LOW-FAT BBQ/Smoked Ideas (Michele P. look here for ideas)

This is in honor of the request of Michele P. who asked for Low-Fat ideas and instead got a few responses and a lot of arguing about diet tips and the efficacy and safety of certain diets. Please leave your comments on that thread and leave your tasty ideas on this tread.

fish, shellfish, poultry and any lean pork can be cooked on the WSM and all have little to no carbs

Tony C.,

Thanks for joining the discussion

Josh

Low fat... What's that?

CHICKEN!

This has become nearly a weekly cook for me. Salted, all natural or Bell & Evans chicken, spatchcocked. Wonderful smoke flavor, low fat, low carbs...makes fantastic tacos or pulled chicken sammies the next day.

Turkey breast + low-carb torillas + salsa verde. That's been breakfast for the last couple of mornings. Good stuff...

A few of the things that I have done to cut out the methyl ethyl bad $hit in my Q, is more chicken. I do the beer can chicken method and cut a slit around the ankle bone to let the grease drip out. Doesn’t seem to dry the bird out any. After the cook, I always pull off the skin, but with a dry rub (I no longer use sugar in my dry rub), beer can chicken seems to transfer the taste past the skin to the meat better than other methods.

When I eat pork, after cooking it low and slow to render out much of the fat, I trim all other fat I can see, and any of the connective tissue that didn’t cook out. I also eliminated sugar in my dry rub for these long cooks. It has the added benefit of not caramelizing and picking up too much smoke. When I am going to have pork, or a cut of meat that has more fat in it, I plan out the day’s calories, so I stay within my allotment for the day. That may mean just a bowl of Kashi cereal with non fat milk for breakfast and a mushroom/olive/spinach salad with rendered balsamic vinegar for a dressing for lunch, but, hay, I get my Q.

For my pulled pork, I now use a vinegar/mustard based sauce rather than a tomato/sugar based sauce, but I know that a lot of people don’t like the tartness of that. I LOVES it.

Another thing that I did is to buy a good vacuum sealer. After I cook up a mess of spares, we’ll have three ribs for dinner, then vacuum pack the rest, four (for lunch) or six (for dinner) to a pack for the both of us. Also, after cooking up a few pork butts, I vacuum pack the pulled pork in half and one lb packages and freeze it. That way, we don’t feel compelled to eat it all in a few days so it won’t spoil

How about switch from smoking to grilling instead. Seems to me you can grill most anything that is good for you. Plus there are a ton more recipes. And if ya want a little smoke flavor throw a piece or two of wood on it.

I agree, grilling over lump charcoal will give you more options.

Great! Thanks for the ideas!!

You could try curing and smoking a ham too, they're relatively low-fat (compared to pulled pork or ribs or brisket, maybe not compared to turkey breast)

As long as you're open to grilling options, don't forget the veggies!

Portobellos are fantastic. Various squash, onions, tomatoes, corn...

Paul