10 KETO FOODS YOU SHOULD ALWAYS HAVE IN YOUR FRIDGE + 7 easy keto recipes to make with them

One of the keys to being successful with the keto diet is to always be prepared and have foods on hand that you can just make recipes at a moment's notice, so if you come home from work and you're starving, or if you wake up in the morning and you're hungry too, or if you just need a snack, you always want to have foods on hand to keep you sticking to your goals. So I'm going to share with you guys my favorite foods to have in my fridge. Today we're going to take a peek inside my fridge, and I want to share with you guys 10 keto foods that I think everyone should have in their refrigerator. So let's go take a look. The first must-have food in your refrigerator is eggs, unless you're allergic to them, then of course don't have eggs. But I usually keep around two or three dozen eggs in my refrigerator at a time, and that's because we eat them like crazy. I use them for breakfast, I use them in baking, my kids like them as a snack, or I pack them in their lunches too, they're big hard-boiled egg fans. So I usually have two or three fresh, uncooked eggs in the fridge, and then one carton of hard-boiled eggs that I usually make up in my Instant Pot. These are the eggs that I buy, they're from Happy Eggs, they are from pasteurized chickens. The yolks are orange, they are so high in omega-3 fatty acids and all these nutrients inside of them, plus they're creamy too and delicious, it's my favorite egg. The benefits of eating eggs is that they are an excellent source of protein, they're a complete protein, in fact, they have all of the necessary amino acids that you need. They have a large amount of omega-3 fatty acids, that is if you get the pasteurized eggs, and saturated fat too. They also have a lot of vitamins and minerals, so there's selenium, copper, iron, zinc, vitamin B, vitamin D, and they have choline too, which is great for nerve function. Besides making eggs for breakfast, I also like to pack them in our lunches. So I'll bring him to work with me or pack him in my son's lunch, he's a huge fan of hard-boiled eggs. I use eggs when I'm making chaffles or pancakes or fathead dough, obviously any sort of keto baking that you're going to do, you're going to need eggs. And the yolks can actually be used as a thickener, so if you're trying to make dressings or sauces, you can use an egg yolk as a thickener. And then the whites, you can actually whip those up and form stiff peaks, get them all nice and fluffy, and you can make meringues out of those, or like a whipped topping out of the whipped up egg whites, it's excellent, it's delicious. I have a hot chocolate recipe that uses a meringue whipped topping, and I'll leave that video linked up here for you. I mentioned earlier that I like to make up around a dozen hard-boiled eggs for the week, and I usually make that in my Instant Pot. I love making them up in the Instant Pot because it's really easy, it's convenient, I don't have to babysit them, and the shells peel off so easily too. You place your eggs on top of the trivet that came with the Instant Pot, and then you're going to add a cup of water. And pressure cook it on high for five minutes. You're going to let the pressure release naturally for five minutes, and then immediately transfer it to an ice bath, and let it sit there for five minutes. Then you can peel your eggs. Some people store them just with the shell on, which is what I like to do, others will actually peel their eggs right away and store them unpeeled in the refrigerator. If you do that, you have to put it in some water that you change out daily, or I've heard that you can put it in a container with a damp paper towel, and that works too. Another food that is always in my refrigerator is bacon. We love bacon in my household. My kids love to eat it in the morning for breakfast, so I usually have like two or three packages of bacon on hand because we go through it so fast. And bacon's delicious, it has such great flavor, it's fatty, I mean, most people love it. I mean, who doesn't love bacon? Everybody loves bacon. If you don't, we're not friends. I like to add it to a bunch of my savory dishes just to pump up the flavor, or also if I'm thinking that a recipe is lacking in some fat content, because I want to make sure it's going to keep us full until our next meal. And with bacon, you can actually save your bacon grease. Store it in a Mason jar, or they have those bacon containers that you can pick up from Amazon that help store your bacon and keep it fresh. You can use this bacon to cook other things with, like your eggs, saute up some chicken with it, and it adds just like a little hint of smoky, bacon-y flavor, and it's delicious. It's the perfect fat to cook any of your foods with. I have lots of recipes on my website that utilize bacon. I have maple bacon cookies, bacon mayo, bacon and blue cheese zoodles, bacon wrapped shrimp, bacon wrapped little smokies, stuffed with jalapeno poppers, which is delicious, by the way. We're actually making that this weekend because we're having people over, and they're so good. All of my non-keto friends love them, too. If there is one big tip that I could give you guys to make meal prep easier and making dinner easier, that would be to have all of your vegetables prepped out ahead of time. So all the washing, the chopping, the slicing, dicing, and storing it all in a container, that is my biggest tip for you guys, and that is why number three food on my list is to have these pre-chopped up, ready-to-go vegetables on hand. You can have pre-sliced onion, bell pepper, or cut into strips, celery, broccoli, cauliflower, any of your favorite vegetables, just pre-chop them, get them washed up, ready to go. You store them in an airtight