
on today's episode of what's for keto dinner we're
actually not making dinner at all we're making side dishes and desserts and meal prepping for
thanksgiving and actually you could use these recipes for any time this holiday season but i'm
going to share with you guys my make ahead recipes and i'm going to be making everything up ahead of
time that i could possibly make up ahead of time for this thanksgiving and i'm hoping it'll
give you guys some tips all right so this is what we're making today so again make ahead side
dishes and some holiday meals first up i'm going to prep a pie crust a keto pie crust because i
want to make some pecan pie but i need to make this up first and it has to refrigerate for
like about an hour before i fill it with the pie filling next we're going to make my recipe
for the best ever keto rolls so we'll do that and then we're going to make up some sugar-free
cranberry sauce and then finish up the pecan pie i'm gonna attempt to make a cornbread stuffing and
a cauliflower graton and then we're gonna finish it with um prepping up breakfast for this week
i'm going to be making some breakfast burritos and for the breakfast burritos it's going to
be super simple i'm going to be using some eggs probably some red bell pepper and then i'm going
to use a new product that accompanies shipped me they actually sponsored this video today it's
called carne sekei from dania blanca i i don't know if i pronounced that right it's probably
don don it has a little squiggle over the end so i think that's dania blanca um anyways i'm super
excited to try it this is it right here so a carne aseca and it's basically they say it's basically
like jerky but shredded and the cool thing about this is that it's kept at room temperature and it
expires after a year that it's packed so it's a really good option to keep on hand um that you
could use any time especially when the stores start to run low on meat with just um being 20 20
and everything that goes on that comes along with that um so yeah this is a really good option and
it's great they say it's great in like omelettes or quesadillas or just like breakfast burritos
would be good too it's zero carb you can see zero carb and just tons of protein in it they are
a texas based company so if you're in texas you can find them at heb grocery stores i'm over
here in the pacific northwest so i don't know if it's pronounced heb or h-e-b you guys let me
know in the comments but you can find them there you can also find them on amazon and walmart
too and i'll have all their information listed down below in the description box definitely
check this out because i think this is a really cool product and something fun to play with i
already did my grocery shopping we just got back and i've separated kind of everything out
into trays because i am prepping a lot today so i have like my cranberry stuff here this is
my stuff i need for the cornbread stuffing it's not everything i still have to get stuff
out of my pantry but this is all the stuff that we bought from the grocery store um the
cauliflower and then the breakfast burritos and then everything else i should have in
my refrigerator or pantry already all right first i'm making that keto pie crust this is
a an easy recipe it's nice because it's a roll out pie crust too so it's not one of those that
you're pressing into your pie pan i do have that recipe on my website too i'll have it linked down
below it's delicious it's more of a shortbread type crust so it's kind of on the sweeter side
it pairs well with like a cream pie like i use it on my banana cream pie and it's excellent so
this one doesn't have any added sweetener so it works really good with like a pumpkin pie or a
pecan pie plus you can roll it out and make the crust really pretty on the edges and of course
i have my thanksgiving shirt this is here to get basted because we're making all of these recipes
for thanksgiving everything is going to be going into a food processor to make this crust if
you don't have a food processor you could use either just a pastry blender which i'll show
you what that looks like in case you don't know because when i first started out cooking i
didn't know what a pastry blender was either so this is a pastry blender and you can find them
at any grocery store we'll have them if you don't have one of these you could actually use a fork
too just put everything in a bowl and you're going to be cut they call it cutting the butter into the
dry ingredients and so that means that you're just getting it in like small little chunks so it forms
like a coarse they call it coarse crumbles so it's like a crumbly coarse mixture and that's going
to be your pie dough and you want your butter as cold as possible so i usually when i'm making
pie dough i will put my dough in the freezer and get it as cold as possible just because
you want these chunks of butter in your dough because as it bakes those little
chunks of butter are going to melt and just create these air pockets and steam's
going to release and it's going to get nice and flaky it's okay if your butter accidentally
melts during the process it still works out it's just not gonna be as flaky as it could be we're
gonna start by adding one cup of almond flour and then a third cup of coconut flour we're
also going to use a teaspoon of xanthan gum and the purpose of the xanthan gum is it's
