Sri Lankan Keto Prawn Curry

Sri Lankan Keto Prawn Curry

For those of you who have been keeping up with my articles on Keto, you know why I started Researching the Ketogenic Diet and some of the problems I faced.

Many I meet have asked me what I did to solve the problems I mention briefly in my articles and I will share the details of that with you in a future article.

Before we head into our recipe for today, I thought I’d mention a few tips on the kind of food preparation I use when I am a little short on Keto alternatives; that is, food on the approved Keto food list.

As a Tropical country, Ceylon (Sri Lanka) is dependent on the tropical seasons, humidity, and soil conditions. This being the case, we don’t always have a constant supply of fresh Keto vegetables… and certainly not much of the American Keto foods, which makes sticking rigidly to actual Keto very difficult.

There are a few ways I move around the roadblocks to the American Keto diet. One way was to work with what I had, substituting Sri Lankan vegetables for American ones and then lowering the carbs in the preparation of others.

My Tips on How to Change Starchy Food into Low-carb Food.

• Prepare your own spice and seasoning mixes and use only fresh or whole-dried ingredients. Avoid powders, and mixes created by others as they may contain additives (corn starch and flavour enhancers).

• Add spices and seasonings in the marinade rather than when cooking to allow the mixes to begin their work of lowering the carb count.

• Lower the carbs in certain vegetables by removing part of the starch in starchy veg. This I accomplish by soaking them in salt and turmeric water for a few days (at least 24 hours; more is better) and then overcooking them slightly. While the vegetables are cooking remove any starch floating on top of the water.

  Follow this option only when necessary and you have no other alternative. It will not make starchy vegetables 100% keto-friendly but this will make sure they are a lot lower in carbs than they would otherwise have been.

• Ferment or pickle root vegetables to reduce sugar and stabilize the glycemic load.

• Keep green vegetables as crunchy as possible.

• “Add fat to burn fat” is not a thing anymore, so don’t overdo it on the fat, add just enough healthy fat to make tasty food.

The reason I am discussing these food preparation tips is that if you live outside the US and are trying to follow the American Ketogenic diet then I do not doubt that like me, you will have run into a few problems.

Sri Lankan Keto Prawn Curry

Total cook time: 5-7 minutes.

Ingredients:

700g wild-caught Prawns. Beheaded and shelled, tail on.

1 medium size onion. Finely chopped.

2-inch light green leak. Finely chopped. (optional)

2 medium tomatoes. Diced.

1 capsicum chilli sliced. (Keep the seeds in for an extra spicy curry option).

2 teaspoons chilli powder.

½ teaspoon turmeric powder.

¼ teaspoon ground pepper.

1 1/2 teaspoons cumin or fennel seed.

Salt to taste.

2 cloves garlic.

2 tablespoons virgin cold-pressed coconut oil.

1/2 cup coconut milk.

Method

Combine your coconut oil and garlic, while you prep the other ingredients.

Combine your spices (chilli, turmeric, pepper, and cumin) and marinate your prawns.

Heat the garlic oil, add the onions, and leak, and cook until translucent (not caramelized)

Add the marinaded prawns and cook for 30 seconds.

Toss or stir before adding the coconut milk and capsicum.

Remove from the heat once the gravy starts to bubble around the edges.

Rest for 5-10 minutes before consuming.

This curry is usually an accompaniment to...

• A very large raw garden salad and at least one other vegetable side.

• Three different cooked Sri Lankan Keto vegetable sides.

• Two vegetables and one “Malum”.

* In Keto the idea is to eat 5 to 7 cups of vegetables per day. Having two and a half cups to three per meal makes it easy to get the required vegetable carb count. 

In Conclusion...

What is important to me, is to keep being pain and inflammation free. Without this, Rheumatoid Arthritis would take over and I would be incapable of living a normal life.

Keto doctors will not agree with this article at all. However, when faced with the options of letting the RA take over or holding it off and living a normal life, guess which option I chose… I was not ready to give up and give in.

Two years in, and I am still going when I should have been crippled!

In my next article, I will list some of the problems I faced with American Keto and tell you the solutions that worked for me. 

Meanwhile, leave your comments in the box below and let me know how you feel about this article or ask any questions you like. I will research and answer them in the articles to come.

Until next time... Stay Healthy!