Top 10 Protein-Packed BBQ Recipes

Eating for nutrition never tasted so good!

“You are what you eat.” Or so the saying goes. That phrase is attributed to the French lawyer and food-lover Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, who wrote “Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are” in his 1825 book, The Physiology of Taste. Brillat-Savarin was an early adopter of low-carb eating. He thought obesity was caused by eating too much refined sugar and white flour and not eating enough protein. Rings a bell doesn’t it? And this was over two centuries ago!

Meat is high in protein

If you want to eat more protein, meat makes a pretty good choice today, just as it did back then. Meat is muscle after all, and muscle contains a fair amount of protein (“you are what you eat.”). Most meats—and even fish like salmon—consist of about 20% protein, 60 to 70% water, and 5 to 15% fat. The fat percentage varies because lean meats like chicken and turkey breast contain less fat, and thus more protein, than fattier meats like pork belly. Learn more about basic meat science by reading our article on the subject.

How much protein do you need?

According to current dietary recommendations, the average sedentary adult man needs about 56 grams of protein a day and adult women need about 46 grams of protein per day. If you’re very active or trying to lose weight, you should aim for more.

But maybe you don’t really care about nutrition and meat composition. Maybe you just want to eat. We get that! So here are our best protein-packed BBQ recipes. Each serving of these recipes contains at least 30 grams of protein and some contain 50 grams of protein. Of course, for more protein, you can always eat more than one serving. But don’t get too bogged down in the numbers. Most foods, even vegetables, contain a little protein, so it’s not hard to get what you need.