Pizza night is back. 43 keto Italian recipes. See the Menu →
Dump everything in before work, come home to dinner. That is the actual promise of slow cooker cooking, and these 19 recipes deliver on it. Soups, chili, shredded chicken for meal prep, beef stew, pork ribs, party dips, and hot chocolate that stays warm for hours.
Long cook times do something to broth that nothing else can replicate. An hour on the stovetop is not the same as eight hours in a slow cooker. These five soups and chilis prove the point.
29 reviews, 4.9 stars. The white chicken chili starts with a can of green chiles and cream cheese that slowly melts into the broth over six to eight hours, producing something thicker than standard chili without any flour or cornstarch. Six and a half grams net carbs, thirty grams of protein.
Taco-seasoned ground beef with diced tomatoes and celery in a broth that absorbs the spices over a full day of low heat. Under eight net carbs. Filling in a way that most soups are not.
The dumplings here are almond flour-based, which sounds like a compromise until you actually eat one. They puff up and hold their shape in the broth, and at 42.7g protein per serving, the soup does real nutritional work. Fifteen reviews averaging 4.7 stars.
Pho broth takes eight hours of simmering beef bones with star anise and charred ginger. The slow cooker is, unexpectedly, the right tool. 2.9g net carbs. The kind of recipe you make on a Sunday.
A whole chicken. Water. Salt, peppercorns, herbs. That is the ingredient list. What comes out after eight hours is a deeply golden broth with zero net carbs and about twenty grams of protein per cup. I keep bags of it in the freezer and add it to everything.
Shredded chicken and braised beef are the two things a slow cooker does better than any other method. The connective tissue breaks down slowly and the meat absorbs the braising liquid in a way that makes any cut tender.
Ranch seasoning packet, cream cheese block, chicken breasts. Everything goes in cold. By dinner, the chicken pulls apart into the cream cheese sauce and the result is somehow more than the sum of those parts. Three grams net carbs, 46g protein.
Easiest one here. A jar of salsa poured over chicken thighs. Four hours on high or eight on low. The shredded chicken soaks up all the tomato and chile flavor and ends up at three grams net carbs and thirty grams of protein per serving.
4.8 stars across four reviews. Beef chuck with carrots and a rich bone broth gravy. The key is browning the beef before it goes in the slow cooker (five extra minutes, worth it). 4.7g net carbs, 23.4g protein.
Italian beef stew. Crushed tomatoes with dried basil and oregano over tough beef cuts that become spoonable after a full day. 6.2g net carbs. Four five-star reviews from people who said they made it twice in one week.
63.2 grams of protein. That number is not a typo. Steak strips with green peppers and onions, cooked low and slow until the beef softens and the peppers break down into the sauce. 3.8g net carbs. The filling in a keto cheesesteak wrap.
Ribs cooked until the bone slides out clean. A buffalo dip that is ready when guests arrive. The slow cooker handles all of it with almost no involvement from you.
Zero net carbs. Baby back ribs go in with dry rub and come out six hours later with the bone pulling clean. No grill required, no babysitting. Three five-star reviews.
Asian-marinated tenderloin. The marinade starts with coconut aminos and fresh ginger, and the pork cooks in it for six hours until it slices cleanly. 2.7g net carbs, 32.4g protein per serving. Good cold the next day over a salad.
Buffalo dip. Shredded chicken cooked directly in buffalo sauce and then mixed with cream cheese. One gram net carbs per serving. Serve it with celery or cucumber slices and it disappears faster than it took to make.
Pizza dip. Cream cheese on the bottom, pizza sauce and mozzarella on top, everything melts together over two hours. 4g net carbs. The kind of thing that gets scraped down to the last bit with whatever you are using to dip.
Mini sausages in a sweet and tangy sauce (made with a sugar-free ketchup base, not the usual brown sugar version). Five minutes of prep, three hours unattended. 4.1g net carbs. Two five-star reviews.
The slow cooker solves the holiday hot chocolate problem: it holds the drink at serving temperature for three hours without scorching it on the stove.
Base recipe. Unsweetened cocoa, almond milk, heavy cream, sweetener. It goes in on low. The slow cooker keeps it at a consistent 140-ish degrees for hours while people fill their own mugs, which is the whole point. 2.8g net carbs.
Three five-star reviews. Peppermint extract added to white chocolate cocoa, which has a different fat profile than dark and requires a slightly longer melt time. 6.2g net carbs. The one I make every December.
White hot chocolate without any peppermint, for people who want something different but do not want mint. Still 6.2g net carbs. Creamy in a way that milk-based cocoa is not.
Coconut milk instead of heavy cream and almond milk. The fat content keeps it rich and the flavor is close enough to the dairy version that most people do not notice the swap until you tell them. Four net carbs.