A fully homemade, tasty and filling dinner! This Keto Smoked Salmon & Pesto Zoodles with Bacon recipe gives satisfying smoked and bacon flavors with healthy keto veggies!
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Keto Smoked Salmon & Pesto Zoodles with Bacon
Once a week, hubby and I create a new dinner.
What we normally do is I pick the base (Ex, zoodles, salmon) and hubby will pick the accent flavors (like bacon) and then we put it all together. We are a pretty darn good team. I do the baking 100% on my own, but we split the cooking.
He’s a better cook than me, but we are a team when it comes to dinners!
This recipe serves 4. It is a bit smaller than the recipes I normally make, but most of the older kiddos were not home, so we didn’t need as much as we normally do.
The cooking time for zoodles can vary. But it is a fine line between crunchy and soggy. AND if you don’t cook them enough, they have a tendency to result in, well, gas for some people. We like them soft, but not mushy.
10 minutes over medium heat is usually enough to accomplish that sweet spot. Test them on occasion, though, to make sure you don’t overcook them!
Smoked Salmon is one of my favorites. I also love cajun salmon. This Cajun Samon Alfredo is top notch, so after you make this Smoked Salmon, be sure to put that on your “to make” list!
Flavors
The smoked salmon and bacon really make this meal! You can smoke the salmon yourself or you can buy pre-smoked salmon. This is what we did.
When we eat salmon, we normally buy wild caught, fresh salmon and cook it ourselves But when we want smoked salmon, we prefer to buy it already smoked. Which is funny because we have a smoker and smoke plenty of meat. Go figure.
Bacon obviously provides a familiar and wonderful flavor. What makes it even better is cooking the veggies in a little bit of bacon grease.
The recipe calls to drain most the grease after cooking the bacon, but you can leave as much as you want in the pan. Just don’t overdo it because you don’t want your meal heavy with grease. Just a light coating to cook it in is perfect.
And, of course, the homemade pesto! Seriously, do NOT buy pesto. You can make it yourself really easy and have leftovers to use on your eggs. It is made from spinach, cashew, and goat cheese as the base. Doesn’t it just sound amazing? Wait until you TASTE IT!
Kitchen Essentials
Spiralizer – I use a simple spiralizer. You can get a fancy one, but a small one that you turn the zucchini yourself is all you really need. If you’ve never used one, never fear, they are easy to use.
Wok – You don’t really need a wok, but we started cooking in a normal pan and ran out of room and quickly switched to a wok.
Keto Smoked Salmon & Pesto Zoodles with Bacon
Ingredients
- 3/4 cup Homemade Keto Pesto Sauce
- 10 ounces thick cut bacon chopped (about 10 slices, 6 inches long each)
- 1/2 pound smoked salmon chopped
- 5 medium zucchini spiraled, then cut a few times to make strands shorter
- 1 yellow pepper chopped
- 1 orange pepper chopped
Instructions
- Cook chopped bacon in a wok (or medium pan) over medium heat.
- Remove bacon from pan and mostly drain the grease. Set bacon aside.
- Add peppers into the pan used to cook the bacon. It still should have traces of bacon grease in it.
- Saute peppers for 5 minutes, stirring often.
- Add spiraled zucchini, bacon, and salmon to pan with peppers.
- Cover (optional) and cook over medium heat for 10 minutes, stirring often.
- Remove from heat, add pesto, and mix well.
- Serve warm.
Trina Krug is a Holistic Nutritionist, Integrative Health Coach and host of the Carbless Conversations Podcast. With a Master’s Degree in Complementary and Alternative Medicine, her single mission in life is to facilitate self-healing in herself and those around her through awareness, lifestyle shifts and low-carb eating. As a current Doctor of Science student, she continues her studies in functional nutrition.