just going to provide some structure and it's support of what will help
hold your pie crust together and then a little bit of salt so you could
do a quarter teaspoon i'm just going to do a hefty pinch of salt but you do want salt in
here just because it helps give it some flavor now you can spin this if you want
to which i think i might give it a good spin just to mix up all of my dry ingredients well that broke and then next we're going to add in our butter
and then i'm going to be using cream cheese too so we need an ounce of cream cheese and then
you'll need a half a cup of very very cold butter and you want to cut this into cubes because it'll
make it easier to chop up in the food processor do all right so now my butter is chopped up
into little cubes we're gonna add it in here and then give it a good pulse until
we get that coarse crumble consistency okay i think we're there so you want it to
look like this so you can see there's chunks of butter in here just bigger chunks of butter
you really don't want to overwork your dough because like i said that's gonna just make it
more prone to melting in there and it's gonna be more like i don't know like a tougher pastry than
it needs to be instead of like light and airy so next we're gonna add an egg and
this will help bind everything together so one egg is going to go in here and to give
it some flavor we're going to add some vinegar now you can use whatever type of vinegar you
have whether it's white vinegar apple cider vinegar or in my recipe i use rice wine vinegar
rice vinegar um i'm just gonna use apple cider vinegar today because i wanted to try that
instead kind of like the flavor of apple cider vinegar so it's gonna be a one and a
half teaspoons of the apple cider vinegar and i'm just gonna eyeball it all right pulse it again until everything is
just combined again don't overwork it there we go so as soon as it
starts to form that dull ball that starts to spin around that's going to stop then we're gonna take our dough
out this is what it looks like i can see chunks of butter i kind of wish it was a
little bit chunkier i might have overworked it but that's okay still gonna be delicious even if you
don't have like flaky pie crust it's still good okay so i get everything out because everything
is golden we want to maximize our pie crust when we're making pie and then i'm just going to put
this on a sheet of plastic paper flatten it out and store it in the refrigerator for an hour
the purpose of storing in the refrigerator is twofold one we want the flavors to melt
together and two we want that butter to resolidify when we go to bake it that's what
will help get it to be that nice nice flaky consistency all right so while that pie crust is doing its
thing in the refrigerator we're going to move on to something else i want to make up those rolls
and get them all baked because i'm going to need my oven space later on we're baking the pie and
i'm going to also need it for the graton bakes in there and the cornbread stuffing um the rest
of it is gonna bake in there so i'm gonna need that oven space so let's get going on those rolls
and get that done this recipe is super easy it's on my website i also have a video on it here
you can click up here to watch the whole thing the whole tutorial but these rules are great like
they taste like real dinner rolls there's a secret ingredient inside which i'll let you know what it
is it's either you could use buttermilk or yogurt but it just gives it that real um good like
authentic uh dinner roll flavor surprisingly and um also those ingredients
help it levitate too levitate like love it's a leavening agent when you combine that with like the baking powder it
just helps them rise and get fluffy so i've added three cups of mozzarella cheese in
here and also four ounces of cream cheese we're gonna melt this in the microwave so while that
is melting in the microwave i'm gonna mix up the rest of the ingredients just add them to my
food processor so it's two and a quarter cups of almond flour and then a quarter cup of coconut
flour then we add our leavening agents which is the baking soda baking powder and then we're gonna
add some salt too to finish up the dry ingredients and then we're adding in a quarter cup of i'm
going to be using low carb yogurt if you don't have that you can use buttermilk you can make your
own buttermilk too just by taking some heavy cream and adding some vinegar to it and letting it sit
sorry the microwave's done we'll get that in just a second so you could that's an option too you
could try sour cream that would kind of give it that sour flavor as well so any of those are going
to be fine and then we're also going to need two eggs to go in here my cheese is all melted so
we're going to add that to this mixture as well okay that looks like it's all mixed up and
it is and it's beautiful now this dough is very sticky so i recommend when you go to work
with it and put it into its dough ball shape that you wet your hands with some water or just
put some olive oil on them and then they're they'll be easier to roll in your hands that way
so i got my wet hands and now we're ready to roll so it makes it so much easier when you pick them
up like this with the wet hands i actually think i'm gonna divide my dough because this will make
