Do you get frustrated with your diet and want to quit? Quitting feels like a disease in itself with me. I’ll start something gung-ho, just to realize  a few weeks later that I invested too much of myself in the venture, and I want to quit. When it comes to low-carb dieting, it will feel easy to quit.

If you’re a carb addict like me, you’ll suffer from withdrawal. I struggled with food cravings when I first started my ketogenic diet. I craved bread, fruit and desserts constantly. Truthfully, I still crave all those things daily, but I decided to find alternatives. There are ketogenic substitutions for almost everything, save produce. Changing your eating habits doesn’t happen in an instant. It takes time. It’s taken me months to try recipes and find find products I like to make the diet feel more like a pleasure than a chore.

Delicious Asparagus Soufflé for Any Diet

I know most people take on low-carb or ketogenic diets to lose weight. So, in addition to recipes and searching for retail products, I was able to turn to other resources, like articles. For example, this article on low-carb dieting to lose weight is a big help to teach me more about how certain high-carbohydrate foods affect my body.

Now that we’ve quit quitting, let’s get to the delicious asparagus soufflé.  This recipe has been in my family , literally for generations. This soufflé was served in my grandparent’s restaurant, The Crystal Grill, and then, at my parent’s restaurant, Yianni’s. Now, it reappears at family occasions. When I started eating keto, I looked through tons of our recipes to find some gems that fit into the diet. Here’s a great one! Let’s get started.

Asparagus Soufflé Ingredients

4 eggs

1 15.5 oz. can of asparagus spears, drained

1 cup cheddar cheese, shredded

1 cup mayonnaise

1 10.5 oz. cream of mushroom soup STOP! Cream of mushroom soup is way to starchy to fit into a keto diet. It is, but instead of quitting, I found a substitute. Dana Carpender’s Mushroom Sauce from her cookbook 200 Low-Carb, High-Fat Recipes is perfect. Making the Mushroom sauce is simple. Here’s how.

Dana Carpender’s Smashing Cookbook

Mushroom Sauce Ingredients

2 tablespoons butter

4 ounces mushrooms, chopped

2 tablespoons onion, minced

1/2 cup beef broth

3/4 cup heavy whipping cream

1/2 teaspoon xanthan gum

To make theMushroom Sauce

Melt the butter over medium-low heat. Sauté the mushrooms and onions until they’re tender. Add the beef broth and bring the mixture to a simmer. Let it cook for around 5 minutes and then whisk in the cream and xanthan gum. Continue to cook so the mixture can heat through, reduce and thicken  a bit. 

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease a half-quart soufflé dish with butter or lard. Beat the eggs in a blender or Cuisinart. Add the remaining ingredients and blend until thoroughly combined. Pour the mixture into the soufflé dish. Then, place the soufflé dish into a second pan and add two inches of water. Bake the soufflé for 55-60 minutes or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.

Nutritional Information

Serves 8

Calories 289
Fat 28g
Colesterol 34mg
Carbohydrates 2g
Fiber 1g
Protein 7g

Cooking Tip to Help Your Diet Succeed

If you’re disaster prone like I am, it’s very easy to spill the whole thing all over the kitchen floor. To avoid disaster, I open the oven and pull out the rack. then, I place the pan on the rack. I place the soufflé dish in the pan and gently push the rack in. I pull the pan off just enough to be able to safely pour the water in, and then I push the pan in all the way and close the door to cook. Follow the same method to remove it.

Also published on Medium.