The two numbers on every line below are worked out from each recipe own ingredient list. Every dinner here comes in under ten grams of carbohydrate and over twenty-five grams of protein a serving. The real spread is one to eight grams of carbohydrate and twenty-six to sixty grams of protein, and both numbers sit next to the recipe so you do not have to open it to find out whether it fits.
What makes a dinner low carb is almost never the protein. Chicken, beef, pork, fish and eggs are all at or near zero on their own. It is whatever carries the volume on the plate. A cup of cooked rice is about forty-five grams of carbohydrate and a medium potato about thirty-seven. A cup of cooked broccoli is six, cabbage five, zucchini four, shredded lettuce one. Nearly every recipe below is a dish you already know with that one component swapped, and the swap is where the entire saving comes from.
The second place carbohydrate hides is coatings and glazes, and it hides well. A breaded chicken tender carries roughly twenty grams that an unbreaded one does not. A flour tortilla is about twenty-five, a hamburger bun twenty-five, an egg roll wrapper fifteen, a tablespoon of ordinary bottled teriyaki six. Five of the recipes here are built on removing exactly one of those, which is why their counts land so low without a single unusual ingredient in the list.
Times run from fifteen minutes to just under three hours, and the long ones are almost all marinating rather than cooking. Calories run from 203 to 914, because low carbohydrate says nothing at all about calories: a ribeye and a lettuce wrap can both be under two grams of carbohydrate and four hundred calories apart. If calories are the number you are watching rather than carbohydrate, read that column too before you pick.
Chicken, Plain and Fast
Six, and in all of them the carbohydrate comes from the seasoning rather than from anything starchy.
Baked Chicken Breasts
Six ingredients and the baseline the rest of the site points at, with thirteen pages linking to it. One gram of carbohydrate a serving, which is as close to zero as a cooked dinner gets, and forty-five grams of protein from the breast alone. View the full recipe — 50 minutes · 1g carbs · 45g protein · 274 calories
Air Fryer Chicken Tenders No Breading
No breading at all, which is the entire reason the carb count stays at two grams where a breaded tender would be at twenty. Twenty-two minutes, and the seasoning goes directly on the meat. View the full recipe — 22 minutes · 2g carbs · 39g protein · 243 calories
Keto Chicken Broccoli Casserole
Broccoli carries the volume that rice or pasta would carry in an ordinary casserole, and broccoli is about six grams of carbohydrate a cup. That single swap is what keeps a full casserole under five grams a serving. View the full recipe — 45 minutes · 5g carbs · 26g protein · 403 calories
Teriyaki Chicken Lettuce Wraps
Seven ingredients and twenty minutes. Lettuce instead of a tortilla is worth roughly twenty-five grams of carbohydrate, and the teriyaki is thinned rather than sweetened so the glaze does not undo it. View the full recipe — 20 minutes · 5g carbs · 27g protein · 203 calories
Grilled Paprika Chicken Breast
Seven ingredients, a dry spice rub and nothing wet. At two grams of carbohydrate and forty-five grams of protein this is the leanest ratio in the collection. View the full recipe — 59 minutes · 2g carbs · 45g protein · 278 calories
Ranch Marinated Grilled Chicken Thighs
Thighs rather than breasts, so there is more fat and the meat survives a long marinade without going stringy. Most of the time here is the marinade sitting in the refrigerator, not work. View the full recipe — 2 hours 56 minutes · 5g carbs · 40g protein · 481 calories
Beef and Steak
Five where the beef is the whole dinner and a vegetable with almost no carbohydrate in it does the rest of the plate.
