This is a beautiful dish that combines elements of earthy peanuts, acidic citrus, and umami; finishing off with a slightly sweet and spice from the chili. If you’re a fan of Asian style peanut sauces (think satay), then you’ll love this dish. Plus, it sits at just under four net carbs per serving!
If you have the carb allowances for the day, you can pair this with a side of cauliflower fried rice to complete the meal. We chose broccoli, which when steamed al dente, adds a fantastic crunch alongside the chicken!
The protein levels for this recipe might be a little bit high, but keep in mind that you can easily scale back the amount of meat you have – just keep the same amount of sauce. If you need any extra help with your macros, make sure you’re accurately calculating macros >
Yields 4 servings of Thai Style Low Carb Peanut Chicken
The Preparation
- 1/4 cup chicken broth
- 6 tablespoons peanut butter
- 2 tablespoons soy sauce, or coconut aminos
- 1 tablespoon fresh orange juice
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice
- 1/2 teaspoon sesame oil
- 1/4 teaspoon ground coriander
- 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
- 2 teaspoons chili paste, such as sambal oelek
- 25 ounces boneless, skinless chicken thighs
- salt and pepper, to taste
The Execution
1. Add all of the ingredients (except for the chicken) to a container.
2. Use an immersion blender to mix the ingredients. Make sure that the sauce has a smooth consistency throughout. Set aside until needed.
3. Cube the chicken thighs and season and salt and pepper to taste. Don’t over-season with salt as there’s soy sauce (in the peanut sauce).
4. Heat a dry pan over high heat. Once it’s scalding, add chicken and saute for about a minute.
5. You should see quite a lot of excess moisture coming out of the chicken. Drain the excess moisture with a paper towel and set aside.
6. Continue cooking the chicken (and removing excess moisture) until the chicken is browned well.
NOTE: Don’t be overly aggressive with collecting moisture. You want caramelization to happen, so you want to try to let the chicken cook undisturbed as much as possible.
7. Once the chicken is browned and cooked through, remove the pan from the heat entirely. Pour the already made peanut sauce over the chicken and stir well.
8. Serve with your favorite side! You can optionally garnish with a few pre-sauteed chopped peppers, 1-2 tbsp. chopped peanuts, and a sprinkle of chopped spring onions.
This makes a total of 4 servings of Thai-Style Low-Carb Peanut Chicken. Each serving comes out to be 409 calories, 28.6g fats, 4.5g net carbs, and 36.9g protein.
| NUTRITION | CALORIES | FAT | CARBS | FIBER | NET CARBS | PROTEIN |
| 1/4 cup chicken broth | 4 | 0.1 | 0.3 | 0 | 0.3 | 0.4 |
| 6 tablespoon peanut butter | 569 | 48.4 | 19.4 | 5.8 | 13.6 | 24.2 |
| 2 tablespoon soy sauce | 17 | 0.2 | 1.6 | 0.3 | 1.3 | 2.6 |
| 1 tablespoon fresh orange juice | 7 | 0 | 1.8 | 0.1 | 1.7 | 0.1 |
| 1 tablespoon lemon juice | 3 | 0 | 0.9 | 0.1 | 0.8 | 0.1 |
| 1/2 teaspoon sesame oil | 20 | 2.3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 1/4 teaspoon ground coriander | 1 | 0.1 | 0.2 | 0.2 | 0.1 | 0.1 |
| 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper | 1 | 0.1 | 0.3 | 0.1 | 0.1 | 0.1 |
| 2 teaspoon chili paste | 2 | 0.1 | 0.4 | 0.1 | 0.3 | 0.1 |
| 25 ounce boneless, skinless chicken thighs | 1013 | 63.3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 120.2 |
| — salt and pepper | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Totals | 1638 | 114.5 | 24.7 | 6.6 | 18.1 | 147.8 |
| Per Serving (/4) | 409 | 28.6 | 6.2 | 1.7 | 4.5 | 36.9 |
Thai-Style Low-Carb Peanut Chicken
Ingredients
- ¼ cup chicken broth
- 6 tablespoon peanut butter
- 2 tablespoon soy sauce or coconut aminos
- 1 tablespoon fresh orange juice
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice
- ½ teaspoon sesame oil
- ¼ teaspoon ground coriander
- ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
- 2 teaspoon chili paste such as sambal oelek
- 25 ounce boneless, skinless chicken thighs
- salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
- Add all of the ingredients except the chicken, salt, and pepper to a tall container.
