Quick and Easy Lemon Orzo (Keto Rice)

This quick and easy Greek styled lemon orzo rice will have you questioning if you mistakenly are eating the high carb stuff. Nope. It’s Keto!

I may never go back to keto cauliflower rice again. Seriously! A friend of mine gave me the heads up on this new shirataki noodle that came in the shape of rice. I told her she was crazy.

Now you have to understand my past experiences with shirataki noodles. They were weird. They were rubbery. Which I could have got past but then there was the strange smell. Oh so you know the one. That weird, slightly fishy smell that the instructions said would be gone if you rinsed the noodles. But it just never vanished.

I tried all the noodle tricks…. rinse them, dry them, pre-cook them. Nothing worked. That odd smell just sort of stuck around. My eyes were trying to tell me that this was “pasta” but my mouth said something different.

Along came this new (well at least new to me) brand of shirataki noodles. It’s made with the usual konjac yam fiber. But this brand also add in oat fiber. It still comes up as a super low carb food because both types of fiber appear to not be easily digested. This means it does make your blood sugar go crazy like traditional pasta AND it’s super low in carbs. 

The best thing about this brand of shirataki…..no smell!

The Liviva noodles or rice come packed in liquid and still need to be drained. You can give them a rinse. After that, depending upon how you’re going to use them, you may want to dry them a bit and then cook them with your meal.

I’ve rinsed the rice and then added it right into whatever I’ve been cooking. If I’m topping the rice with something, such as curried chicken, I rinse it and mix a little of the curry sauce in to keep the rice from drying out. Then I add it to my bowl and top with chicken. I’ve used the angel hair shape and topped it with Cincinnati Chili. Delicious! 

They appear to be rebranding themselves as Liviva but were formerly called Zeroodle. It’s the same company. Just an FYI in case you get some of the previously branded packages. I’ve had both the Zeroodle and the Liviva packages. Same delicious noodle in each one. 

I ended up ordering a case of each type of noodle. Each package comes with two smaller packages. The smaller packages are a perfect individual serving size.

Now that I’ve been stocked up on noodles and rice I’ve been testing out some new recipes. This Greek styled lemon “orzo” is one of them. Traditionally orzo pasta is used to make the dish. I replaced it with the Liviva rice shaped shirataki. It was amazing. In fact it was so amazing I tripled the batch to have left overs during the week and discovered that some of the other people in my house ate it and never questioned that it wasn’t rice! Give this lemon orzo a try and, if you get the shirataki rice, let me know what you think about it.

Greek Styled Lemon Orzo (Keto Rice)

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 small red onion, diced

• 1 tablespoon olive oil

• 1 tablespoon butter

• 1 teaspoon minced garlic

• 1 Roma tomato, diced

• Juice of 1 lemon

• 2 packages of Liviva shirataki rice

• 1/3 cup feta cheese

DIRECTIONS:

• In a skillet melt the butter and add the olive oil.

• Add in the diced onion and minced garlic. Saute until softened.

• Add the diced tomato and cook for 2 to 3 minutes.

• While onion/garlic are cooking rinse off the shirataki rice in a strainer.

• When onion is soft add in the shirataki rice and mix well.

• Add in the juice of 1 lemon

• Turn off heat and stir in feta.

• Add salt and pepper to taste

Using shirataki rice in place of traditional orzo reduces the carbs from 35 net grams per 1 cup serving to 3.9 net grams per serving. 

Traditional pasta based orzo contains:

• Calories: 270

• Fat 10 grams

• Total carbs: 37.8 grams

• Fiber: 2.8 grams

• Net Carbs: 35 grams

• Protein 8 grams

Shirataki based orzo contains:

• Calories: 116

• Fat: 9.1 grams

• Total Carbs: 7.7 grams

• Fiber 3.8 grams

• Net Carbs: 3.9 grams

• Protein: 2.2 grams

If you are looking for other low-carb/keto recipe ideas, be sure to check out our growing Recipe Index full of low-carb/keto recipes!

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