Karla Baker - Keto Pasta: Delicious, Simple, and Easy Low Carb, Keto Noodle, Italian Pasta Dough, and Sauce Cookbook. With Recipes To Make By Hand and Those For A Pasta Maker or Machine!

KEY INGREDIENTS OF HOMEMADE KETO PASTA

Pasta is traditionally made of wheat flour, water, and eggs. Keto-friendly pasta recipes mostly require egg, little or no water, and flour alternative.

Flour alternatives are different from traditional flours because they dont have gluten. Gluten is what gives pasta a firm texture. Without it, pasta would become too mushy. For that reason, flour-based keto pasta recipes require thickening agents or stabilizers.

Common Ingredients:

Almond flour Made with ground blanched almonds, almond flour is the most commonly used ingredient to replace regular high-carb flour in keto recipes. Compared to regular flour, it is richer in calories, fat, and protein.

Almond flour is available in health food stores, most supermarkets, and online retailers but you can also make your own using a food processor. When you buy or make almond flour, make sure that its blanched and finely ground since larger particles can make the finished product less cohesive.

Coconut flour Coconut flour is a fine, powdery, and dense flour that subst i tutes high-carb flour. It has less calories, fat, and protein compared with almond flour but is much richer in fiber.

Because coconut flour has a mild smell and taste of coconut, its normally used in small amounts, way less than the amount of almond flour in a recipe. Another reason is that it may require more binders to keep the pasta together.

Coconut flour soaks up more liquid than other flours. To compensate for this, recipes with coconut flour require more liquids, such as water, oil, or eggs.

Xanthan gum A popular food additive, xanthan gum is a powder that acts as a binding agent. It increases the thickness and prevents separation of food pro d ucts. Although its produced mainly with sugars, the carbohydrates in xanthan gum is 100% fiber, so it has zero net carbs.

Xanthan gum works like gluten, improving the doughs texture by making it sticky and gummy. Other ingredients, such as psyllium husk and gelatin po w der, can substitute for xanthan gum but the resulting texture may not be that close to a normal flour dough.

Psyllium husk This ingredient is commonly used as a dietary fiber suppl e ment. In recipes, it acts as a thickener that binds ingredients together. Because its an all-natural fiber, those who want a more natural approach to cooking can use psyllium husk as a replacement to xanthan gum.

When pasta noodles contain psyllium husk powder, discoloration can happen once theyre cooked. Their color usually becomes grayish brown or purple.

Eggs and cheese For flourless pasta, the main ingredients are eggs and cheese, particularly cream cheese and shredded mozzarella cheese. Recipes based on eggs and cheese usually dont require any binding agent. In fact, you can make pasta solely out of these two ingredients.

When a recipe calls for shredded mozzarella cheese, its best to use mozzarella thats already shredded at the store instead of shredding the cheese yourself.

Whey isolate or protein powder The main reason for using whey isolate as a flour substitute in keto pasta recipes isnt just to make your food more protein-rich. Whey isolate actually works like gluten, binding all the ingredients together and improves the consistency of dough.

One specific type of protein powder is micellar casein. Some observe that this slow-digesting dairy protein can make dough thicker.

Pork rinds Although this ingredient isnt commonly used in making low-carb pasta, pork rinds make a good flour substitute. They are high in protein and fat and contain no carbohydrates.