One of the reasons our way of eating is often described as a ‘luxurious’ diet is that we can have steaks— really nice ones— and not have to have half portions or quarter portions because we are counting carbs and not calories and all steak is zero carb. 

Burgers are also good food, especially if you can get some grass-fed ground beef from Walmart. It’s weird to eat them with a knife and fork, on a plate, instead of on those overly-sweet buns the fast-food places are pushing, but it’s a learning curve. 

A lot of people who can’t cook anything else know how to take a steak and a frying pan and make dinner. But some of us have trouble with it. I never knew how long to cook things for, and so either got nearly raw or overcooked steaks. 

What helped me was when I got my George Foreman grill (the one with the interchangeable plates) and the booklet came with suggested times for Cooking a lot of kinds of Meat. Beef ribeye steak is 5-7 minutes on high, hamburgers are 3-5 minutes on medium, and pork loin chops are 4-5 minutes on medium.

I figured out that since the GF grill heats from top and bottom at once, if I was cooking the meat in a frying pan, I would take the suggested number of minutes and do that number of minutes, flip, and do the same number of minutes on the other side. I would set a timer.  That way, if the meat came out too rare, I could add a minute next time I cooked that kind of meat, Or if it was not rare enough, I could subtract a minute. All to my taste.

To learn more meat-cooking lore, you can check with cookbooks, especially low-carb cookbooks, or do internet searches. That’s how I learned to cook chicken hearts— I found a few blog entries about cooking chicken hearts and I used it when I cooked my own.

Seasoning meat: Mostly you will want to add salt (or salt-free Spike or kelp powder) and pepper to your meat before cooking. Perhaps some onion powder or garlic powder as well, or paprika. Soy sauce or Worchestershire sauce can also be used. In time you may learn to put meat in marinades before cooking. A simple low-carb vinaigrette dressing can do for a marinade. Put a couple Tablespoons of the marinade in a plastic bag with the meat and keep it in the fridge a couple of hours. People also use seasonings at the table. Low-carb catsup or low-carb barbecue sauce can be made at home and are good for this purpose. 

Frozen meat: I freeze meat. I live alone, I buy ‘family packs’ of meat to save money, and I pack it all up into my big freezer on the porch. But you have to thaw the meat before you cook it! In the evening, pull out any frozen meat you need to cook the next day and let it thaw in the fridge. NOTE: I normally freeze single portions. If you have a whole turkey in your freezer it will need longer to thaw out!