egg Bake – Exciting Variations on Eggs

Empire State during thunder and lightning

It sounds like something from a Frankenstein movie outside – thunder and lightning and huge sheets of rain drumming against the window. But inside, I’m nice and dry and about to bake something delicious! Eggs are a staple ingredient of low carb life. It’s good as a snack, as a salad garnish, or as a meal. However, hard boiled eggs, fried eggs, scrambled eggs, omelets and egg salads are so commonplace that the thought of having to eat them again and again can create severe nausea and a pounding headache! So here is a new way to spice up your egg-eating life – the bacon egg bake. I found this recipe on allrecipes.com, and it works great! In essence it’s just a different way of dressing up the bacon and eggs that I eat for breakfast daily, but it does look a lot more appetizing – it almost looks like something you’d find at an upscale brunch place, especially if you place it on a bed of green leaves!

Ingredients to make 1 Bacon Egg Bake

• 1 slice of bacon
• 1 egg
• 1 tablespoon of grated aged cheese (or a slice) – I recommend aged Cheddar or Parmesan
• salt and pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon melted butter (optional)
• you’ll also need a muffin/cupcake pan

1. Preheat the oven to 350F (170C).
2. Cook the bacon so that it’s not crispy and won’t break when you fold it. You can cook the bacon in the skillet or in the oven or even in the microwave.
3. Wrap the bacon slice around the inside of a muffin/cupcake cup making a ring (like in the photo below).
4. If your muffin/cupcake pan isn’t non-stick, then put a 1/4 teaspoon of melted butter into the base of the pan – this is just to prevent the egg sticking to the cup.
5. Crack the egg into the muffin/cupcake cup – don’t worry, it shouldn’t overflow.


Egg bake preparations – bacon wrapped around cupcake cup with egg

6. Sprinkle the grated cheese or place the slice of cheese gently on top of the raw egg and put the pan into the oven for 10-15 minutes. You can check whether the egg is cooked by shaking the pan gently – if the stuff inside wobbles a lot, then it’s not cooked yet, but a small amount of wobble is good. If you like you egg well done, then there should almost be no wobble. Remember to shake very gently! When it’s done, sprinkle a bit of salt and pepper on top and carefully scrap the around the edge of the cupcake cup to detach the bacon from the sides of the cup. Then stick the fork under the egg and lift it up. Place on a salad bed or just devour it by itself.

Bacon Egg Bake