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Top 10 Carnivore Snacks To Feed Your Inner Beast

Carnivore meals are based on fatty, nutrient-dense foods making the desire to snack far less frequent. In fact, many carnivore eaters find it an ideal way to practice OMAD (one meal a day). But we know that sometimes we find ourselves on the run and in need of a nourishing carnivore snack.

Carrying around fresh meat to sizzle up isn’t an option for most of us, but with a little foresight, preparation, and savvy shopping you can have these delicious whole food carnivore snacks locked and loaded. 

This list is centered around simple whole foods that take minimal preparation, with a few store-bought items for when you’re in dire need of convenience. 

1 Steak Leftovers

The carnivore diet is based around fresh ruminant meats, and there’s no reason why your carnivore snacks need to veer from this ancestral staple. 

When selecting your cut of steak, pick one that’s bigger than you can eat all at once. Cold, leftover steak is the healthiest, most nourishing carnivore snack on earth. 

Go for a ribeye and you’ll be snacking on one of the nutrient-dense foods in the world, and the king of keto meats. 

Other fatty cuts will do just fine, too. Classics like the NY strip, and short ribs provide every essential macro and micronutrient, even vitamin C, in the most bioavailable forms and in near-perfect proportions for the need of our bodies. 

Leftover steak provides beneficial nutrients only found in meat including: 

• Carnitine: supports male fertility, reduces anemia, improves mitochondrial function, and supports heart health
• Taurine: An antioxidant that can reduce glycation and oxidative stress, and offers significant improvements in overall mental health
• Carnosine: Supports heart health and skeletal muscle formation. Reduces glycation, and protects against damage to telomeres, providing anti-aging benefits
• Creatine: Associated with improved cognition and neuroprotection. Enhances athletic performance, and heart health.

Ribeye Carnivore Snack Nutrition Highlights

2 High Fat Cheese

For the vast majority of you who tolerate dairy, fatty cheese makes a delicious carnivore snack. It’s also a way for those of you who have given up wine and alcohol (since these are fermented plants) to flex your carnivore connoisseur muscle. 

Since carnivore, like keto, is a high-fat low-carb way of eating, the fattiest, creamiest cheeses make the best carnivore snacks. 

A helpful rule of thumb is to look for cheese labeled “triple cream,” or “creamy…” such as Dr. Kiltz’s personal favorite, “creamy blue cheese”. 

Though there isn’t an industry standard for what “creamy” means, it’s likely loaded in nurturing fats and low in protein. 

In a pinch, you can choose harder cheeses like cheddar and parmesan. 

A large-scale 2018 study looking at over 2,500 men showed that after a five-year follow-up, participants who consumed higher amounts of cheese had a lower body mass index.

The combination of fat and protein in full-fat dairy substantially increases sensations of fullness and satiety. This makes cheese a powerful craving-cutting snack. This can be especially important when transitioning from a standard American diet to carnivore when the satiating power of cheese can help you kick your carb addiction. 

Carnivore Snack Highlight: Creamy Blue Cheese

Creamy blue cheese is delicious on its own, and an amazing topping when melted over a ribeye steak.

Blue cheese also has the added benefits of unique bioactive compounds. Studies show that regularly consuming blue cheese provides anti-inflammatory effects that reduce the risk of heart disease. 

It’s also been shown to lower cholesterol levels, prevent arterial inflammation, reduce incidences of blood clotting in veins, reduce joint pain, and relieve arthritis.

3 Beef Jerky and Biltong

In terms of convenience beef jerky and Biltong take the cake. It lasts a long time and packs a ton of nutrition into a small volume. 

Biltong is a type of South African dried meat that’s marinated in vinegar and air-dried.  While jerky is generally smokier in flavor cooked or smoked on a rack.

When it comes to packaged food on carnivore, it’s important to take a close look at the ingredients before buying. Almost all commercial jerky contains non-carnivore ingredients like spices, soy, and sugar. 

It’s also important to beware that though beef jerky and biltong are low in carbs, they are also low in fat. On the carnivore diet, it’s important to consume at least as many grams of fat as carbs. Your body can only metabolize 35-50% percent of calories from protein alone before you enter protein poisoning territory. 

You can often get fattier biltong than jerky–and you can always make your own unspiced biltong or jerky out of super fatty cuts of beef of your choosing. 

