Caponata con Carne
Caponata is a classic Italian dish from the South.
It is sort of the Italian version of the French Ratatouille. Though Italians would definitely think that the Ratatouille is the French version of the Caponata.
The original recipe is truly amazing but it has two caveats for us, looking to get lean and strong: it has a disproportionate amount of calories and basically no protein whatsoever.
“Such a pity!” — I said to myself.
So I did something that is sort of illegal in Italy: I changed the traditional recipe.
I know, many grandmas are most likely turning in their graves as I cooked this.
But, if you can forgive me the biggest Italian sin, then this recipe should really be in your high-protein staples.
Mind you, it still has a lot of calories, but waaaaay less than the original. Which makes this a great recipe for a clean and healthy bulk.
Let’s talk about the mind-blowing taste. Bittersweet, flavorful, rich, and truly mouth watering. Each bite will call for the next.
You say that you can’t gain weight because you seem not to eat enough? Try this recipe and try to tell me that again! 😉
Given the relatively high amount of fiber, this dish is pretty satiating too!
This recipe is also low carb high fat (LCHF) so, if you happen to be on this diet, you’re good to go!
GIF Recipe
Pork Belly & Brussels Sprouts (Vitamin K & C Booster!)
I used to HATE Brussels sprouts.
Like any cheap plot you can think of, I am now in love with them, of course.
It all started when I wanted to pair some veggies with my beloved sardines.
I was experimenting with different things and I decided to give Brussels sprouts a try. And boy I was hooked!
I don’t know what happened but I actually really like them now. Go figure!
Brussels sprouts are a nutrient powerhouse!
100g of Brussels sprouts provide:
- 142% of your Vitamin C RDA
- 221% of your Vitamin K RDA
- 15% of your Folate RDA
- 3.4g of protein per 100g (not bad for a vegetable!)
- fullness and satiety
This recipe is a great way to pack some vitamins together with some great flavor (and a lot of protein!).
In the recipe I used beer. Feel free to substitute it with wine or vinegar (apple cider goes great here!).
If you don’t want to use sweetener, you can use applesauce for a more natural and whole ingredient (I didn’t have it at hand). Apple goes very well with pork, you should really try.
This is a full meal great for clean bulking. I would recommend this as dinner or post-workout. You get protein, fat, and healthy carbs all in one meal!
You don’t need to eat junk food to gain muscle mass. You can have perfectly healthy bodybuilding meals to gain mass and this recipe is an example.
This is a one-pot recipe which means that you won’t have to spend much time for cleaning up since you do everything in one pan.
This is a very easy and quick bodybuilding recipe which is also good for people on the paleo, primal, lchf, iifym diet.
GIF Recipe
Pork Belly With Mushrooms (Keto Bulking Recipe)
I never cooked pork belly before but I was intrigued to try it since it was on discount at the supermarket.
It’s not the big chunk pork belly usually comes in but it was in slices.
Anyway, I decided to try to cook it very simply with mushrooms and cherry tomatoes.
Literally, it took me 10 min total to make this and it tasted so freaking great.
On top of that, it packs 900 kcal and almost 40g of protein.
I really cannot understand how people struggle to eat enough to gain muscle mass. It’s not difficult if you choose calorie dense food.
Being so low carb and high fat, this is a great keto bulking recipe.
If you are looking to make some keto gains, you should try this recipe out.
On a bulking phase, you increase your calories. On a ketogenic diet, if you are not tracking your caloric intake, it can be hard to gain weight since this diet is very satiating. With some tricks such as adding heavy cream, butter, or olive oil, this can be overcome.
Too many calories for you? Really easy! Just drop the heavy cream! It will still taste great and it will have 132 kcal less.
Still too many carbs for you? Skip the cherry tomatoes or replace the shallot with garlic. The taste will be different but still delicious since garlic goes great with both pork and mushrooms.
This dish not only is super easy and delicious but it’s also incredibly cheap! No excuses for not building muscle mass here!
GIF Recipe
Chicken Drumsticks with Cherry Tomatoes
You know when you open your fridge and you can find just a couple of ingredients and get discouraged?
That’s what happened to me before making this recipe.
I opened my fridge and I just had chicken and cherry tomatoes.
On top of that, I wanted to make something quickly.
