Last year we travelled to Spain, a country with an incredible cuisine and some brilliant ingredients. My lingering memory is of eating tapas, with some chorizo, a little manchego and a nice dry sherry…heaven! This spanish inspired salad makes use of that most wonderful spanish ingredient – chorizo! And at only 5g net carbs per serving this makes a brilliant lunch or lighter dinner.

I love using chorizo in keto dishes, there’s so much flavor that often you don’t need to use much to give a dish a real boost. In many dishes I use it as more of a flavoring, than as the main protein in the meal, but not here! Chorizo is front and centre, and in this I’m using two types! This is a pretty meaty salad but combined with fresh, acidic tomatoes it’s not overly heavy, ideal for a cool day in fall.

The key here is to serve the dish whilst the cooking chorizo and the olive oil dressing are still warm, and make sure your tomatoes are at room temperature (cold tomatoes don’t have much flavor). This is neither a hot nor cold salad, just something soothing on a cool day. The dressing here is more to coat the ingredients than to be a dominant flavor, meaning the flavors of the individual ingredients are more important. In particular try to get the freshest tomatoes you can.

Saffron, being expensive, is an optional extra, I’d leave it out for those doing keto on a budget. It’ll add a little more depth of flavor to the dressing but it’s not a make or break situation. Likewise I’m using two types of chorizo here, which may not be so easy to find. The dry-cured chorizo, which is finely sliced, should be easier to find. More supermarkets nowadays stock cooking chorizo too which is uncured, but if you can find it, then you could slice and fry some of your dried stuff.

Roasted almonds are eaten a lot in Spain, and here they give a welcome crunch to the dish. It’s important to try to get a mixture of textures, flavors and acidity in a salad, and keto salads can often be lacking in crunch.

Serve this dish up as either a light lunch, or as part of a more substantial meal alongside some other tapas type dishes. This recipe works out at about 5g net carbs with a good amount of fats and protein.

Let me know what you think if you’ve tried it in the comments below. If you liked this, then please give it a share, you can follow me on pinterest here.

Spanish Chorizo and Tomato Keto Salad

lorcan

A spanish inspired keto chorizo salad, with tomatoes, olives and almonds. To be served with warm chorizo and a warm dressing.

5 from 3 votes

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Prep Time 10

Cook Time 20

Total Time 30

Course Lunch

Cuisine Spanish

Calories 553 kcal

Ingredients

2 Beefsteak Tomatoes
100 g Cherry Tomatoes
100 g Olive Oil
4 Cloves Garlic
100 g Roasted Almonds
150 g Green Olives - Sliced
1 bunch of Sage 15g
200 g dry cured chorizo
200 g Cooking chorizo sausages
Salt
Pepper
optional pinch of saffron
50 ml dry white whine

Instructions

Slice your tomatoes thinly, sprinkle lightly with salt and set aside
Heat the wine in a small saucepan (Optional extra: add saffron, mix and warm for 5 minutes to release saffron flavour)
Add the olive oil to the saucepan and heat to a medium heat
Add the garlic and half the sage, heat for 1 minute then set aside to cool slightly
In a non-stick pan fry the chorizo sausages (the cooking sausages, not the dry cured) Turn as necessary until cooked.
Whilst chorizo is cooking, finely slice the dry cured chorizo and combine with the roasted almonds, olives, remaining chopped sage and the tomatoes.
Once cooked, slice the cooking chorizo sausages on an angle and combine in bowl with the rest of the salad ingredients. Pour over the warm dressing and serve immedietely.