Poke is a traditional Hawaiian dish typically made with diced marinated raw salmon or tuna and served over sushi rice. Poke bowls have come to the mainland and are now popular all across the United States. As a keto dieter, have you ever wondered is poke OK to eat on keto? How many carbs are in a poke bowl? Or “how do I order a poke bowl that's guaranteed not to kick me out of ketosis?”
Poke bowls are keto-friendly if you make wise low-carb choices when ordering. Choose a base of greens, cabbage, cauliflower rice, or zucchini noodles for your poke bowl. Add proteins like sushi-grade salmon, ahi tuna, shrimp, scallops, tofu or chicken without marinade if possible. Order low carb toppings like avocado, cucumber, green onion, sesame seeds, nori strips, kale, cilantro, and even edamame or macadamia nuts. Top your keto poke bowl with high-fat, no-sugar sauces like spicy mayo, wasabi mayo, or sesame oil.
Poke is a native Hawaiian dish made of diced raw, marinated fish served with veggies over sticky rice.
While poke bowls were once limited to the Hawaiian Islands, poke restaurants are becoming more and more common in the US.
The cool thing about poke is that the combinations of ingredients are limitless, and you can design your own bowl, sort of like how you can create your own burrito bowl at Chipotle. (Click HERE to read how to eat keto at Chipotle.)
A poke bowl starts with a base, usually sticky rice, and a protein like marinated sushi-grade salmon or ahi tuna. It’s topped with veggies or fruits, like edamame, scallions, cucumber, cilantro, seaweed salad, and pineapple, and is served with a sauce (either on top or on the side) such as spicy sriracha mayo, wasabi mayo, or eel sauce.
Skip the sushi rice and make smart low-carb, high-fat ingredient choices, and you can definitely order a keto poke bowl.
Some poke restaurants, like Freestyle Poke in my hometown of Kansas City, designates menu items as vegan, paleo, and keto to make it super simple to order a low carb poke bowl.
I’ll share the best way to order a keto poke bowl, but it’s always smart to do a little carb detective work BEFORE you dine out.
1. See if your poke restaurant has an online menu and look at the poke bases, proteins, toppings, and sauces they offer. Many small, local places will not have an online menu, but chain restaurants will.
2. If your restaurant offers nutritional information, definitely take a peek at the carb counts before you leave home. While you can make good choices without detailed nutritional information, it’s always good practice to look at the official carb counts.
People on a keto diet often wonder if poke is a healthy choice on a keto diet. After all it LOOKS healthy with yummy cubed fish, seaweed, veggies and sauces that must be keto, right?
A poke bowl is keto-friendly if you skip the rice, and modify your order to select low-carb, high-fat ingredients.
Choose a base of greens, cabbage, cauliflower rice, or zucchini noodles for your poke bowl.
Add proteins like sushi-grade salmon, ahi tuna, shrimp, scallops, octopus, organic tofu or chicken. If you don’t know the carb count for the marinade (which you may be able to find on the restaurant’s website), ask for it without marinade, if possible.
Order low carb poke bowl toppings like avocado, cucumber, green onion, sesame seeds, nori strips, kale, cilantro, and even edamame or macadamia nuts. Most restaurants have a wide selection of low carb veggies.
Top your keto poke bowl with high-fat, no-sugar sauces like spicy mayo, wasabi mayo, or sesame oil.
A typical poke bowl with sushi rice is not keto friendly.
There are endless varieties of poke bowls sold at chain and local restaurants. What almost all of them have in common is a base of white or brown rice, which is decidedly NOT keto.
Rice alone can add at least 50 or more grams of carbs to your meal. Using the nutritional information from Pokeworks, a base of white rice is 67 carbs, and a base of brown rice is 69 carbs. This starting point of 67 carbs is before adding other ingredients, toppings, and sauces which can increase the carb total dramatically..
A typical poke bowl, like the Pokeworks Umami Ahi Classic Poke Bowl is a 604 calories, 11 grams fat, 97 grams carbs, and 23 grams protein. It contains Ahi tuna, sushi rice, edamame, green onion, sweet onion, hijiki, cucumber, Umami Shoyu Sauce, sesame seeds, and garlic crisps.
The Flaming Tuna poke bowl at Fresh Catch Poke Co. is 640 calories, 15 grams fat, 84 grams carbs, and 15 grams protein.
As I mentioned, ingredients in poke bowls vary widely, but know that a poke bowl with rice base will start with at least 50 grams of carbs and can go much higher depending on the sauces, mix-ins, and toppings added.
Make a few simple swaps to create a keto poke bowl.
If you skip the rice and order low carb proteins and toppings you can create a custom poke bowl with lots of delicious, healthy fats, tons of flavor, and under 10 grams of carbs.
Using the Pokeworks Umami Ahi Classic poke bowl as a starting point, you can swap a cabbage mix for the rice, avocado for the hijiki, Srirachi Aioli Sauce for the Umami Shoyu, and shredded nori for the garlic crisps. This dramatically changes the nutritional profile making it a low carb, keto-friendly bowl with 452 calories, 35 grams fat, 15 grams carbs, and 17 grams protein.
As you likely know, a keto poke bowl is one that is high in fat, moderate in protein, and low in carbs. And it’s really easy to do order one at your favorite poke restaurant using these simple swaps.
Step 1: Start your poke bowl with a keto-friendly base.
The low carb options vary according to your restaurant, but these are common keto-friendly poke bases:
Salad greens
Cauliflower rice
Zucchini noodles, or “zoodles”
Cabbage
Kelp noodles
Stay away from these higher carb bases:
Sushi rice or sticky rice
Brown rice
Forbidden or black rice
Quinoa
Kale noodles (sounds innocent, but Pokeworks kale noodles has 62 grams of carbs!)
Seaweed (around 17 grams net carbs)
Tortilla chips (I know it sounds crazy, but at least one poke restaurant – Poke Bar – offers tortilla chips as a base)
Step 2: Pick your poke bowl protein.
Some restaurants offer a choice of marinated or plain seafood, tofu, and meats. Obviously the plain options would be lowest in carbs, but you can still enjoy a low carb bowl with marinated proteins.
Check the restaurant’s online nutrition information, if available. If ordering in person you can always ask what ingredients are in the various seafood, tofu, and meat marinades.
Good keto choices include:
Salmon
Ahi tuna
Albacore tuna
Spicy salmon
Scallops
Shrimp
Chicken
Octopus
Tofu
Step 3: Add low carb mix-ins and toppings to your poke bowl.
Some restaurants have you order mix-ins and toppings separately, and some just call them toppings, but basically these are ingredients you add to your poke bowl to give them lots of flavor, color, and texture. The mix-ins and toppings are also what make poke bowls so beautiful to look at!
Best practice for keto eaters is to look for low carb veggies and herbs.
The best low carb mix-ins and toppings are:
Cucumber
Maui or sweet onion
Cilantro
Kale
Radish
Shiitake mushrooms
Edamame
Bean sprouts
Jalapenos
Seaweed (but not seaweed salad that often contains sugar)
Scallions or green onions
Pickled or fresh ginger
Wasabi
Daikon sprouts
Thai chiles
Shish*to peppers
Shredded nori
Napa cabbage
Shiso leaves
Jicama
Asparagus
Spicy furikake
Japanese eggplant
Carrots (though a higher carb veggie, we’re only talking a small amount)