12 rolls and so i want them evenly shaped so i'm just gonna eyeball divide it here let's take out
this paddle attachment but they are basically gonna be around like two and a half inches in
diameter when you make these and so we're just going to roll them out into a ball and place
them evenly on our parchment lined baking tray someone did ask if you could freeze this
recipe like this dough ahead of time and the answer is yes you could freeze the dough
um and just store it in your refrigerator not refrigerator freezer that makes no sense store
it in your freezer until you go to make them and then just unthought and then bake once the dough
is unthawed i'm actually gonna try to bake them ahead of time and then freeze them because
i actually haven't tried that yet and i know that's been a question that you guys have been
having so i'm gonna experiment with that because um it's a little bit too soon for me to make
these if i wanted to serve them on thanksgiving so i don't really want them to dry out so that's
why i'm gonna attempt to freeze them and we'll see how that goes all right into the oven these go
at 400 degrees and we're going to bake them for 13 to 18 minutes it kind of just depends on how
thick they are but you'll start to notice when they get golden brown and they kind of spring
back a little bit you could even slice into one two to test it but you'll know it's done but yeah
13 to 18 minutes in the oven up next we're going to be making the cranberries so i have a couple
of different recipes for sugar-free cranberry sauce on my website i'll have them both linked
down below one is a vanilla cranberry sauce it's really good sweet pairs perfectly with turkey and
the other one is more of like a spicy citrusy type it's a jalapeno lime cranberry sauce and it's
it's good you can make it as spicy as you want it has jalapeno on it of course and a little bit
of chipotle pepper so like i said not chipotle cayenne pepper so you can pump up the heat if you
want to or just dial it back but it both options are excellent in turkey and i'm going to show
you how to make the jalapeno lime version today and i'm going to use this entire jalapeno too
and the reason why is because i love spicy things with my meat so like christmas time we'll do prime
rib and i love side horse radish on there like the spicier the better and then thanksgiving i always
like to have cranberry sauce so just to punch it up a little bit make it a little spicy add some
heat i'm going to add an entire jalapeno to this so in goes our washed
cranberries with one cup of water and then i'm gonna add in my jalapeno and then for
sweetness i'm gonna be adding in a half of a cup of monk fruit but you can use swerve if you like
the erythritol instead i'm gonna stir that oops one got away and then just to give it that nice
holiday spice i'm gonna add a cinnamon stick oh and some whole cloves let me go grab some
of those because i forgot the whole cloves if you don't have whole cloves you could use just
like clove powder if you wanted to so just like three or four of those are gonna go in there um
you can take them out too like after this cooks i'll take out that cinnamon stick because it's
really there just for flavor again if you don't have a whole cinnamon stick um just use powdered
cinnamon it works well too so i'm gonna let this simmer we're gonna get it so it's nice and bubbly
i'm gonna heat it over it's over medium high heat we're gonna get it um bubbly and simmering i want
those cranberries to burst so it'll take like four or five minutes for this to happen but once those
cranberries burst and the juices get released um that's when the syrup will start to
thicken up and it will become delicious and we'll remove it at that point and then after
we remove it from the heat i'm gonna add in my lime juice and my cayenne pepper the rolls i'm going to let cool completely
before i put them in some plastic a plastic bag a freezer safe bag and then we'll put them in
the freezer to freeze until i want to have them and then when we do have them we'll just saw them
out in the refrigerator or at room temperature while my cranberries are busy bursting and
doing their thing i'm going to separate some egg whites from the egg yolks
so pecan pie requires six egg yolks egg yolks because it's a custard-based pie but i'm
going to save the whites for my breakfast burritos that i'm going to make so we'll throw those in
there because we don't want to waste anything all right these cranberries are bursting and it smells amazing you guys i
wish you could smell this it's just going to be a half
of a lime squeezed in here and this is just going to help balance
out that sweet along with the spice at this point i'm going to taste it too just
to see how much cayenne pepper i need to add yeah so i just wanted a little bit spicier
i can taste the spice from that jalapeno um so i'm thinking maybe like a quarter teaspoon
of cayenne give it a good stir and then this is just gonna get poured into a mason jar and we'll
store this in the refrigerator until thanksgiving so it's been about an hour since my
pie crust has been in the refrigerator now it's time to roll it out and press it into our
pie plate and then we'll finish up our pecan pie now the easiest way to roll out keto pie crust is