container with just a paper towel on the bottom to collect moisture, and that way you always have something either to snack on, or you can bring it out and throw it in your recipes when you're making dinner. I like to have these all prepped up and ready to go. It makes packing lunches easier in the morning too, because I can just grab a handful of vegetables, toss it in a baggie, send the kid out the door. Well, I mean, I give him other food too, but it makes it so much easier, so I'm not really scrambling in the morning trying to figure out what to pack them for lunch. I also find that if I have my vegetables prepped up, I'll use them more in my recipes too. So I can toss some veggies and some scrambled eggs, or toss them in a salad, so it's not just like a plain lettuce salad, we actually have some other pretty looking vegetables in there. Or you can just serve them as a side dish, so you can toss some butter and salt in with some broccoli and cauliflower, put it in the microwave, or just steam it on the stovetop, and it's a quick side dish for your family at dinner time. Another keto food that I like to have in my refrigerator is some sort of leafy green vegetable. So I usually get the pre-packed salad mixes, like either a baby spinach, a 50-50 blend, or the spring mix. And I like to have these on hand just because I can put together a quick side salad for dinner. It makes it really, really easy, I don't have to wash anything, dry anything, I hate pulling out my salad spinner, I don't even know why I still have one because I don't think I've used that thing in like three years or so, it's been a long time, so I probably should get rid of it. Having spinach on hand is great if you like to make smoothies, if you're a big smoothie person in the morning, or you can throw spinach in like if you're making a soup, or some sort of casserole, or if you're making like an egg scramble in the morning too, spinach is great, or any sort of leafy green vegetable you can throw in there. One of my favorite leafy greens to get is chard, and this is a red chard, I love it because I can throw it into soups for a little extra green, and you can actually cut this up and saute it with some butter and salt and it's delicious, it makes a really good side dish. Not very many fruits are allowed on the keto diet, but the ones that are just happen to be my favorite. Berries. So I always have berries in my refrigerator. From strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, we usually have something. Mostly it's strawberries and raspberries because those are our favorite, but occasionally I'll have the other ones too if they're in season. Berries are full of antioxidants, they're low in sugar too, so I love giving them to my kids as a snack, or pack them in their lunches, I'll serve them on the side with some eggs and bacon in the morning too. But I love incorporating berries into my keto desserts, there's so much you can do. Like I have a recipe for strawberry cheesecake bars on my website, super good, I also have a video on it, I'll link it up here for you. And I have a recipe for a raspberry crumble that is excellent, it's easy to make, it's really good for summertime, you can top it with some keto ice cream or some whipped cream, it's so good. But berries are great if you have a sweet tooth and you're craving something but don't want to drag out all of your baking equipment or start your oven, so you can just have them by themselves as a good sweet treat, or you can make up some keto whipped cream, which is just sugar-free whipped cream, and just mix in some berries with it, or you can make an easy berry cheesecake fluff, which is where you add your favorite berry, cream cheese, some heavy cream, vanilla sweetener to a blender and you blend it all together until it's smooth and it's just a quick, easy keto dessert that you can make. But this is one produce item that you should not pre-wash ahead of time. So on meal prep day, do not wash your berries, because if you wash them, they actually go bad faster. So keep them unwashed, and then when you want to have them, just wash a little bit at a time, just so that the rest of them aren't spoiling. Another food that I always have in my fridge is some sort of pre-cooked protein. So this is something that I'll prep up during meal prep day, and I'll have mostly it's ground beef, so I'll make like a taco meat, have that all prepped up, ready to go, so we can have tacos any time throughout the week. A lot of times my husband will take them for lunch, or we can make a quick taco salad for lunch. I also like to have pre-cooked up grilled chicken. If it's cold outside and my grill is covered in snow, then I'll just put my chicken in my Instant Pot and cook it up that way. But I always have some pre-cooked form of protein in my refrigerator. That way, if I come home from work, I don't have anything planned, I can just easily grab that, grab some vegetables, make up a quick stir fry. If I have the pre-cooked ground beef, I can make up a lasagna. I know you guys have seen my lasagna recipe before. If you haven't, I'll have it linked up here for you, or down below in the description box. It's so easy, it's delicious, you gotta try it. Heavy whipping cream and nut milks are pretty much the only milk options that you can have on the keto diet, so I like to have both on hand. I like to have the heavy whipping cream in case I'm gonna make a quick dessert, like whipped cream and berries. But it also works great as a thickener too, so you can thicken up gravies and sauces with heavy whipping cream. It can make your eggs super creamy if you like to have scrambled eggs in the morning. The nut milk that I like to have on hand is macadamia nut milk. I prefer it over almond milk because it has a higher fat content and it's