PIN the Chicken Salad with Basil to try it later!

Today I’m reminding you about this amazing Chicken Salad with Basil! This is a recipe you should make as soon as you see basil plants showing up in the grocery store. OR if you have basil growing in your garden, you can make it it all summer long! 

I’m a huge fan of fresh basil, and I’ve been growing basil and freezing the basil for many years, so I’m excited when basil season gets started every year. And this basil-loaded chicken salad recipe is one of my favorite summer salads. Through the years I’ve decided you just can’t ever put too much chopped basil in this salad.

And yes, I used the word SUMMER, but please don’t hesitate to make this salad any time you have chicken and fresh basil on hand! If you have to buy basil in the grocery store you can get away with using less in this recipe. But please try it if you’re a fan of these flavors. I could eat this over and over again and never get tired of it!

Click to continue reading…

The post Chicken Salad with Basil appeared first on Kalyn's Kitchen.

PIN the Curried Chicken Salad to try it later!

Curried Chicken Salad is a recipe I’ve been waiting to feature, because in Utah we kept getting rainy weather so I thought cold chicken and asparagus salad might be pushing it. But I noticed when I checked my blog stats that a few salad recipes had gone crazy on Pinterest, so I decided some of you are ready for salads!

I’m a huge salad fan, and some of my favorite restaurant meals are salads that I order over and over and never get tired of. And when I ate leftovers from this salad for breakfast the day after we shot the new photos, I wished there had been a bit more left!

We made a few changes to this salad recipe when we updated it, including switching out the peanuts in the original salad for pine nuts, which were an amazing change! Here’s the printer-friendly version of the original recipe, in case anyone was a fan of the older version.

Click to continue reading…

The post Curried Chicken Salad appeared first on Kalyn's Kitchen.

PIN Ground Beef Tacos to make them later!

When I was a kid I loved my mom’s tacos. Mom would fry corn tortillas to make shells. Then she folded them over to be filled with spicy taco meat, grated cheese, lettuce, hot sauce, and sometimes tomatoes. When we ate mom’s tacos, we had to hold them over a plate because so much grease would drip out!

Ground Beef Tacos with Tomato-Avocado Salsa is a different version of ground beef tacos! These days I make tacos into a low-carb meal by using low-carb flour tortillas. I season the ground beef with my homemade taco seasoning and serve the tacos with a tomato-avocado salsa (with cucumber!)

The tacos you see here are an updated version of Spicy Ground Beef and Black Beans Tacos I first made years ago! But these days a lot of my readers don’t want beans in their taco meat. (If you do want the black beans, follow that link and see the original recipe.)

And Cinco de Mayo is less than two weeks away, and these tacos would be a perfect dinner for that! You can make the ground beef tacos even if you don’t have every ingredient. We doubled the meat, so  you can probably have tacos for dinner more than once. And keep reading to find out about the frozen avocado that we used in the salsa for these tacos!

Click to continue reading…

The post Ground Beef Tacos with Tomato-Avocado Salsa appeared first on Kalyn's Kitchen.

PIN the recipe for Deviled Ham Spread to try it later!

Deviled Ham Spread has been one of my favorite things to make with leftover ham for quite a few years now! And when I buy ham for a holiday meal I’m always happy to have leftover ham to make this!

I love to eat this deviled ham stuffed inside low-carb pita bread for a quick and easy lunch. And I enjoy these pita sandwiches made with deviled ham so much that I find myself doubling the recipe to make this with ham steaks from Costco, even when I don’t have leftover ham.

Through the years I also started adding chopped onion or green onion, finely chopped celery, and just a little fresh-squeezed lemon juice to the recipe.

And I bet today many people have leftover ham from Easter, so I’m hoping you make some deviled ham! This post also has four delicious low-carb options for using deviled ham. If you’ve never made this at home, trust me, it is so delicious.

Click to continue reading…

The post Deviled Ham Spread (and How to Use Deviled Ham) appeared first on Kalyn's Kitchen.

PIN the Asparagus Tomato Salad to try it later!

Asparagus and Tomato Salad with Hearts of Palm came about because of the way I love to pull things out of the fridge or pantry and experiment to see what I can come up with! And this asparagus tomato salad  started with the Hearts of Palm that are one of my favorite salad ingredients!

I also had fresh asparagus in the fridge and chives growing in the garden, although you can use green onions if that’s what you have. I added a few of the small grape tomatoes I start buying in the spring when I’m craving tomatoes. And those ingredients are mixed with a tasty lemony vinaigrette.

And when I can have an easy meal with a salad that includes hearts of palm, asparagus, and tomatoes, I’m a happy camper! This salad is going to be a great side dish for Easter if you’re still narrowing down the menu!

Click to continue reading…

The post Asparagus and Tomato Salad with Hearts of Palm appeared first on Kalyn's Kitchen.

PIN Fried Cabbage with Bacon to try it later!

This popular Fried Cabbage with Bacon is one of the easiest and tastiest recipes I know to make with cabbage! And I always share recipes with cabbage during March when cabbage goes on sale. but I also think cabbage is a perfect low-carb ingredient any time of year! So today I’m reminding you about this tasty dinner idea for Friday Favorites, and urging you to make it for an easy dinner!

