When your entire dinner is cooked in one dish, in just a few easy steps, this is called a win.
When it’s company-worthy-delicious, this is even better.
When it’s also packed with amazing detoxifying, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant nutrients, you deserve a medal.
If you don’t know what’s for dinner tonight, consider making our amazing Keto Zone Pesto Salmon over Asparagus. It’s easy, absolutely delicious, Keto and incredibly nutritious with pesto, salmon, and asparagus’s 5 Proven Benefits.
Keto Zone Pesto Salmon Over Asparagus
Ingredients:
- 4 wild-caught salmon fillets, 4-6 ounces each
- 1 lb. asparagus, washed and tough ends chopped off
- 1 Tbsp olive oil
- ½ cup Keto Zone Pesto (click link for recipe)
- 10 Cherry or grape tomatoes OR whole peppercorns (omit tomatoes if avoiding nightshades)
- salt and pepper, to taste
Instructions:
- Place asparagus in the bottom of a 9×13 baking dish. Drizzle olive oil, salt and pepper, and “roll” to coat.
- Place salmon over asparagus, skin-side down.
- Top each fillet with about 2 Tablespoons pesto.
- Add optional tomatoes, whole peppercorns, and sprinkle on salt and pepper.
- Cover with foil tightly and bake at 400 deg F for 30-35 minutes or until salmon is no longer translucent and flakes with the fork.
- If you’ve made extra Pesto, use it over cooked chicken for another easy dinner, or as a delicious fat bomb.
Serves 4. Nutrition Information per serving: 264 calories, 20 gm fat, 9 gm carbs, 5 gm fiber, 15 gm protein
An Incredibly Nutritious Dinner
It’s difficult to know where to begin when talking about the nutrition in this dish. First, you’ve got one of the most nutritious proteins available, salmon. Salmon is:
- A great source of protein at 7-8 grams per ounce
- Extremely high in anti-inflammatory omega 3s
- Beneficial to brain health and eye health
- One of the top Anti-Aging Foods
Then, there’s our amazing keto zone pesto and all it benefits including reduced inflammation and oxidative stress, improved blood flow, anti-bacterial properties, decreased bloat, and a great healthy-fat profile perfect for Keto Zone eating.
But what about asparagus. What does it add?
5 Proven Benefits of Asparagus
1. Anti-Inflammatory Vegetable
Asparagus contains a unique combination of anti-inflammatory nutrients including saponins like asparanin A, sarsasapogenin, protodioscin, and diosgenin.
These anti-inflammatory components reduce the risk of many diseases, including asthma, brain degeneration, and nervous system conditions, and promote overall health (1).
2. Loaded with Antioxidants including Glutathione
Alongside the anti-inflammatories, asparagus is full of antioxidants. Vitamin C, beta-carotene, vitamin E, zinc, manganese, and selenium to name a few. It also contains one of the most important antioxidants: glutathione.
If you’re not familiar with glutathione, it is one of the most potent antioxidants available to our bodies. In fact, most everyone needs more.
You can get it through foods like asparagus and by using tactics to help your cells produce it on their own. Here’s more about glutathione and why you need it.
3. Cancer Fighter
The anti-inflammatory components in asparagus are actually impressive cancer-fighters (2).
In fact, the saponins in asparagus have been found to fight colon cancer cells in lab studies, even when the cancer cells are resistant to chemotherapy drugs (3)!
What’s more, asparagus nutrients discourage metastasis of cancer cells and proliferation of the disease (4, 5).
4. Better Digestion with Inulin
Not many foods contain inulin (specific soluble fiber). Asparagus happens to be a good source of it. We’ve talked a good deal about probiotics (healthy bacteria that live and grow in your gut), but little about prebiotics.
Prebiotics are simply probiotic food – they allow the probiotics to stay healthy and proliferate. One of their favorite foods is inulin.
In fact, here’s an entire post about the benefits of inulin.
5. Heart Health and Balanced Blood Sugar
As we discussed above, asparagus provides anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidant benefits. These properties are important for heart health and blood sugars.
Then, it has an amazing B-vitamin content – it’s an excellent source of folic acid and a very good source of vitamins B1, B2, B3, and B6. It contains choline, biotin, and pantothenic acid.
These vitamins are important for heart health (6), metabolism of sugar, and energy production.
Even More Benefits
When a food has these strong of anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties, it can affect every cell in the human body and discourage most every disease. While research continues, asparagus is being found to be effective at improving immune system health, reducing lung disease and asthma, and much more.
Bottom Line
You can absolutely flood your body with nutrients, even when using a simple dinner. Choose Keto Zone Pesto Salmon Over Asparagus, and get all the nutrition of basil pesto, salmon, and asparagus for numerous health benefits.
