The Dirty Keto Cookbook: Simple, Real-World Recipes

Chapter 1: Welcome to Dirty Keto

Let me start with a confession: I wrote this book because I was tired. Tired of scrolling through blog posts that took nine paragraphs to get to the actual recipe. Tired of ingredient lists that called for things like "grass-fed collagen peptides" and "monk fruit sweetener" that I had to order online and wait three days to arrive. Tired of feeling like I was failing at keto because I didn't meal-prep my breakfasts in little glass jars with perfectly arranged chia seed puddings.

Here is the truth that took me way too long to learn: keto doesn't have to be complicated. It doesn't have to be expensive. And it definitely doesn't have to be pretty. You can eat a wedge of iceberg lettuce with ground beef and shredded cheddar and call it dinner. You can scramble three eggs in a nonstick pan with a pat of butter and some salt and have a perfectly good breakfast. You can buy a bag of frozen cauliflower rice and a rotisserie chicken and make a decent lunch in five minutes. None of this requires a spiralizer, a food processor, or a trip to three different grocery stores.

So what is "dirty keto" exactly? It's a term that gets thrown around a lot, sometimes with a judgy undertone, but for me it simply means this: focus on your macros, not on some idealized version of "clean" eating. In this book, we care about net carbs, protein, and fat.