My name is Steve and I’ve loved cooking since childhood. I’ve always had a creative streak in me and have never been afraid to try unorthodox approaches to solving problems or making food. If you’ve watched any of my videos, though, you’ve probably figured out that I’m not an especially “serious” person. I am, however, very “serious” about having fun in the kitchen.
I have been baking artisan breads and pastries for over 25 years. For the last decade, I’ve explored smoking meat, charcuterie, preserving, fermentation and molecular gastronomy. I really, really love cooking. I also really, really love eating. This combined passion for cooking and passion for eating resulted in me being overweight the majority of my adult life.
By late 2018, I’d had enough. I honestly believed that I was going to die fairly soon. I was 230 lbs and my blood pressure averaged 145/95 even though I was taking three doses per day of blood pressure medication. My resting heart rate was over 100 beats per minute and I was constantly sweating. My back and my knees hurt and I was struggling with a crushing feeling of depression. I looked and felt at least 10 years older than I was.
In early 2019, I started living a ketogenic lifestyle and have lost over 70 lbs so far. I’m off of two of the three blood pressure medications and my blood pressure is now normal (hopefully I’ll medication free this year). My waist is as small as it’s been since college. My back pain and joint pain are gone. My mood is spectacular. I honestly can’t remember ever feeling this good. And when I look in the mirror, it’s hard for me to believe I’m 54 years old.
In terms of the ketogenic diet, I found that rather than being restrictive, it has opened up a world of creative cooking and baking possibilities for me to explore.
Unfortunately, a lot of the keto / low-carb recipes on the internet are pretty lazy and uncreative, focused more on speed than quality. A lot of other recipes are so zealously focused on being “clean keto” that they create substitutions (like using a leaf of lettuce as a “hamburger bun”) that they make keto feel like “a diet”.
My goal with SeriousKeto is to create a resource for people who enjoy cooking and who want to have fun creating keto foods that they thought they’d never be able to eat again. Sometimes, this means my keto will be a little “dirty” — certainly not enough to knock you out of ketosis, but enough to make the “keto police” angry at me.
I also believe that my experience with baking and molecular gastronomy will lead me to create breads, tortillas, crackers, and and other treats that are legitimate substitutes for the grain and sugar based versions. And my passion for gourmet cooking will lead you to some recipes that your friends and family simply won’t believe are keto.
That doesn’t mean you won’t find quick and convenient recipes here, but you will also find higher end recipes that I have converted to keto from sources such as Food & Wine Magazine, Milk Street, Food52, Serious Eats, Bon Apetit, America’s Test Kitchen, and ChefSteps, as well as from my collection of over 160 cookbooks by award winning chefs.