That inspired me to create this one-pot very simple and easy recipe which also takes 10-15 min to make.
This recipe is great for a meal-prep too since you can make it in advance, store in the fridge, and reheat before eating.
It’s very high in protein and so low-carb that even people on the ketogenic diet can make it.
The taste is completely unexpected: sweet from the cherry tomatoes, sour from the wine and garlic, and great savoriness from the chicken blend together to give you a unique mouth-watering experience.
This makes a great post-workout or dinner when you are looking to pack some muscle mass with an high-protein meal.
Besides being Keto, this recipe is also Paleo, Primal, LCHF, and ofc IIFYM.
If you want to add more carbs, pair this with some rice or (oven baked) potatoes fries.
About the wine: it doesn’t to be the expensive stuff. I truly buy the cheapest there is and, once opened, it can last in the fridge basically forever. You can use wine for a lot of recipes to make them even more delicious so it’s not a waste!
Gif Recipe
Keto Caprese
If you are short on time and don’t have enough time to cook this keto lunch recipe can be a lifesaver.
This dish is called Caprese. and I’ve been eating it when I was in Italy very often and it was one of my most favorite meals!
Especially if you use buffalo mozzarella and very fresh cherry tomatoes, this can turn easily into a foodgasmic experience 🙂
You don’t need fancy recipes to eat well. This is what south Italian cuisine is all about: few ingredients, simple to make, tastebuds ecstasy guaranteed.
This dish is very low carb, therefore, it can be eaten on a ketogenic diet.
It’s also dirty cheap and very quick to prepare since no cooking is involved!
Gif Recipe
Italian Cabbage Dumplings
You know, well, everybody knows that cabbage is good for you.
Right. But that taste…
I wanted to include some green cabbage in my diet and tried to think of how can I make this enjoyable and not a dread.
I thought: Chinese have been using green cabbage since forever and they make delicious stuff out of them!
Since I am not Chinese and I wouldn’t dare mess around with such a complex, rich, and ancient culinary art, I decided to give Chinese cabbage rolls an Italian spin so nobody gets offended. Though if you are Chinese and want to teach me how to make high-protein healthy cabbage rolls, please write me 🙂
So, what makes this dish “Italian”?
Besides the usual aromatics (onion, carrots, leek) I used red wine and fennel seeds. Fennel seeds really give a twist to this dish!
This has only 19g of carbs per serving which makes it ideal for someone on a LCHF diet or keto (when carbs are kept below 50g).
It’s also fairly high-protein. But if you want to increase the amount of protein without increasing calories, go for lean beef (here I used a fatty cut).
This dish can easily be boosted in protein to have 30-40g per serving just by using lean beef.
This dish has less than 500kcal per serving so it can be used for cutting as well (use lean beef in this case which will also increase the amount of protein per serving!)
If I had a broiler, I would have put some Parmesan cheese on top and gave them a couple of mins to become crunchy and even more delicious!
Gif Recipe
Sausage and Beans (Rural Italian Classic)
Have you ever heard of Bud Spencer and Terence Hill? They are famous Italian actors, famous for action-comedy movies such as “They Call Me Trinity”.
In this movie, there is an epic scene of almost 3 minutes in which the main character is eating a delicious beans course straight from the pan.
The scene is so well done that you start drooling right away.
Your brain goes: “MUST. HAVE. NOW.”
I tried to imagine how that recipe would be like and went about to re-create it. t was as delicious as in the movie.
It was as delicious as in the movie it seems to be.
This is a healthy, high-protein, low-carb recipe which is great for building muscles!
If you want to be as strong as Bud Spencer, you should try this recipe. It’s super easy!
This recipe is also gluten-free.
Note: the carbs indicated on the nutrition label are already net carbs (as in the style of European nutrition labels)
Gif Recipe
2
Pork Sausage with Lentils (Very Filling High-Protein Lunch/Dinner)
How to make a cheap, (fairly) healthy, and high-protein dinner?
Well, you use pork, legumes (lentils in this case), and veggies!
This recipe is a great high-protein lunch/dinner idea since it packs a lot of proteins and a ton of fibers (for those of you struggling with fiber intake!). It delivers an incredible 38g of fibers per serving. If I remember correctly that’s the recommended intake for an adult male!