um not on a lightly almond floured surface because that does not work um you want to roll it
out in between two pieces of parchment paper and to keep the parchment paper from sliding
around on your surface a viewer gave me this idea and that's to lay down a wet piece of
paper towel and this will help it cling to your surface so it's not sliding all over the
place as you try to roll out your pie dough and then using some firm but gentle pressure you are going to roll this out into a
circle shape going in all directions until um until it's about like an inch larger in
diameter than or one to two inches larger than in diameter than your pie plate but it needs
to be around like a quarter an inch to an eighth of an inch thick i said that backwards an
eighth of an inch to a quarter of an inch thick and it's important to go in all directions just
so that it's going to form a circle and not a square or an oval or a triangle you're want to
circle because you need to maximize your dough now you can see the little chunks of butter in
here that's what we're looking for and luckily i achieved it and didn't screw this dough up which i
have sometimes basically how we're gonna flip this over is we're gonna take our pie plate and this
one is a nine inch pie plate and we're gonna place it on top of our dough slide your hand underneath
the bottom of layer and then gently flip it over now if you were using this crust recipe to blind
bake which is where you're just pre-baking your pie crust which is great for doing like custards
custard or cream based pie not custard to be cream-based pies that don't require baking
you're going to want to blind bake your pie crust which is where you bake it on its own and
you can definitely use this recipe to do that you just want to make sure that you have some pie
weights in it or some sort of a device to do that and so i'm just going around the edges and just
kind of crimping it to make it all pretty if you have areas that have like excess pie dough you can
tear it off and then move it around to areas that don't have enough pie dough and as you can tell
i'm no baker so i'm just an amateur baker so don't laugh at my pie pie pretty one of the what i even
call this pie making skills dough pie crust skills because yeah i don't know what i'm doing
maybe one of these days i'll take a course all right so we go around and we just kind of
crimp the edges until it looks nice and pretty in like whatever design you want it to there's some
areas i just totally messed up on but that's okay because i'm all about the flavor okay so you can
see it's perfect now i'm gonna refrigerate this while we move on to making the rest of our pecan
pie filling just because i don't want that dough to melt or the butter to melt in there to
this saucepan we're going to add a half of a cup of heavy cream and then a half of a cup of
sugar-free maple syrup and the one i'm going to use is by chalk zero i'll have a link down below
that you guys can click on and if you use my code keto focus at checkout you'll save 10 off every
order um you can use whatever flavor they have actually that take that back please don't use
strawberry mango peach banana although banana might be kind of good um what else chocolate
actually chocolate might be good too um or coconut um i would recommend using either the maple pecan
which is what i'm gonna use today or the caramel syrup would work their vanilla syrup will work and
their maple syrup will work i'm kind of curious about the chocolate i think that that could be
a chocolate pecan pie which might be fabulous and we're going to add a half of a cup of
this into here and we're going to heat it over medium-high heat and let it cook for just until
it's warmed basically this is a recipe i made for chalk zero and i just used an entire bottle of
the syrup but today we're experimenting because i for those of you that don't want to spend all
the money on syrup or sugar-free syrup i just wanted an option for you guys so we're going to
also use a half of a cup of golden monk fruit sweetener you could use whatever sweetener you
wanted even if it was just regular sweetener regular like monk fruit or swerve or something
like that you could use that in this recipe and you could use like i said any sort of sugar-free
maple syrup would work now i don't know about you guys but one of my favorite pies is pecan pie i
love pumpkin pie around the holidays too um and i always have to have a slice of that but i love the
flavor of pecan pie i hated it as a kid i think it was because of the nuts and it didn't look good um
but i tried it for the first time i think i was in my it was either late 20s or early 30s and it was
a pioneer woman recipe and i don't know if you've ever had her pecan pie before you went keto it's
amazing it is so so good um i think she calls it the pecan pie so it's so good it'll make you cry
or something like that and it really does it's so good um so if you are ever off the keto diet
and want to try it you should definitely check out her recipe but you know stick with your
goals stick with your keto goals especially this holiday season because you want to feel
good that's the whole reason why i'm coming up with these recipes because i mean i've
been there i've gone off the diet before during the holidays and um after a while you
just start to feel it you feel miserable so i really highly recommend you sticking to