The purest commercial biltong we’ve found is Brooklyn Biltong’s Naked Meat Flavor, made with grass-fed beef and only apple cider vinegar and salt. 

We couldn’t find any beef jerky that wasn’t loaded with soy and spices, so this is one that you have to make your own with a salt-only recipe. 

4 Beef Liver Crisps

Beef liver crisps take the convenience of dried meat and add in the unsurpassed nutritional abundance of beef liver. 

A daily serving of beef liver crisps provides over 180% of your RDA in Vitamin A, and 540% RDA of Vitamin B12, and is a robust source of copper, Folate, Riboflavin, and Heme-Iron. 

Beef liver crisps from Carnivore Aurelius are only seasoned with salt, yet provide the crunch that many people on carnivore have been missing. 

Carnivore Aurelius claims, “There isn’t a food on earth with greater potential to transform the way you look, feel, and perform than grass-fed beef liver.” When considering the high concentration of vitamin A in beef liver alongside the fact that  43% of American adults need more Vitamin A, we might just agree.

5 Grass-fed Butter

Butter is certainly not the enemy we’ve been brought up to believe. In fact, it’s a bonafide superfood and the perfect carnivore snack. 

One of the benefits of butter as a carnivore snack is that it can balance out your macro intake if you’ve been eating an overabundance of lean meat. 

Choose grass-fed butter for a rich source of healthy fats along with fat-soluble Vitamins A and D, and K2, with 21 mcg for 18% of your RDV per 100g. 

Vitamin K2 is one of the most important yet unsung vitamins in our diets and the key to absorbing and utilizing many other nutrients. 

And in case you were wondering, modern science tells us that there is no link between saturated fat and heart disease. In fact, eating full-fat dairy like butter can actually protect your heart health. 

For instance, a review of 16 studies found that the consumption of high-fat dairy products like butter can lower your risk of obesity.

A study on men and women aged 45-75 who regularly consume dairy fat showed a reduced risk of a heart attack.

Another massive review including data from more than 3.6 million people found that high-fat dairy products are not associated with any causes of mortality.

One study found that adding one serving of full-fat dairy to your daily diet can reduce the risk of infertility by over 50%.

Butter is also a great source of CLA (conjugated linoleic acid), which has been shown to: 

• provide antitumor properties
• Protect against colon cancer
• Protection against heart disease
• Reduce cholesterol
• Improves insulin sensitivity in young, sedentary adults
• Reduce excess body fat
• Strengthen the immune system and reduce inflammation

A Good Source of Butyrate

Butter is also a great source of butyrate, which can be important on a carnivore diet that cuts out nearly all fiber that can be fermented into butyrate in your gut. 

This short-chain fatty acid has been found to reduce inflammation in the colon and liver and enhances sleep.   

Grass-fed butter from New Zealand cows is one of the healthiest keto fats you can gift your body. And when you buy it in bulk, it’s surprisingly affordable. 

2lbs of Kirkland grass-fed butter comes in at a budget friendly $13.00 while offering an incredible 6400 whole food calories, almost exclusively from vitamin-rich fats. 

6 Heavy Cream/Butter Coffee

This one’s a bit of a gray area. Coffee comes from a bean and it’s not an animal product, so it’s not technically a carnivore food. 

But coffee has so many benefits, and people going carnivore are already eliminating so many foods, that, to be realistic, we’ve included in our list. 

Though usually considered a beverage, you can turn coffee into a carnivore snack by adding butter, ghee, heavy cream, and collagen powder. 

Butter contains around 400 different fatty acids including those listed above like (CLA) and gut-health-boosting butyric acid and lauric acid. 

These fats also provide antimicrobial and antifungal properties. Studies show that lauric acid reduces pathogenic bacteria in the gut that significantly support intestinal health.

Adding collagen provides your body with the amino acid glycine, which has anti-stress, anti-aging, and anti-inflammatory effects.

Butter Coffee Nutritional Highlights

7 Hard Boiled Eggs

Eggs are loaded with healthy fats, complete proteins, and important micronutrients like choline and fat-soluble vitamins. Hard boil your eggs in batches for a weekly supply of high-powered 100% carnivore snacks. 