- Use an immersion blender to blend the ingredients, ensuring that the sauce has a smooth consistency throughout. Set aside until needed.
- Cube the chicken thighs and season to taste. Don't use too much salt, as the peanut sauce already contains salt from the soy sauce.
- Heat a dry pan over high heat. Once hot, add the chicken and sauté for about a minute.
- There should be quite a lot of excess moisture coming out of the chicken — simply pat it dry with a paper towel.
- Continue cooking the chicken (and removing any excess moisture) until well browned.
- Once browned and cooked through, remove the pan from the heat. Pour the peanut sauce over the chicken and mix well to combine.
- Serve and enjoy!
Looks great! How big is a serving?
Kellie, I’m not too sure to be honest. I didn’t weigh the chicken – but it was quite a lot of food. A serving was 1/3 of the entire recipe.
Was looking for a good Thai inspired recipe. It turned out awesome, non keto friend loved it as well. The art of spice is making it blend into a meal, seamlessly – and this one was perfect at that!
Definitely making again!
Thanks Katie! It’s one of the few recipes I actually make a couple of times a month and everyone seems to love it. Did you get the change to add the cucumber? I started marinading the cucumber in vinegar/sweetener and adding it to the dish – makes a world of difference!
Sadly, I over did it last summer on cucumbers. I served it with some leftover stir fry veggies. Tomorrow’s lunch of it (I’m already looking forward to it…) will be over a bed of lettuce/cabbage – I think that cabbage crunch will be a nice complement.
That sounds awesome Katie! The crunch component really helps set the dish apart, for sure. The cucumbers did that for me – the freshness and slightly acidic qualities of them with the spicy and rich peanut sauce was perfect. I have no doubt you’ll really enjoy it, thanks again for making it and leaving a comment 🙂
Craig, Were the peanuts raw or toasted? I can’t use chili anything (night shades) because they cause my joints to hurt. Do you have any suggestions for alternate seasonings? I know it won’t taste as good but…
Susan,
The peanuts were raw and salted (that’s why I rinsed them). It you can’t use anything with chili or from chili sources, just omit it. The spice won’t be there, but the flavor should be. For the chili garlic paste, just sub 1 1/2 tsp. Minced Garlic in place of it.
If you are allowed to eat anything with spice in it, you could sub that in for the cayenne and chili. Hope that helps!
Thanks, Craig. I plan to try it tonight.
No problem! Let me know how it turns out 🙂
I just made this recipe and it was delicious! I love Thai inspired food and this was easy to make (I had to make a few substitutions though). I made this spur of the moment, so I didn’t have some of the ingredients; I was able to improvise. I didn’t have red chili paste, I had red curry paste. I used organic peanut butter, garlic powder, organic ground turkey breast, chicken base dissolved in 1/4c. of microwave-boiled water and added red pepper flakes. Then I topped it off with your idea of throwing the baby spinach on top of it all to steam it to finish it. I like having the 2 servings left over for lunches. Thank you, an great work with all your recipes! They all look delicious and I can’t wait to try more. BTW-I have your book and your cookbook!
Carol, thanks a bunch – love positive feedback! The red chili paste sounds like it’d be delicious. I haven’t had any in months and have really been meaning to grab some from Whole Foods next time I take the trip out there. Glad you liked it though, sounds like your substitutions were spot on!
