Better than Popcorn – Low Carb Nut Bowl snacks for movie night

If you’re on a low carb diet and like snacks during movies, we have plenty of delicious ideas for you, and we’re going to start today with nuts. Nuts have good fats, lots of protein, and are very portable. Nuts also take on lots of interesting flavors, kind of like popcorn does — minus the carbs. Here’s our favorite easy peasy flavorful savory-spice ideas. Satisfy your salt tooth! These nut bowls will work for movie nights at home, or you can take them to the drive-in theater.

Note: any nut will do. The best — almonds, walnuts, peanuts, shelled sunflower seeds, cashews, pumpkin seeds, macademia, Brazilian. Or a mix of what you have! Just make sure they are 1. Raw, and 2. Unroasted.

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Again, start with any raw, unroasted, unsalted, non-flavored nut of choice. We like almonds best, but YMMV.

This is a nice low carb yummy treat to serve at home, nice and hot. Or let cool and place individual serving sizes in small closed containers for each person attending, say, a drive-in movie. Or bring uncooked to a friend’s CoVid-approved small gathering in a big bowl and heat up there. Nuts are EASY. Here is a super simple mixture that tastes great and won’t ruin your diet.

(Remember to serve safely in individual servings during the pandemic. This is no time to share bowls.)

Ingredients:

Bag of nuts: We used a large bag of almonds for our example (unroasted, unsalted, unflavored). With raw nuts, you can save money and flavor it to your taste in many ways: this is just one idea.

Allow 1/4 or 1/3 cup per person.

• Oil: We prefer sesame oil, but olive oil is fine. Use one teaspoon per 1/2 cup of nuts. Add to bowl of nuts and shake or stir.
• Grated Parmesan Cheese to taste. Mix with nuts, or melt on top. We loooove Parmesan!
• Soy Sauce to taste (we prefer Bragg’s Liquid Aminos for being extra healthy and tasting great).
• Brewer’s Yeast — Super healthy (Vitamin B!), inexpensive, and adds an extra nutty kick to your nut-corn. You can skip this ingredient if you don’t have any on hand. Use 1 TBS per 1 cup of nuts.
• Rosemary — We have the fresh stuff from our yard in San Diego, but use what you can. Use 2 tsp dried Rosemary per cup, or to taste.
• Garlic – Slice up the fresh stuff if you have it, or use garlic powder and lots of it.
• Himalayan pink salt, cracked salt, or sea salt — You want the kind of salt that you see on hot pretzels — large crystals that melt onto the hot nuts. Try 2 tsp per cup of nuts, or to taste. Mmmmm….
• Cracked Pepper — You want this to adhere, like everything else on this list, to the oil-coated nuts. 2 tsp to one cup of nuts.
• Tabasco, or any hot sauce — let your guests add this individually — do not add to the mixture. Tell everyone to wipe down the bottle with sanitizing wipes between uses.
• Sanitizing Wipes – for the hot sauce bottles and spice jars if people outside your household are sharing them. Encourage safe eating!

Preparation:

After adding your spices, put a lid on the bowl and shake the spice/oil mixture so everything is nicely coated.

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Place bowl in microwave for 30 seconds (no longer!). Or use a saucepan over medium heat and stir constantly until spitting hot. Remove immediately — do not burn the nuts! If you nuke the nuts for 1 & 1/2 minutes that’s too long. Remember to NOT overcook. All the flavor leeches out if they burn. You need half a minute to one minute to cook them, but no more.

Serve:

Place 1/4 or 1/3 cup of nuts into individual serving sizes (small servings in individual ramekins will do).

Serve warm in small containers, with hot sauce to taste per person.

Although the serving size is small, each nut is worth savoring. A small bowl goes a long way when you pay attention to your food. (Even while watching a movie.)

So good! We also have a delicious Zucchini/Squash & Olive Nachos recipe coming up to plan a larger low carb movie healthy snack FEAST. Or just spear some pickles and provide mustard dipping as a crunchy, cooking-free, low carb side snack. (Try different pickles and a few kinds of mustard for dipping.)

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Jill Florio

Co-Creator of RunPee, Chief of Operations, Content Director, and Managing Editor. RunPee Jilly likes galaxy-spanning sci fi, superhero sagas, fantasy films, YA dystopians, action thrillers, chick flicks, and zany comedies, in that order…and possesses an inspiringly small bladder. In fact, that little bladder sparked the creation of RunPee. (Good thing she’s learned to hold it.)