Eggs Nutrition Highlights

Eggs are another carnivore food that’s been maligned by bad science since the 1960s. Thankfully, modern research is setting the record straight: 

• A 2013 meta-analysis published in the British Medical Journal showed that eating an egg a day is not associated with an increased risk of coronary heart disease or stroke
• A 2017 meta-analysis confirmed that even people with existing heart disease risk factors can consume at least an egg a day without increasing risk factors
•  A Harvard study of more than 80,000 female nurses found the same thing—egg consumption is not associated with an increased risk of heart disease

In fact, it’s the cholesterol and fat content in eggs that make them such a sustaining carnivore snack. And research shows that eggs are not just harmless, but may actually reduce your risk of heart disease: 

• A massive study involving 500,000 Chinese people found that those who ate the most eggs had the lowest risk of major cardiac events, CVD, ischemic heart disease, and CVD-related death
• The cholesterol in eggs has been shown to increase HDL (good) cholesterol while for most people, leaving LDL (bad) cholesterol unchanged

8 Pork Rinds and Cracklings

In the South, they’re called rinds or cracklings. In Mexico, they’re called “chicharrones.” But people everywhere call them delicious. 

Make sure to avoid seasonings other than salt and you’ve got yourself a convenient and deeply satiating carnivore snack. 

Stay on the lookout for pasture-raised pork rinds from your farmer’s market, since these will have a better fatty acid profile and more vitamin D. 

For store-bought varieties, we recommend Epic Artisanal Oven Baked Pork Rinds, Pink Himalayan Sea Salt flavor. The only ingredients are pork skins and salt, and zero carbs. 

You can also use pork rind bread crumbs as a carnivore diet substitute for bread crumbs. This trick boosts your fat content when cooking leaner meats like poultry and seafood. 

9 Bone Broth

Bone broth is a soothing and nourishing carnivore snack. 

The only downside is that all store-bought bone broths are seasoned with non-carnivore herbs and spices. The good news is that it’s easy to make your own carnivore bone broth. Making your own allows you to leave the fat in, making it even more nutritious than the store-bought varieties that wastefully skim off the schmaltz (chicken) and tallow (beef). 

Add a few tablespoons of ghee, butter, or tallow to increase your fat intake. 

Bone broth nutritional highlights

When pioneering dentist and nutrition researcher Weston A. Price traveled the world to discover the health secrets of traditional diets, he found that bone broth was used by virtually every ancient culture.  

Bone broth is an excellent source of inhibitory amino acids, which are lacking in a modern diet with its overabundance of excitatory amino acids (tryptophan, cysteine, etc.) from muscle meats.

Drinking bone broth offers numerous benefits including: 

• Anti-aging–reduces facial lines and wrinkles while improving skin elasticity
• Normalizes GABA levels to improve your mood
• Improves sleep
• suppress inflammatory responses
• Reduced joint pain in osteoarthritis patients
• Promotes healthy gut microbiome
• Prevents ulcers

Carnivore Bone Broth Recipe

Most bone broth is made with an acid to break down bones and help extract nutrients, but it’s not actually necessary. We’ve left it in as an option, but we also haven’t noticed a difference in consistency and taste when leaving it out. 

Ingredients

• 12 pounds beef bones
• 1/2 cup raw apple cider vinegar optional
• Lots of salt to taste

Directions

• Step 1 (optional): Preheat oven to 450 °F (232°C). Arrange bones in a single layer on a large roasting tray, place in oven for 20 minutes. Roasting is not necessary but can add flavor.
• Step 2: Place bones in large stock pot and fill with water until all bones are covered.
• Step 3 (optional): Add vinegar
• Low simmer for minimum 18 hours. 72 hours is ideal. Check to make sure bone are covered with water, add more when necessary.

10 High Quality Preserved Meats–Salami, Prosciutto 

High-quality preserved meats like salami and prosciutto provide an abundance of proteins, fat, and salt. 

It’s important to note that a carnivore diet is a version of keto, which means that you need to consume more salt. You’re also cutting out most processed and junk foods which are loaded with salt. Most people on carnivore have to be reminded to consume not only more fat, but more salt. Preserved meats can help. 

Preserved meats are by definition processed, and processed meats have been given a bad wrap, however, studies show that the link between processed meat and cancer is essentially non-existant. 5 

Combining quality preserved meats with the delectable cheeses listed above will relieve any sense of deprivation you feel by going carnivore.

Niman Ranch has a solid line of uncured, humanely raised preserved meat products. And this is another carnivore snack category where you’ll likely find the best pasture-raised varieties at your local farmer’s market. 

Preserved Meat Nutritional Highlights