When you start a paleo or keto diet, one of the first obstacles to overcome is throwing away all the food items in your kitchen that don’t contain paleo ingredients. Most sauces and salad dressings are full of junk and toxic seed oils, and could stop you from experiencing all the benefits of eating like your primal ancestors.
The thought of making ketchup or BBQ sauce from scratch every time though or going without is daunting. Enter Primal Kitchen — the brand of condiments and sauces from paleo thought leader Mark Sisson, author of The Primal Blueprint and the man behind Mark’s Daily Apple.
The company makes a lot of different sauces and condiments and it can be difficult to choose which to buy, so here we review our favorite primal kitchen products to help you choose which are best for your diet.
The ingredients are simple, and there isn’t any junk, just: avocado oil, organic eggs, organic egg yolks, organic vinegar, sea salt, and some other organic species depending on the flavor you choose.
This is how mayo should be — it’s clean, tastes great, and is suitable for both paleo and keto diets. You can even eat this mayo on the carnivore diet.
While all the flavors are good, our favorite is the regular mayo with avocado oil in the squeeze container. It’s uncomplicated and easy to serve with any of your favorite dishes.
It’s worth trying any of the flavors you like the look of, but note that the garlic aioli mayo does have a strong garlic flavor.
Primal Kitchen Salad Dressing Review
Primal Kitchen makes over 10 dressings and marinades that are great on salads, as well as with paleo-friendly noodles and slaw:
It’s difficult to pick the best as they all contain natural ingredients and taste fresh, but for salads specifically, Green Goddess Dressing is our pick. Our second choice is Ranch, but more on that below.
Green Goddess Dressing is made with tarragon, dijon mustard, and apple cider vinegar and has a unique, sharp taste that compliments all types of salad leaves. When you’re on a low-carb and high-protein diet, you need your sides to taste good, and a splash of this will liven up any bland plate of crunchy veggies.
Our recommendation is to pick 5 different dressings, and have one every day of the week on a salad for lunch with a different protein each time. It’s probably the easiest way to stick to a paleo or keto diet when you don’t have much time to meal prep.
Primal Kitchen Ranch Review
Our second choice of Primal kitchen dressing is the Ranch Dressing. Who doesn’t love a ranch dressing? It’s the perfect sauce to dip veggies into, or serve with buffalo chicken wings.
Primal Kitchen’s Ranch is just the right amount of sour and creamy, and works especially well with meat.
The only downside is that this dressing contains a few more ingredients than usual, including nutritional yeast, and several types of organic gum. None of these are harmful, but if you’re on a strict ancestral diet, you’d be better off reducing the number of processed foods you eat, even if they’re organic.
Primal Kitchen Ketchup Review
Ketchup is a food staple that most people give up when they go on a paleo or keto diet, as most store brands are full of junk. Primal Kitchen’s Organic Unsweetened Ketchup is the best paleo ketchup on the market because it only contains natural ingredients:
Organic Tomato Concentrate, Organic Balsamic Vinegar (Organic White Wine Vinegar, Organic Grape Must), Less than 2% of Salt, Organic Onion Powder, Organic Garlic Powder, Organic Spices
The flavor is perfect, and works well with sweet potato fries, or on top of lettuce-wrapped paleo hamburgers. We found that having this ketchup in the kitchen was also motivation to try more paleo versions of homestyle recipes, like chicken nuggets and fried chicken.
The only downside is that ketchup contains tomatoes — so it might not be good for people trying to cut nightshade vegetables from their diet. Tomatoes are fine for most people, but can cause inflammation in others.
Primal Kitchen BBQ Sauce Review
There are several different Primal kitchen BBQ sauces:
Primal Kitchen’s Classic BBQ sauce is perfect for freshly grilled meats. You can also use it to dip sweet potatoes fries in.
It has a smokier flavor than you’d expect and works best with things like kebabs that use chicken and vegetables. If you want a sauce for red meat, try Primal Kitchen’s Steak Sauce.
This BBQ sauce has a long ingredients list, but don’t worry, they’re all just herbs and spices. However, while this is a great paleo sauce, it’s not suitable for the carnivore diet or for people eliminating all non-animal-based foods.
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