Labor Day Cookout with Dana Carpender – Includes her Low-Carb Salmon Recipe

Good grief! Is it really Labor Day already? I declare, time goes so fast I’m going to wake up tomorrow to discover I’m eighty five, smack myself on the forehead and say, “What happened?”

For the last glorious holiday weekend of the summer, a cookout seems mandatory. So call up some friends, throw some (light) beer in the cooler, fire up the barbecue, and let’s make an end-of-summer feast that will be filling and memorable without any nutritional regrets.

Grilled whole salmon is a great festive meal that feeds a crowd with very little work. You’ll find a great recipe for Wasabi Soy Salmon below.

Salmon is very nutritious stuff.

A four-ounce serving has 57% of your B12, 28% of your niacin, 15% of your thiamin, 10% of your potassium, 9% of your riboflavin, 5% of your iron, 4% of your zinc and vitamin A, and even 1% of your calcium and folacin. You’ll get 132 calories, no carbs, and 23 grams of protein.

You’ll also get omega-3 fatty acids. This is a very big deal. Not to get too complex, the essential polyunsaturated fats are omega-3s and omega-6s. These two fats should be balanced in the diet, but because vegetable oils high in omega-6s have flooded into our diet in the past 50 years or so, most people’s fat intake is badly unbalanced, with all kinds of health problems resulting, including cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and inflammatory conditions. Increasing our intake of omega-3 fats is a profound way to improve our health. (So is cutting out those omega-6-rich vegetable oils, like soy oil and safflower oil.)

There is a big nutritional difference between wild salmon and farmed salmon.

While farmed salmon tends to be fattier than wild salmon, a lower percentage of that fat is made up of those healthy omega-3 oils, apparently because salmon are being fed soy, wheat, and other plant foods – completely unnatural foods for salmon, who are carnivores. Farmed salmon is also more likely to be contaminated with high levels of PCBs. If you can get a whole wild-caught salmon, it’s worth the extra expense.

It’s good to know that well-wrapped whole salmon freeze very well, so when they’re on sale, buy a couple extra, have the nice fish guys at the grocery store wrap them for the freezer, and stash ’em away for a special meal.

What to serve with your salmon?

I’d run with the Asian theme, and serve a slaw of Napa cabbage, with toasted sesame seeds and a ginger dressing: Whisk together 2 tablespoons lime juice, 1 tablespoons grated ginger root, 2 teaspoons dijon mustard, a pinch of cayenne, and 1/3 cup olive oil. (For this I would use just plain olive oil, not extra virgin olive oil. The pronounced flavor of extra virgin is just not very Asian.) Toss with shredded Napa cabbage, shredded carrot, and sliced scallions, then toss in toasted sesame seeds.

For a hot vegetable dish, how about grilled mushrooms, basted with soy sauce with a little garlic and Splenda or low carb imitation honey? Grilled asparagus would fit in well, too, or grilled eggplant. Or both!

Watermelon is the go-to dessert this time of year, but honeydew and cantaloupe are lower carb, and come across as a little more upscale, especially if you make cubes or balls and toss ’em with lime juice, ginger, and a touch of sweetener.

Happy Labor Day!

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(Recipe reprinted with permission from The Low-Carb Barbecue Book by Dana Carpender, 2004 Fair Winds Press.)

More Low Carb Recipes & Articles by Dana Carpender.

© 2010 by Dana Carpender. Used by permission of the laborious author. What do you think? Please send Dana your comments to Dana Carpender.