On behalf of my husband, I just wanted to say thank you. He loved it so much I hardly got to eat any of it, and he went to sleep dreaming about the peanut sauce! By the way, I used Peanut butter and co’s The Heat is On, which was perfect in this.
Glad to hear it Seraphina! Shame for you though, as you didn’t get much – next time make double 🙂
I’ve never heard of that peanut butter, but I’ll definitely have to check it out. I was actually planning to make some flavored ones soon.
I made this tonight for the family. We did not have cucumber but I liked the idea of a cool crunch with it so I served it inside an ice-berg lettuce leaf with a handful of mung bean sprouts beneath it and fresh chopped coriander (cilantro) over the top. Everyone loved it it. Thankyou for a lovely recipe.
I used extra crunchy peanut butter, which is just peanuts ground up in New Zealand (no sugar or oils are added). I threw the coconut oil in anyway.
Sounds awesome Madeleine! I’ve used crunchy peanut butter in this before also, and it tastes great too. Bean sprouts are a good idea – I made that when I used this same sauce to make Pad Thai with the noodles from my cookbook. Glad to hear you all liked it!
I made this recipe a while back and added broccoli slaw at the end and let everything cook for a few minutes. The recipe yielded so much food when I did that. It reheated great for lunches!
This was absolutely delicious. Went very well with the red pepper flakes and cucumber. Husband loved it too!!
How long does it take you to get the peanut butter smooth in your food processor? I thought I had mine done, but it turned out much thicker and crummier than in the picture. I thought maybe I had too many peanuts in there, but I guess I just didn’t blend them enough. Anyways, I just cooked t and i will be eating it later so we’ll see how it tastes.
This was pretty fantastic. I added a handful of cilantro, two garlic cloves, did lime instead of lemon and about 1tbsp of white vinegar for a little twang to the sauce ingredients. I stirfried with some pepper strips and served it over miracle rice. Definitely a repeat.
That sounds delicious JeAnne!
THIS WAS THE BEST PEANUT SAUCE!!!!! It will now be my go to satay-like sauce forever! I made chicken tenders with onion & peppers. Next time I will add zoodles! sooooo good. ( added Cilantro, sub’d lime for the lemon and like Jeanne and extra lime at serving)
That’s awesome!!
This Dish was so tasty, changed it a bit, added coconut, with green onions served with steamed bok choy and broccoli with a bit of butter. Thank you and I will be using more of your recipes soon
I’m so happy to hear that Blaire!
Just curious what peanut butter could have so few carbs per serving
Pretty much all natural peanut butters with ingredients listing only peanuts and salt will have this nutritional content – there are many choices on the market now. In almost every grocery store, I’ve seen Skippy Natural as well.
This was DELICIOUS! Serving this with your ‘Delicious Vegetable Medley’ recipe is the perfect pairing of spicy deliciousness.
I couldn’t wait to make this after I pre-made the sauce earlier.
My husband absolutely loved it.
I used almond butter instead (allergic to peanuts) so that option definitely works.
Only edit on the recipe I’d add in ingredient section is change 1 tbsp orange juice to 1 orange (1 tbsp orange juice). I never buy oranges and didn’t even think to do that until after I read through the recipe before making it. Brilliant idea by the way! I just wish I’d looked at the photos closer. 🙂
I am so happy to hear you guys enjoyed it! I’ll add that to our notes to change site-wide as some of our other recipes use orange juice and we usually recommend just buying 1 orange for the recipe. The almond butter sub sounds fantastic as well!
I love this. I made extra PB sauce to use with tofu. Thank you for posting it.
Glad to hear you liked it!
Love this recipe. Sometimes I use chicken, sometimes shrimp, when I can’t make up my mind I use both.
I often cook with radishes. Sliced & stir fried they are a great substitute for water chestnuts and delicious in this dish.
Thank you for another wonderful recipe from ruled.me!
Thank you so much – it sounds like it’d be great with shrimp, too. The radish side dish sounds really interesting – I’ll give it a try with some cashews or almonds.