While being all good for your intestinal health, it’s also very delicious as the aroma of the pork meat perfectly combines with the texture and taste of lentils and tomato sauce. Then, the added spices add a touch of unexpected flavor that blends delightfully with the whole dish.
It’s not a quick recipe (it might require up to 50 min), mind you, since you have to cook the lentils but if you have a slow cooker than it’s perfect!
Since this is a high-calories recipe, it’s ideal if you struggle to gain weight and muscle mass.
This recipe is good also for people on the slow-carb diet!
The amount of carbs in the label is net carbs (as in European nutrition labels’ style).
Gif Recipe
Natural Stamina&Libido Boosting Recipe
I know, I know, the title of this video sounds super scammy, but stay with me for a second and I will explain to you why this recipe may (YMMV) will increase stamina and libido.
Sardines Testosterone Booster
I’ve been eating sardines for more than 1 year, every day.
Not only sardines are high in protein, they are also packed with omega-3, vitamins, and minerals. Ah, and I haven’t mentioned how cheap they are…
Where I live (The Netherlands), you can buy a can, containing 88g of sardines for just 53 euro cents!
100g of sardines will provide you with 25g of protein, 1.5g of omega3s (!!), 68% of your RDA of vitamin D3, and 9% of your RDA of zinc.
Why did I mention specifically omega3s, vitamin D3, and zinc?
Because higher intakes of these are correlated with high testosterone levels.
Do I have to tell you why having higher testosterone is good for you?
Besides that, omega3s are anabolic, which means that they promote by themselves increases in muscle mass and strength (you still have to train though).
Stamina Boosting Foods
But this dish doesn’t contain sardines only. We have a whole combo of manliness enhancing foods!
Beetroot
Enhances blood flow in your body. It can be for this reason be used as pre-workout to “increase the pump” or to increase endurance. Now, it has never been studied as a “sexual performance enhancer” but my guess is that if it enhances endurance exercise it will naturally enhance stamina too.
Garlic
Aka “natural viagra” aka “vegetable viagra”. Since I started eating 1-2 cloves daily (steaming or boiling removes bad breath giving compounds) I feel 14 years old again.
Ginger
It is not very well known as testosterone/libido enhancer yet it can increase sperm count and quality, testosterone, and ejaculate volume. Besides that, it’s truly a great “superfood” enhancing also your memory and lowering inflammation.
Then we have other components in this dish that are just straight good for your health and immunity. Because even if you have high libido and stamina, if you’re sick, there’s no use to that 🙂
Sauerkaut are a source of probiotics, fibers, and vitamin C (and lemon juice too). These will make you less susceptible to getting sick and there’s one study saying that vitamin C can lower the symptoms of depression, leading to more frequent intercourses (the study is funded by a pharma company so this last piece might be total bs).
That’s it! Simple, easy, high-protein, and also tastes great! Try this recipe for yourself and let me know how it goes!
References
http://jap.physiology.org/content/82/1/49
http://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/5/2/509
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26679702
http://jap.physiology.org/content/early/2015/08/27/japplphysiol.00066.2015
http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/102/1/115.abstract?etoc
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2958879/
https://examine.com/supplements/ginger/
https://examine.com/supplements/vitamin-c/
https://examine.com/nutrition/non-traditional-use-for-probiotics-illness-in-athletes/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3249897
https://examine.com/supplements/beet-root/
Gif Recipe
Simple Yet Tasty Pork Sausage Risotto
Today we go for something rather sophisticated but actually incredibly easy to make.
On top of that, it is gluten-free and perfect if you are coeliac and doing bodybuilding.
The recipe is not the quickest but it’s simple and straightforward. This would make you look like a master chef even if your biggest culinary achievement so far has been scrambled eggs.
I would recommend this recipe to whoever has never tried making risotto since it’s very basic and simple and can help you getting started.
Once you can master this high-protein risotto, every other risotto recipe is going to be a no-brainer and will add endless possibilities to your cooking repertoire. For instance, you could try this foodgasmic risotto with pumpkin and pork sausage.
I love to have risotto as my post-workout because I can get in one package carbs, proteins, and fat with benefits of an incredible creamy taste.
Great for when you are bulking and want to eat a lot of calories in a single meal!