lower in carbs. Plus it's so creamy and it tastes delicious. They have an unsweetened version, which is the blue label, that's what I usually get. I'll use it in my savory and my sweet dishes, but I will also sometimes get the vanilla flavored one because it's delicious. It's unsweetened, but it has just a hint of vanilla. I like to use nut milks when I'm trying to thin out something like a gravy or a sauce or smoothies, and I don't want to add additional heavy cream because I don't want more carbs or more fat going into it. I think I lied when I said that berries were my favorite fruit to have because I forgot. There's one other fruit that's allowed on the keto diet and that's avocado. Now, avocados are great because three quarters of the calories of an avocado come from fat, so it's the perfect food for you. You can just shave off a couple of slices, top it on a taco salad. I like to sprinkle some salt on it and I'll just take that to lunch oftentimes. I'll just bring an avocado and a knife and some salt to work when I am too busy to pack my lunch and it's perfect. I mean, don't tell anybody I bring a knife to work because that could get me in trouble because it's a sharp knife, but it makes the perfect meal because it's super high in fat. It's loaded in fiber, has lots of vitamins in it too. It actually has more potassium than bananas. So as a pharmacist, that's my day job, I actually will recommend when people have leg cramps, I recommend they go eat some avocados. I don't tell them to go eat a banana because there's not as much potassium and bananas, plus they're loaded with sugar. So I'll tell them to go eat an avocado and see if that helps. And if not, then we'll talk about some other options for them. But you could also add avocados to smoothies. You could also make guacamole. I have an easy keto guacamole recipe on my website. You can also make those little avocado boats where they stuff them with chicken salad, or you can just crack an egg and put that on the avocado, put it in the oven and bake it, and it makes a little egg, egg boat, avocado thingy. I don't know what those are called, but they're really good. And avocado works as a substitute for mayo too. So if you're trying to make a lettuce wrap or just a low carb wrap, you can just spread some avocado down and it serves as like a mayonnaise to help moisten your wrap. I like making avocado fries. They're delicious served alongside a bunless burger. I'll leave my favorite recipe link down below for you. And you can also use avocado in your keto baking. So it works as a fat replacer. So it's replacing any of the oil and butter that might go into a recipe. So for every one cup of oil or butter, you're going to use a one cup of mashed avocado. I like to store my avocados in the fridge because I think it keeps them from going bad too quickly. And if some are looking sad, you can actually freeze them too. Just scoop out the green insides, toss in a Ziploc bag and freeze it. I'm sure if you're on the keto diet, you probably already have this in your refrigerator unless you're lactose intolerant or trying to avoid dairy, but that's cheese. And I always like to have cream cheese and a regular cheese stored in my refrigerator. And the cheese that I mostly like to have in my refrigerator is mozzarella cheese because I like to use it when I'm making fat head dough. If I'm going to make up a pizza or chaffles, a lot of my chaffle recipes require mozzarella cheese. I like to have it on hand if I'm going to make some keto lasagna too, but the cream cheese I like to add in if I'm going to just, I want a little bit of creamy factor into a recipe. Like if I'm trying to make like a soup, nice and creamy or some sort of a stir fry, add some creaminess to that instead of using heavy cream. Sometimes I'll just add a little couple of cubes of cream cheese and it also can be used as a thickener in the sauces too, just similar to the heavy cream. You can just use cream cheese instead. Cream cheese is also great if you're trying to make up some quick keto snacks like taking celery, spreading cream cheese on it. You can sprinkle some everything but the bagel seasoning on top or make a quick salami roll up with some cream cheese inside, maybe a little pickle slices in there is delicious as well. And the last keto food that I always like to have in my refrigerator is grass fed butter. And I get the grass fed kind, I don't get the conventional butter because I want my family to have that extra little bit of nutrients. Grass fed butter is filled with conjugated linoleic acid or CLAs and this is an essential fatty acid. It helps with inflammation so it's naturally anti-inflammatory. It also helps with muscle growth and grass fed butter is filled with vitamin K2 which is also essential for bone health. Plus grass fed butter tastes amazing so I love to use it in everything. So anytime I'm sauteing vegetables, even some meat, if you're finishing off a steak, throw some butter on there. I use it in my keto baking too. I mean I don't have to tell you what to use butter in because you probably already know, it's butter, it's the keto diet, it's amazing. Just make sure you don't run out. These were the 10 items that I like to keep in my refrigerator at all times. There are many more items that I could add to this list. If you guys have some ideas, make sure you comment them down below so maybe we can get to thinking about, hey, maybe I should always have that in there. That's a really good idea. Some of my other ones are chicken broth. I always have a barbecue sauce on hand too. What else do I do? Pickles, garlic. I usually keep garlic in there. I hope you guys enjoyed this video. If you like it, please give me a thumbs up because that tells me if I should make more videos like this. Have a good one. Bye.