And this cabbage fried with bacon is so quick and easy you barely need a recipe. Just fry some bacon (more or less, depending on how you feel about bacon.) Leave a little bacon fat in the pan and fry the chopped cabbage. Then add the bacon back in and cook a little more. Season the finished dish with salt and fresh-ground black pepper (and a pinch of red pepper flakes if desired).

Before you know it you’re eating a delicious dish of fried cabbage and tasty bacon! Just be sure to use a big pan so the cabbage isn’t crowded, because no one wants steamed cabbage when it’s supposed to be fried! And if you’re a fan of these ingredients I hope you make this soon.

Click to continue reading…

The post Fried Cabbage with Bacon appeared first on Kalyn's Kitchen.

PIN the recipe for Shrimp Salad Cups to try them later!

Shrimp Salad Cups are a fun recipe where tasty Shrimp Salad is served as an appetizer inside a cup of cabbage or lettuce. And she shrimp salad part of the recipe is inspired by a salad that’s the most-requested recipe for the Super Bowl menu in my extended family!

The famous Shrimp and Macaroni Salad I’ve been making for over 30 years is always a crowd-pleaser. And now I make it with Fiber Gourmet Light Elbows for a more carb-conscious version. But if you want to keep it lower in carbs, these Shrimp Salad Cups are a fun way to enjoy those shrimp salad flavors!

Serve the tasty shrimp salad in low-carb cups made of lettuce or cabbage, whichever you prefer. And if you’re wondering about cabbage, think how cabbage with mayo dressing is so good on fish tacos! Either way you make them, the Shrimp Salad Cups, are a fun appetizer that will be a huge hit with shrimp fans. I hope you try them soon!

Click to continue reading…

The post Shrimp Salad Cups appeared first on Kalyn's Kitchen.

PIN Low-Carb Turkey Soup to make it later!

Happy Thanksgiving to all my readers! I’m heading out in a few hours to spend Thanksgiving with my sister Laurel and some of her family. I don’t normally update the website on Thursday, but I wanted people who who subscribe to the site to get this recipe for Low-Carb Turkey Soup with Zucchini  in their inbox on Friday morning. And if you get some leftover turkey, I hope you make this soup or one of my other low-carb recipes for leftover turkey!

This soup is the perfect thing to make on the day after Thanksgiving! When we tested this recipe for low-carb turkey soup, we gobbled it up, even though it was the end of a long day of recipe testing and we weren’t really that hungry. I first made this tasty soup with zucchini noodles, but now they aren’t so much of a thing, and this soup will be equally delicious (if not better) with small diced pieces of zucchini.

Take your choice on that, but trust me when I say you’re not going to miss the traditional higher-carb ingredients like potatoes or noodles in this delicious turkey soup! And if you don’t have leftover turkey, you can make this soup with chicken as well. I hope it’s going to be a hit at your house!

Click to continue reading…

The post Low-Carb Turkey Soup with Zucchini appeared first on Kalyn's Kitchen.

PIN Italian Beef Stew to try it later!

This Italian Beef Stew recipe starts with a few pounds of chuck roast that’s simmered with tomatoes, herbs, and beef stock to tenderize the meat. Then onions, peppers, zucchini, and mushrooms are each briefly cooked and added to the stew. And the stew is finished with chopped fresh basil, chopped basil in a tube, frozen basil, or purchased basil pesto, whichever works for you.

And I know beef is a lot more expensive these days, so if you wanted to make a zucchini-loaded stew that uses more zucchini and less beef, I think that variation will still be delicious. However you adapt the recipe, this beef stew has all the Italian flavors I love so much! And this reheats very well, so don’t be afraid to make the full recipe even if you’re not cooking for that many people.

Click to continue reading…

The post Italian Beef Stew (with Zucchini, Mushrooms, and Basil) appeared first on Kalyn's Kitchen.

PIN this Tuna Salad with Cucumbers to try it later!

Tuna Salad with Cucumbers, Tomatoes, Parsley, and Mint is the kind of thing I want for dinner at this time of year! And it’s true that when the end of summer approaches, I have a hard time letting go of summer foods. And I’m not apologizing for it, because salads like this are perfect to make in late summer, when garden tomatoes are at their prime and the herb garden is still loaded with leafy goodness.

This salad was inspired by my favorite Middle Eastern Tomato Salad, something I make every year when I have good tomatoes, fresh cucumbers, and parsley and mint from the garden. This salad with tuna has some of the same flavors, but it features tomatoes and cucumbers cut into bigger chunks, for more of a main-dish salad.

What really makes this salad a winner for me is the generous amount of chopped fresh parsley and mint. I haven’t been to the middle east, but I’ve eaten in enough middle eastern restaurants to know about their salads with fresh herbs, where the herbs are almost eaten as a form of greens. And I absolutely love that combination in this salad! I hope you’ll try the salad if you’re a fan of these ingredients and also like holding on to summer!

Click to continue reading…

The post Tuna Salad with Cucumbers, Tomatoes, Parsley, and Mint appeared first on Kalyn's Kitchen.