Keto Marinara Sauce
My husband found a way to make his delicious traditional marinara sauce with fewer carbs. This sauce has a really nice zing to it, and I had been missing it on keto.
Usually the tomato part of a recipe is a bit higher in carb count. However, he did some investigating while shopping and found that a 14 oz can of Del Monte diced tomatoes with zesty mild green chilis
The actual secret delicious ingredient in this recipe is the 1/2 of red wine, but be sure to make it DRY red wine, because the carb count is lower than sweet red wine.
Here’s the entire list of ingredients and what I calculated for carbs…
Marinara sauce:
- 1 and 1/2 – 14 oz. cans of tomato sauce (zero)
- 2 cans of Del Monte diced tomatoes with zesty mild green chilies (5g each/10 for this recipe)
- 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil (zero)
- 2 tablespoons minced garlic (1g)
- ¼ cup diced onions (4g)
- 1/2 cup dry red wine (4g)
- 1 tablespoon oregano (0g)
- 1 tablespoon basil (0g)
- Pinch of crushed red pepper flakes (0g)
- Salt and ground pepper to taste (0g)
Directions
1) Heat a large sauce pan over medium heat for 1 minute.
2) Add olive oil, crushed red pepper flakes, onion and garlic.
3) Saute until onion and garlic have turned translucent; about 1 minute.
4) Add diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, and wine. Reduce heat to a simmer and cook for 15 minutes
5) Add oregano and basil and cook another 10 minutes. Adjust the seasoning as needed with salt and ground black pepper.
Carb count – whole recipe = 19
This really makes a lot. You can get at least 10 servings from it, depending on what you use it for.
Approximately 10 servings @ 1.9 net carbs per serving. Put it over 1/2 cup cooked spaghetti squash (5.9 for both) or in my keto lasagna recipe (6.4 g. carbs). You can also use it as a pizza sauce on the best low-carb pizza crust ever.
*Note about the Kroger tomato sauce: When I first wrote this blog, I put the sauce at zero carbs. I then found info online that said one can equaled 7 grams of carbs, so I added that to the total, making the marinara sauce recipe 4 grams of carbs. I was discussing my supposed error with my son, and he told me that I was correct the first time. He’s on keto and buys it by the case.
The Kroger brand claims to be 1 gram of carbs and 1 gram of fiber per 1/4 cup of sauce. I have since reduced the total carb count of the recipe back to my originally stated 1.9 grams per serving. See pictures of the cans below.
If you don’t have a Kroger near you, then I suggest looking at all the brands to see if there is another that has a carb count this low. I almost can’t believe this myself, but if this brand can do it, there may be others.
More from my site
Have the carbs in this sauce been confirmed?
It doesn’t make sense that 1gm of carbs is 4%. Seems to be a misprint.
11 grams of carbs = 4%. Has Kroger updated their label?
If you don’t have a Kroger, these are their affiliated stores (aka all are owned by Kroger and stock the same food items)
:: Kroger Affiliate Stores
Ralph’s (California)
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King Soopers (Colorado)
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Fry’s Food (Arizona)
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City Market (Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming)
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Dillons (Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, Nebraska)
ad runs Wed through Tue
Smith’s Food and Drug (Arizona, Idaho)
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QFC (Quality Food Centers) (Oregon, Washington)
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Jay-C Foods (Indiana)
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Fred Meyer (Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Alaska)
ad runs Sun through Sat
Yeah, this looks good and pretty low carb, but the nutritional information on that can HAS to be incorrect.
Like, literally. It says there’s 1 gram carbs, 1 gram fiber, and . . . 2 grams sugar.
Sugar is a carb.
You can’t possibly add 2 grams of sugar to 1 gram of fiber and end up with 1 gram of total carbs.
Since that’s incorrect, I’m not sure how much I’d trust the rest of the label, to be honest.
Still seems like a good recipe, though. 🙂
Where did the zero come from? Even the label says 1g of total carbs per 1/4 cup serving.
Remember, they creatively round down what are already estimated and somewhat misleading numbers PER serving. This means that adding up the servings can make the totals very inaccurate.
The FDA allows up to 1.49g per serving to be labeled as 1g per serving. That can could contain over 10g of carbs even if they’re following the FDA nutritional label rules. Even then, that is still pretty low for what should be mostly just tomato.
Hi Michael,
The label says 1g of carbs and 1g of fiber. Fiber isn’t digestible and is deducted from the carb count on the keto diet.
I agree about the creative rounding down issue, though. I’ve had the same issue with heavy cream. The label tells how many carbs per tablespoon or so, and it’s pretty misleading if I’m trying to count the carbs in a cup.
There seems to be some confusion here about Net Carbs. FIBER is subtracted from, not added, total carbs to get NET CARBS. So 1 G CARB minus 1G FIBER equals 0G.
Even so, the numbers sound a little suspect. Heading over to Kroger in a bit to investigate!
What can I use instead of wine? Thanks looks awesome!