eating sugar-free gluten-free and keto foods um not necessarily gluten-free because
people can tolerate gluten just fine um but just through the holidays you continue
to feel good all right so that's heated up and now we're gonna remove it from the heat and
we're gonna stir in some butter and some salt so i'm gonna add in four tablespoons of butter
just gonna whisk that in here until it's dissolved and then it's going to be a half a teaspoon of
salt did i say dissolved i meant melted you guys probably know me by now i always say the wrong
things like i love to say unthaw is one of them um some people say i say pasteurized eggs it's
really pasture raised eggs but i think how i say it i say it really fast that people think
i'm saying pasteurized eggs but no it's pasture raised eggs even though that that doesn't make
sense either eggs from pasture-raised chickens that's what i'm trying to say anyway my friends and family
always make fun of me because like most the things i say don't make sense
but they know what i'm trying to say so here's our egg yolks i'm just going to
kind of lightly beat them a little bit just to get them all mixed together and then
we are going to whisk your egg yolks into your sugary syrupy cream mixture do a little
bit at a time just in case your make sure it's still kind of warm you don't want to cook those
egg yolks so just doing a little bit of time just kind of cools it down i think it's also called
tempering your egg yolks all right perfect now it's time to pull back out that crust add our
pecans pour this in here and we'll go in the oven okay at this point we are about halfway done with
all of our prep work so we've done the pie crust we've done the rolls the cranberries and we
finished the pecan pie it's bacon in the oven now let's finish the rest of our recipe so i'm
gonna be working on two sides the first one is a cornbread stuffing and then we'll also have
to do our cauliflower um great gratin graton i don't know why i struggle with that
word it's like the theme for today and then last i'm gonna prep up breakfast for
the week so it's just gonna be a super simple week for me why well because i actually have to
work all week long which is not cool so the only day i get off is thanksgiving so um that's why i
want to get all this stuff done ahead of time so that i don't have to think about it i can just
enjoy the holiday and enjoy the time that i do have off so let's get started with the cornbread
stuffing first um so the cornbread stuffing i'm going to be making up my recipe for cornbread
if you guys want to see that then you need to click down below i think i did a video on it too
but it was a video along with some other things i meal prepped so um just click down below in the
description box i'll have the full recipe link there this is actually a very simple cornbread
recipe that you can make and i mean we're keto so there's actually no corn in it or cornmeal
that's fine it's gonna taste like cornbread though do for the rest of my stuffing i'm gonna be cooking
up some thick cut bacon in a skillet along with some chicken gizzards because gotta have the
chicken gizzards or just the chicken organs in your stuffing it makes it so tasty and i just feel
like really levels up your dressing i'm actually gonna cook up this entire package of bacon
and the reason why is because i'm gonna use it well i could use it in my breakfast burritos
if i wanted to but actually i'm gonna add it to that cauliflower gratin and naturally i chose a
really tiny skillet i'm going to cook the bacon let it get all nice and crispy we're going
to remove it from the frying pan i'm going to keep the grease inside i'm going to cook up
the gizzards remove those and then cook up my vegetables and i'm going to be using fresh herbs because i
think you just got it around this time of year but if you want to use dried herbs you could
too i'm going to use a little bit of sage some thyme and some parsley oh and i think our
pecan pie is done it can go a little bit longer while i chop up some of this sage so a couple
tablespoons of sage a couple teaspoons of thyme and then we'll need a half a cup of chopped parsley okay i'm gonna set this aside
and then let's add in our cornbread i'm gonna cut this up into chunks and like i mentioned you have
the option of toasting these if you want or you can just
throw them all in there and let's stir everything together when you go to
cook this you do want to make sure that you add some moisture because you can see it's really kind
of dry looking and i only suggest adding this like maybe right before you cook it so if you leave
it in the refrigerator if you are just going to make this ahead of time just like this mixed up
yeah it can get soggy but if you add any sort of liquid right now it's really going to get soggy
so i would suggest you do it before you bake it and you have a couple of different options i'm
going to use some chicken broth you can use beef broth you could use water you can use heavy cream
you could use a nut milk like a macadamia nut milk use regular milk if you wanted to anything
just to add a little bit of moisture to it smells so good stuffing is one of my favorite
recipes around this time of year it's one of my favorite things to eat so that goes in
a 325 degree oven for around 20 30 minutes all right this is the pecan pie it's beautiful
