BBQ Cooking and Low Carb Diets

If you’re on a low carb diet, you might be getting a little bored with some of your low carb recipes and food choices. One way to add interest is with BBQ cooking. The type of BBQ cooking I’m referring to is cooking meats for a long time over charcoal or wood, giving the meat a wonderful smoky taste and aroma. Fortunately, wood smoke contains no carbs. Another benefit to BBQ cooking is that much of the fat drips away from the meat during the cooking process, too.

What kinds of meat are good for BBQ cooking? Just about any meat or poultry tastes great when subjected to smoke. This includes fresh pork hams, pork shoulders, crown roasts, baby back ribs, spare ribs, country-style ribs, pork loin roasts, beef ribs, beef briskets, beef roasts, chicken, turkey, and venison and other wild game. The meat can be seasoned with herbs and spices in a dry rub before cooking, which adds lots of flavor. Since most meats require several hours for smoking, you might also want to mop the meat with a thin sauce while it’s cooking, too. This will provide even more flavor and will help keep the meat from drying out.

Low Carb Recipes for barbecue sauce

The ingredients usually used for rubs and mop sauces are low carb or no carb. These include vinegar, olive oil, bottled hot sauce, and a host of dried herbs and spices. Some cooks include sugar or brown sugar in rubs, so you might want to leave that out if you’re on a strict low carb diet.

But what about the barbecue sauce – the one you use on the cooked meat. Aren’t those high in carbs? Yes, traditional commercial barbecue sauces are usually high in carbohydrates, but homemade barbecue sauces don’t have to be. Use low carb recipes.

Make your own low carb homemade bbq sauce by combining ingredients like low-carb ketchup, mustard, vinegar, Splenda, calorie and carb-free syrups, melted butter, hot sauce, and spices.