Air Fryer Steak
Five ingredients and sixty grams of protein, the highest in the collection, at one gram of carbohydrate. The air fryer is doing what a very hot pan does, without the smoke. View the full recipe — 42 minutes · 1g carbs · 60g protein · 680 calories
Herb Butter Ribeye Steak
Five ingredients. Ribeye is the fattiest common steak cut, which is why this is the richest serving here, and the herb butter is finished on the meat off the heat rather than cooked in. View the full recipe — 45 minutes · 1g carbs · 54g protein · 914 calories
Keto Flank Steak Broccoli
Flank is lean and tough unless it is sliced across the grain, which is the one step that decides this dish. Broccoli again doing the volume work at five grams a serving. View the full recipe — 1 hour 5 minutes · 5g carbs · 28g protein · 361 calories
Ground Beef Cabbage Stir Fry
Cabbage is about five grams of carbohydrate a cup cooked, so it stands in for noodles at a fraction of the count. Eleven ingredients and twenty-five minutes in one pan. View the full recipe — 25 minutes · 4g carbs · 26g protein · 325 calories
Pan Seared Round Steak
Fifteen minutes, the fastest recipe on this page. Round steak is cheap and lean, so it wants high heat and a short rest, and fifty grams of protein a serving comes out of it. View the full recipe — 15 minutes · 2g carbs · 50g protein · 606 calories
Fish and Shrimp
Six, four of them under twenty-five minutes, because fish and shrimp cook faster than any vegetable needs to.
Grilled Garlic Butter Salmon with Rosemary
Twenty-one other pages link to it, the most of anything here. Seven ingredients, one gram of carbohydrate, and the rosemary goes on the grill with the fish rather than into a marinade. View the full recipe — 42 minutes · 1g carbs · 34g protein · 358 calories
Grilled Halibut
Halibut is lean where salmon is fatty, so it dries out faster and wants a shorter time at a higher heat. Forty grams of protein a serving, the highest of any fish here. View the full recipe — 42 minutes · 2g carbs · 40g protein · 401 calories
Lemon Garlic Baked Halibut
The same fish in the oven instead of on the grill, which is more forgiving, and in twenty-five minutes rather than forty-two. Eight ingredients and three hundred and eight calories. View the full recipe — 25 minutes · 2g carbs · 40g protein · 308 calories
Garlic Butter Shrimp with Zucchini and Bell Peppers
Zucchini and bell peppers are both under five grams of carbohydrate a cup, and both release water as they cook, which becomes the sauce. Fourteen ingredients but twenty-two minutes. View the full recipe — 22 minutes · 8g carbs · 29g protein · 237 calories
Air Fryer Salmon Filets
Fifteen minutes, eight ingredients, two grams of carbohydrate. Salmon in an air fryer keeps its fat where a grill drips it away, which is why this comes in higher in calories than the grilled version. View the full recipe — 15 minutes · 2g carbs · 34g protein · 421 calories
Miso Air Fryer Salmon Bites
Cut into bites so the surface area goes up and the miso glaze caramelizes on every side. Eighteen minutes, and the miso is the only thing contributing carbohydrate at all. View the full recipe — 18 minutes · 6g carbs · 35g protein · 421 calories
Pork, Bacon and Eggs
Five built by removing exactly one thing: the bun, the wrapper, the breading. That single removal is worth twenty to twenty-five grams every time.
Oven Baked Pork Tenderloin
Six ingredients and one gram of carbohydrate. Tenderloin is the leanest cut on the pig, so the only real risk is overcooking it, and the recipe is built around a thermometer rather than a clock. View the full recipe — 40 minutes · 1g carbs · 31g protein · 309 calories
Pan Seared Garlic Pork Chops
Nine ingredients, one gram of carbohydrate, thirty-six grams of protein. No flour on the chops, which is the usual hidden source of carbohydrate in a pan-seared chop. View the full recipe — 40 minutes · 1g carbs · 36g protein · 413 calories
Low Carb Bacon Cheeseburger Casserole
Everything a cheeseburger has except the bun, baked as a casserole. Eleven ingredients, and four grams of carbohydrate where the bun alone would have added twenty-five. View the full recipe — 50 minutes · 4g carbs · 28g protein · 344 calories
Ginger Sesame Egg Roll Bowl
The filling of an egg roll without the wrapper, which is where almost all of an egg roll carbohydrate lives. Two grams a serving and thirty-two grams of protein, in twenty-five minutes. View the full recipe — 25 minutes · 2g carbs · 32g protein · 320 calories
Egg Frittata Casserole
Eight ingredients, eight servings, and it reheats without going rubbery the way scrambled eggs do. Thirty grams of protein a serving from eggs and cheese alone. View the full recipe — 1 hour 15 minutes · 5g carbs · 30g protein · 340 calories
Lamb, Turkey and Meatballs
Three where the usual side dish is what would have broken the number, so there is not one.
