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Fast Food Fix

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Fast Food FixAlthough sometimes dedicated home cooks don’t always like to admit it, there is often a reason that popular fast food dishes are popular: they taste good. And I don’t just mean burgers, either. Fast foods include all kinds of quick service foods, like a slice from your favorite pizzeria or a muffin from a favorite coffee shop (although I will admit that food that falls into this category usually comes from chain restaurants). No matter how good that food tastes, it is a guilty pleasure because it’s probably not all that good for you. In Fast Food Fix: 75+ Amazing Recipe Makeovers of Your Fast Food Restaurant Favorites, author Devin Alexander sets out to remake all kinds of fast food favorites into healthy, lower fat and lower calorie treats that you can make – and enjoy guilt-free – at home, without sacrificing the flavor of the original.

The book covers burgers, fried chicken, fried fish, french fries, pizza, tacos, breakfasts and desserts. Alexander uses lots of low fat cooking tricks to cut the fat from these recipes while keeping the end result true to the original, like oven frying and substituting lower fat ingredients, from leaner beef in burgers to low fat or fat free yogurt in desserts. You’ll find things like In-n-Out’s Double Double with Grilled Onions, Taco Bell’s Mexican Pizza, Cinnabon’s Classic Cinnamon Roll and Dairy Queen’s Brownie Earthquake. The book isn’t exactly heavy on photos, but the recipes are simple, approachable and easy to follow along with.

One other feature that is fun about this book is that most of the recipes (excluding baking recipes) make just one serving – just like ordering a fast food item from a menu. They’re easy to scale up, but if you’re cooking for just one or two you won’t have to do nearly the work you would if you were working from another cookbook, and there is no excuse to get fast food if you’re looking for a quick meal for just yourself.

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2 Comments
  • Belinda @zomppa
    June 14, 2010

    Great to have homemade versions!

  • Marly
    June 14, 2010

    What a great idea! I’ll have to check this book out. Right now the only fast food restaurant we go to (rarely) is Taco Bell…and that’s because they’ll make us a burrito without meat or dairy. I used to miss McDonalds french fries, but it seems my taste buds have adjusted and those are now too greasy for me. I prefer our homemade fries any day!

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