Fast Food Fix: 75+ Amazing Recipe Makeovers by Devin Alexander

Indulge your fast food cravings without guilt–with recipes that deliver the same great taste without putting your health at risk or inches on your hips

Americans all want to "eat healthy," but when they yearn for the fast foods they love, what they want most are the fabulous flavors that have made them favorites in the first place. That's what makes this collection of recipe makeovers so exceptional. Los Angeles food writer, chef, and caterer Devin Alexander specializes in low-fat, high-flavor, scrumptious cuisine. In Fast Food Fix, she shows the reader how to transform 75 fast food favorites into healthier versions that are even more flavorful than the originals. Fast Food Fix:
• demystifies the special seasonings and secret sauces of choice fast foods–showing how to reproduce their flavors quickly and easily from common ingredients
• teaches how to lighten many dishes with new cooking techniques, such as the oven-frying method that yields incredibly crunchy popcorn chicken with 35 fewer fat grams than the original version from KFC
• reveals simplified cooking methods that save time in the kitchen, proving that "fast food" can still be fast even when prepared at home

For Americans hooked on fast food flavors, these recipe makeovers by a chef with an impressive repertoire of culinary tricks will quickly become a kitchen staple.

Is it possible to make fries that taste just like McDonald's with no trans-fatty-acids? Yes, but it's not easy. Blessed with an obsessive, analytical mind and cursed with a craving for Burger King, Alexander offers healthier (but not necessarily healthy) substitutes for brand name burgers, milkshakes, fries and pizza. In true fast food fashion, recipes are single servings, but some are generous enough to serve two. Though substitutions are included (use a whole wheat for a white bun or turkey for pork), Alexander reminds readers the goal is to "cut fat and calories…without affecting taste." This takes precision: though the Popeye's Cajun Battered Fries are still spicy and delicious and relatively straight-forward to make, the recipe for Hardee's 1/3-lb Western Bacon Thickburger has steps for breading onion strings, frying bacon, forming and grilling the burger, preparing the bun and making barbeque sauce. Luckily, her directions are clear and her comments are funny-in the KFC Popcorn Chicken recipe she tells of dissecting 38 popcorn pieces and finding chicken in only 20, then explains how to make the recipe "drive-though" style by preparing ahead and freezing batches. And the fabled McDonald's French Fries? They aren't quite the same and they're a pain to recreate, but they taste great. Fast food addicts with moderate kitchen savvy may find themselves hooked.