The 15 BEST Low Carb Vegetables [EAT AS MUCH AS YOU WANT!]
In this article, we’re going to take you through 15 of the best low-carb vegetables.
All the vegetables in this article are so low in carbohydrate that you can pretty much eat as much as you want even on the most restrictive of low carb diets such as the ketogenic diet!
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Now, all the vegetables in this article contain less than 5 grams of net carbs per 100 grams of food and net carbs are the digestible bit that our bodies actually can use for energy.
It’s a really low amount of carbs which means you’ll more than likely be full before you start to over eat these foods. We will try to use the common vegetables’ names so no one is left behind.
So, let’s start!
Number 1: We call them courgettes, you might call them zucchini. This member of the squash family is particularly low in carbohydrates and it’s really versatile.
Compare it to other members of the squash family such as pumpkins which have 6.5 grams of net carbs and butternut squash which has 10, whereas courgettes have just 2.1 net carbs per 100 grams. You can roast them, fry them, grill them but they’re perhaps most famous in the low-carb world as an alternative to pasta. You can use a spiralizer to turn courgettes into spaghetti which we call “courgetti”.
You can try this Courgetti Bolognese recipe or if you’re feeling a bit more adventurous, then use them as a noodle substitute, in this ramen noodle recipe.
Number 2 is aubergine or eggplants. Now these can be cooked in a variety of ways I love them because they suck up the flavor from everything around them.
My favorite way to cook them is to cut them into thin slices and use them as a substitute for lasagna sheets. Asparagus, this vegetable has such incredible flavor especially if you can get it locally produced and in season.
It makes a great low carb side dish steamed, sauteed, barbecued. It makes a fantastic accompaniment for steak.
Number 3 is broccoli.
Now this might seem like a pretty boring vegetable especially if it’s just boiled or steamed but there’s loads of great where you can cook broccoli that make it loads more exciting stir-fry it, roast it or even blend it up into a soup.
Number 4 is mushrooms. Love them or hate them, mushrooms are very low in carbs.
I always try to keep some in the fridge. They are a great tasty side dish. Just saute them with some butter and some garlic. I mix mushrooms with some cheese as a stuffing for an omelet or make a lovely creamy mushroom sauce to go with steak.
Number 5 is peppers. Now fun fact: red peppers are just ripe green peppers they go through yellow on the way to get there and the ripening process means that more sugars will be present in the flesh of peppers.
Green peppers are a really solid low-carb choice at 3 net carbs whereas red and yellow peppers only just make this list at 5 grams per 100 grams. You can slice them up and eat them raw in salads or fry them up.
Number 6 is the amazing avocado. Avocados are one of my low carb superfoods. They’re just loaded with healthy fats and are perfect in salads, blended in smoothies for an extra creamy texture or squashed up to make guacamole.
If you’ve never tried making guacamole at home it’s really easy and it’s so much better than the shop-bought stuff.
Before we go any further, I want to talk about the elephant in the room. Not all of these vegetables are technically vegetables. Yeah it’s true some of them are actually technically fruits but we talk about them as vegetables because they have similar nutritional profiles to vegetables even though they’re not but here’s a little challenge for you let me know in the comments down below which of the items on this list are technically a vegetable or a fruit.
Number 7 is the humble tomato. Again it’s not a vegetable but it is a fruit.
Lots of people seem to get upset about tomatoes on low-carb diets and we’re not really sure why that is. Yeah there are certain varieties which are a bit sweeter than others and may have a slightly higher carb count but most are pretty low in carbs and of course there’s hundreds of different ways that you can use tomatoes such as raw in salads or cooked but beware of sun-dried tomatoes for the same reason that we avoid dried fruits the sugars that are there are just so much more concentrated in anything that’s been dried.
Number 8 is cabbages. Now cabbages don’t have to be boring.
You know shredded cabbages can form the basis for coleslaw and work really well as a sort of noodle substitute for low carb stir fry. These can be seriously tasty.
Number 9 is olives.
Love them or hate them, they feature in quite a lot of our recipes over at carbdodging.com but olives are often my go-to snack on the road because you can usually pick up a small pot in pretty much most supermarkets very easily.
Number 10 is a group which is green leafy vegetables and by green leafy vegetables I mean things like spinach, bringreens, kale, those kinds of things.
We’re not going to go into detail in this one because they’re not exactly the most inspiring out of all of these vegetables but they are super low in carbs and full of important nutrients whether you decide to cook them or blend them into smoothies. They’re always something we get more of in our diets.
Number 11 is lettuce and number 12 is cucumber and we’re going to talk about these two together again because they’re not overly exciting on their own but they form the basis of amazing salads which you can eat to your heart’s content on a low-carb diet.
Number 13 is something that I think is frequently overlooked as a great low carb vegetable.
It’s radishes and this includes the radishes oriental cousin the daikon radish or mooli. I always used to think of using radishes in salads, but they can also be roasted and stir-fried. Get creative with them.
Number 14 is green beans which we also used in the salmon nicoise salad.
You can use them in salads, stir fries or as a side dish but they also work really well for meal prep foods because once cooked they can be stored really well in the fridge for a few days.
Number 15 is the cauliflower. Oh cauliflower, I can’t believe I’ve left you until number 15.
Now it’s fine I may have saved the best to last. Cauliflower is quite possibly the king or queen of low carb vegetables. It can be mashed as a potato substitute blend it with parmesan and use it to top off this amazing shepherd’s pie grate it pulse it up in a blender chop it up finely and use it as a low carb rice substitute and I just love to chunk it up into florets or steaks and roast it in the oven with some salt pepper and oil it’s such a quick easy and tasty side dish. You can even make cauliflower into a pizza base and if cauliflower can be a pizza base then, my friends, anything is possible!!
So that is the list of our top 15 low carb vegetables and hopefully a bit of inspiration about how to use those in various recipes.
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