i probably should have taken it out a little bit more well it's kind of spongy you kind of
want it to be a little wobbly in the surface and it will continue to set while it cools so
i'm just going to cool this at room temperature for a little bit and then we'll pop it in
the refrigerator and that's really going to set up the custard the next side dish that i'm
going to make for you guys to go on your keto thanksgiving table is a keto cauliflower gratin
graton greyton i don't know how to pronounce it i don't know if i ever will i've always
pronounced it wrong so i always pronounce it all three ways just in case i get it right um
this is not my recipe um i've added to it though this is from my friend emily and she is keto
underscore chef on instagram you guys should check her out because her recipes are delicious
but i got this recipe from her i made it a few a few years ago and i loved it it was so good so
i've just kind of changed it up just a little bit i'm going to add a couple different types of
cheeses and some fresh herbs in there since it is thanksgiving and we're gonna add some bacon too i
also think that adding in some diced ham would be delicious in this even goat cheese would be good
too but i'm gonna use a sharp cheddar cheese and then greer cheese to go in there the first thing
we need to do is cook up our cauliflower florets and i like to keep things simple so i just got
a bag of cauliflower you could get a whole head of cauliflower if you want that's much cheaper
and um much cheaper but this is more convenient so we're going to steam these in a stock pot
with some salted water and then let them dry and then we'll finish up the rest of the recipe
while that's steaming we are gonna make up the sauce to go on our cauliflower so i'm gonna need
some butter so it's three tablespoons of butter we're gonna be making a roux out of that and a
little bit of almond flour once your butter is melted we're gonna add in around three tablespoons
of almond flour stir that until it starts to thicken or the butter's glopped onto the almond
flour and then we're going to whisk in some heavy cream now this is thanksgiving so we're going full
blow out on all of the heavy creams and delicious fatty stuff so if you don't want to use all
heavy cream you could cut it with some nut milk like a macadamia nut milk or even um some chicken
broth would work too at this point we're going to season it too with some salt some garlic powder
some onion powder black pepper and that's it then we're going to spread some sauce down
into my cast iron skillet and then top with a little bit of the cauliflower
and then add some more sauce on top all right so this is going to bake in the oven
it's going to bake in a 375 degree oven for around a half hour 25 minutes half hour just until the
cheese is melted and it starts to bubble next up i'm going to be making up those breakfast burritos
so we could have these throughout the week i'm going to freeze these too and i'll give you some
pointers on how to freeze these so i'm going to heat up some oil into a skillet and then i'm going
to add in some diced up bell pepper and then that carne seika the thing that is super cool about
this stuff is that it's dried beef and so once you add it oh it feels so cool really it's just dried
dirt jerky so once you add it to your skillet and heat it up either with just like a little
bit of liquid or some oil it reconstitutes it now it's time to assemble our breakfast burritos
i'm going to be using um i'm going to use two types of wraps for this i did get the mission
carb balance wraps these do have gluten in them so if you're trying to avoid gluten um then i
would not use those the other one is um i found these at the grocery store and they're egg white
wraps and i already tried one they look like a regular tortilla i'm quite amazed i don't know how
these are going to freeze but we're just going to experiment but they look like a regular tortilla
they're kind of the texture is a little chewy but super good though so that's a
good option if you are gluten free the thing when it comes to making up some
breakfast burritos and definitely freezing them is that you want to add your cheese down
first otherwise when you reheat it it gets the tortilla gets super soggy so you don't want to add
the egg directly to the tortilla the other thing is make sure all of your ingredients are cool
before you assemble too because that way it's not going to make the tortilla super moist and soggy
so cheese down first then our beef and egg mixture now when it comes to freezing these you just wrap
them in tin foil and then put them in a ziploc bag in a single layer and then freeze them and then
when you want to reheat them you can reheat them in the oven or unwrap them and heat them in the
microwave i hope you guys got some great ideas from some make ahead side dishes and holiday
meals this thanksgiving and christmas i love all of these recipes once again full recipes will
be down in the description box below they're on my muslim or on my website and be sure to check out
the carnosica from dania blanca thank you so much for sponsoring this video these little breakfast
burritos are going to be awesome this week and save me so much time when it comes to having
to work and deal with other thanksgiving menus you