Garlic Herb Grilled Lamb Chops
One gram of carbohydrate and ten ingredients, nine of which are aromatics. Lamb chops cook in minutes once the grill is hot, so the garlic and herbs go on before, not during. View the full recipe — 50 minutes · 1g carbs · 29g protein · 546 calories
Moroccan Lamb Backstrap with Yogurt Sauce
Seventeen ingredients, the longest list here, almost all of it spice. The yogurt sauce is what keeps the carbohydrate at two grams where a couscous side would have put it near fifty. View the full recipe — 1 hour 20 minutes · 2g carbs · 35g protein · 370 calories
Air Fryer Meatballs (Juicy Lean Beef)
Lean beef with just enough binder to hold, which is why these land at seven grams rather than the fifteen a breadcrumb-heavy meatball carries. Twenty-seven minutes and nine ingredients. View the full recipe — 27 minutes · 7g carbs · 28g protein · 300 calories
Low Carb Questions Worth Answering First
Where do these carbohydrate numbers come from?
They are calculated from each recipe ingredient list and divided by the stated servings, not copied from a label or a database entry for a similar dish. That matters because the figure moves with the recipe: change the servings or leave out the glaze and the number changes with it. It also means the number is only as good as the serving size, so check that first. A recipe written for four that you eat in two portions is twice the carbohydrate a serving, whatever the page says.
Is this the same as keto?
Overlapping but not identical. Standard ketogenic eating targets something like twenty to fifty grams of carbohydrate across a whole day, so a dinner under ten grams fits inside almost any version of it, and several recipes here are written as keto from the start. But low carb is a wider idea than keto and says nothing about fat, which keto does. If you are following a specific protocol, the number on the line is what you need and the label on the recipe is not.
What do I actually serve instead of rice or potatoes?
Cauliflower rice is the closest substitute in behaviour, at about five grams of carbohydrate a cup against forty-five for cooked white rice, and it takes seasoning the same way. For something with more bite, shredded cabbage sauteed in butter sits under a stew the way mashed potato does. Roasted broccoli, green beans and asparagus are all between four and seven grams a cup and brown properly at high heat. What does not work is a one for one swap in a dish where the rice was absorbing liquid, because nothing on that list absorbs anything.
Should I be counting net carbs instead?
The figures here are total carbohydrate, which is the more conservative of the two and the one that appears on a US nutrition label. Net carbohydrate subtracts fibre, on the reasoning that fibre is not absorbed. On these recipes the difference is small, usually one to three grams, because none of them lean on high fibre ingredients. If you follow net carbs, subtract the fibre figure shown on the recipe page itself rather than estimating.
Will a dinner this low in carbohydrate actually fill me up?
Protein is the part of a meal that most reliably does that, which is why every recipe on this page clears twenty-five grams a serving and several pass fifty. The usual reason a low carb dinner leaves someone hungry is that removing the rice or the bun was not replaced with anything, so the plate is simply smaller. The recipes here put volume back with a vegetable rather than leaving a gap, and that is the difference between a meal and a piece of meat.
More Collections Built on a Number
Same idea, a different number doing the work.
- 25 High-Protein Chicken Dinners — Every one over thirty grams of protein a serving.
- 25 Twenty-Minute Recipes — When the constraint is the clock instead.
- 25 Recipes With Six Ingredients or Fewer — When the constraint is what is in the cupboard.
- 25 Steak Dinners — Most of these are naturally under five grams of carbohydrate.
- 25 Egg Recipes — The cheapest high-protein, near-zero-carb ingredient there is.
Browse all of our recipe collections.
