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We all love hamburgers, but can you still enjoy hamburgers when you are following a ketogenic diet?
The answer to this question is more complicated than you’d imagine, so let’s start with the basics.
Are Hamburgers Keto Friendly?
Let’s start with the basic question, then dig into the details.
A hamburger patty made from quality ingredients is keto-friendly, but a traditional hamburger bun is too high-carb so you’ll have to choose an alternative keto-friendly bun. In addition, some ingredients, additives, and condiments found in many traditional hamburgers are not keto-friendly.
Now let’s dig into the various parts of a hamburger and see how many carbs are in each ingredient.
How Many Carbs In Hamburgers?
To really answer how many carbs are in hamburgers, we need to look at the individual ingredients. The table below breaks down the parts of a hamburger.
Table Of Carbs In Hamburgers By Ingredient
| Hamburger Ingredient | Net Carbs |
|---|---|
| Hamburger Patty – No Binder | 0 grams |
| Bread Crumb Binder (1 Tbsp) | 4.5 grams |
| Hamburger Bun | 25 grams |
| Tomato Slice | 0.5 grams |
| Lettuce Leaf | 0.1 grams |
| Raw Onion Slice | 0.7 grams |
| Dill Pickles (8 Slices) | 0.5 grams |
| Ketchup (1 Tbsp) | 5 grams |
| Mustard (1 Tbsp) | 0 grams |
| American Cheese Slice | 2.4 grams |
| Button Mushrooms (1 Sliced) | 2.3 grams |
| Jalapenos | 0.3 grams |
| French Fries (2 Cup Serving) | 20 grams |
| Ketchup For Fries (2 Tbsp) | 10 grams |
| Total Hamburger w/ Fries | 71.3 Net Carbs |
As you can see, a simple hamburger is great for a ketogenic diet, but once you start dressing it up it quickly becomes way too carb-heavy to be part of a keto diet.
A hamburger with everything on it and a side of French fries served with ketchup has a total of 71.3 grams net carbs. A standard ketogenic diet allows 25 net carbs per day, so a traditional hamburger is not keto-friendly.
However, as you skim through the table above you’ll see that some of the ingredients on a standard hamburger are very low carb which makes them fine for a keto diet.
Other hamburger ingredients are very high carb, but there are low carb alternatives for many of those ingredients.
Armed with that information, you can pretty quickly design a great low carb hamburger and below I’m going to walk you through the process of building the perfect keto hamburger.
I bet you’re wondering about fast food hamburgers. A McDonalds’ Big Mac has 42 Net Carbs without fries and a drink. { Link To Data }
~Angela
The Perfect Ketogenic Hamburger
You can easily make a great hamburger that is keto diet safe. You just have to be thoughtful about what you are putting on that keto-friendly chunk of meat.
Below are some guidelines that will help you create the perfect keto-friendly hamburger.
How To Make A Keto Hamburger – The Keto Hamburger Rules
#1 – Start With A Clean Hamburger Patty
Make your hamburger patty with good ground beef (ProTip: Add Ground Pork for fat and flavor) and don’t add any carb-heavy binder or sugar-laden condiment to the ground meat before cooking.
If you want a binder, I like to use ground Pork Rinds. It helps hold the burger together while adding great keto-friendly fat.
#2 – Choose Low-Carb Condiments
Choose low carb condiments on your burger.
Mustard and Mayonnaise are fine but skip sugar-heavy ketchup.
#3 Skip The High-Carb Hamburger Bun
Nearly all hamburger buns are high-carb so just get in the habit of avoiding them altogether. If you want to pick up your hamburger and take a bite, the best choice is to wrap your hamburger in lettuce.
However, if you ‘need’ a bun, then you have two choices:
Choice #1 – Make 90 Second Keto Bread
90-second keto bread is made of almond flour and is cooked for 90 seconds in the microwave. It will make a decent hamburger bun, but it’s not ‘just like a bun’.
However, it’s good enough and your jeans will still fit.
{Click Here to see a 90 Second Keto Bread Recipe on a friends website. >>> }
Choice #2 – Buy A Low Carb Hamburger Bun
There are more and more low-carb breads available, but you need to be a little careful with them.
In truth, all of these low-carb breads are high-carb but also high-fiber, making them low net carb. The high fiber is achieved by stuffing the bread with fiber.
This fiber-stuffing will not spike your insulin, but your tummy (and the rest of your body) might not like it much. Just be careful when eating these kinds of commercial low-carb products.
I’m going to share my favorite brand of keto hamburger bun below.
Best Low Care Hamburger Bun Brand
Franz is my favorite low-carb hamburger bun. Honestly, I don’t eat them very often and instead, just save them for backyard barbeques when I don’t want to spend the afternoon explaining the keto diet.
ProTip: These buns freeze well. I take them out of the bag and freeze them on cookie sheets then put them in ziplock bags in the freezer. That way I can easily take just one or two out of the freezer at a time. ~Angela
Still, they are pretty darn good. And no, they do not taste ‘just like the real thing’, but they are close.
These Franz Keto Hamburger Buns have 17 grams total carbs and 16 grams of fiber, which gives them just 1 gram net carbs.
{ Click Here to see these buns on Amazon. >>> }
#4 – Choose Real Cheese
That imitation America Cheese doesn’t have lots of carbs (2.4 grams), but if you choose a real cheese it will have less than 1 net carb.
Besides the lower carb count, real cheese just tastes better!
#5 – Add Keto Friendly Options
The perfect ketogenic hamburger isn’t all about avoiding bad choices, it’s about adding great choices.
My favorite additions to my keto hamburgers include:
- Bacon Slices
- Avocado Slices
- Guacamole
- Ham Slices
- More Real Cheese
- Fried Egg
Of course, I don’t add all of these all the time. But regardless of my mood, I can always find great keto upgrades for my hamburger feast.
#6 – Skip The Side Of Fries
In my pre-keto life, hamburgers always came with fries and a beer.
Now, I still have a low carb beer (Michelob Ultra is my favorite) with my burgers, but I skip the fries.
Instead, I have a side of pork rinds or ParmCrisps dipped in homemade ranch dip. { Click Here for ranch dip recipe on my website. >>> }
If you follow these six simple rules, you can build a keto-friendly hamburger that is to die for.
A Keto-Friendly Hamburger served on a low-carb hamburger bun can easily have less than 3 net carbs.
Enjoy!
~Angela
