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food.fast editors: editorial responsibility

An organisational byline for collaborative work where individual authorship has not been independently verified.

This byline is used for food.fast recipes and guides when the work is collaborative or when an individual contributor has not supplied verifiable authorship details for publication. It is deliberately not a person, a pen name or a claim of professional credentials.

The useful work is shown on the pages themselves: complete methods, explicit assumptions, troubleshooting, calculations, dated menu records and source links where external factual claims require them. Recipe illustrations and editorial hero images are AI-generated and are labelled as illustrations; they are not presented as photographic proof that a dish was cooked.

Corrections can be sent through the contact page. Material changes update the review date on the affected page.

Recipes from this desk

Papa John's

Papa John's Pizza Dough Copycat Recipe

A medium-hydration dough with a little sugar and oil, which browns readily at the temperatures a home oven can actual…

32 min + wait Moderate Serves 8
CoCo Ichibanya

CoCo Ichibanya Curry Rice Copycat Recipe

Short grain rice cooked so it holds its shape under sauce - rinsed, rested and plated as a bank rather than a heap.

32 min Easy Serves 4
McDonald's

McDonald's Fries Copycat Recipe

Thin-cut, sugar-dipped, twice fried. Genuinely close on texture, and the page says plainly which part cannot be matched.

45 min + wait Moderate Serves 4
Swensen's

Swensen's Hot Fudge Sauce Copycat Recipe

Cream, sugar, cocoa and butter, boiled briefly. Five minutes, and it turns any supermarket vanilla into a dessert.

28 min Very easy Serves 12
Hardee's

Hardee's Sausage Gravy Copycat Recipe

Browned breakfast sausage, a roux in its own fat, milk and a startling amount of black pepper. Fifteen minutes.

20 min Easy Serves 6
Sizzler

Sizzler Cheese Toast Copycat Recipe

Soft white bread, a parmesan butter paste, and a griddle. Four minutes, and it is not made under a grill.

10 min Very easy Serves 4
Wingstop

Wingstop Ranch Copycat Recipe

Buttermilk, mayonnaise and a proper quantity of dill, thicker than any bottled ranch. Five minutes and an overnight rest.

5 min + wait Very easy Serves 12
Starbucks

Starbucks Mocha Sauce Copycat Recipe

Cocoa, sugar and condensed milk cooked into something that clings. Eight minutes, and the reason home mochas taste thin.

11 min + wait Very easy Serves 16
Shake Shack

Shake Shack ShackSauce Copycat Recipe

The most argued-about burger sauce in the world. Five minutes, and the mustard choice is what separates it from every…

5 min + wait Very easy Serves 12
Taco Bell

Taco Bell Baja Sauce Copycat Recipe

A pale green mayonnaise sauce with a vegetal jalapeño note and a late, mild heat. Six minutes and an hour in the fridge.

6 min + wait Very easy Serves 12
Nando's

Nando's Perinaise Copycat Recipe

Peri-peri sauce folded into mayonnaise. The ratio is the entire recipe and most people get it wrong in the same direction.

3 min + wait Very easy Serves 12
Domino's Pizza

Domino's Pizza Dough Copycat Recipe

A pressed rather than tossed dough, cold-fermented for two days. Fifteen minutes of work, and the fridge does the rest.

30 min + wait Moderate Serves 4
Wendy's

Wendy's Frosty Copycat Recipe

Malted milk powder and a deliberately under-frozen texture. Five minutes of work, four hours in the freezer, no machine.

8 min + wait Very easy Serves 4
Taco Bell

Taco Bell Mild Sauce Copycat Recipe

Thin, sharp and mostly tomato - a sauce that soaks into a tortilla rather than sitting on it. Ten minutes and a blender.

15 min + wait Very easy Serves 24
KFC

KFC Coleslaw Copycat Recipe

Chopped to rice-grain size rather than shredded, dressed sweet and sharp, and left overnight. Fifteen minutes of work.

15 min + wait Very easy Serves 8
KFC

KFC Gravy Copycat Recipe

A properly dark roux, chicken stock and a genuinely startling amount of black pepper. Fifteen minutes, and the colour…

18 min Easy Serves 6
Taco Bell

Taco Bell Seasoned Beef Copycat Recipe

The component that unlocks the whole menu. Oats cooked into the mince and enough water to make a paste - which is the…

25 min Very easy Serves 8
Wendy's

Wendy's Chili Copycat Recipe

Beef browned hard and broken into chunks rather than crumbled, a sweet tomato-juice base, and two kinds of bean. Nine…

1 hr 50 min Easy Serves 8
McDonald's

Big Mac Sauce Copycat Recipe

Eight minutes, one bowl, no cooking. The sweet pickle relish base that every 'secret sauce' recipe gets wrong, and th…

8 min + wait Very easy Serves 12

Guides from this desk

Kit & setup

Your Oven Is Probably Lying to You

A recipe that works everywhere except your kitchen is usually a thermostat problem. Here is how to find out what your oven …

3 min read food.fast editors
Kit & setup

Setting a Kitchen Up for Batch Cooking

Batch cooking fails on storage more often than on cooking. Here is the small amount of infrastructure that makes it actuall…

3 min read food.fast editors
Menus & prices

Reading a Menu Board in Thirty Seconds

Menu boards are designed to be looked at in a particular order. Looking at them in a different order gets you a better answ…

3 min read food.fast editors
Sauces & spice

Dry Rubs and Wet Sauces Do Different Jobs

A rub seasons the food and builds crust. A sauce coats what is already cooked. Using one where the other belongs is behind …

3 min read food.fast editors
Coffee & drinks

Syrups and Sauces Are Different Things

Coffee chains divide their flavourings into syrups and sauces and the distinction is not branding. Using one where the othe…

3 min read food.fast editors
Cost of eating out

The Coffee Habit, Costed Honestly

The per-cup saving on coffee is modest. The annual figure is not, and the payback period on equipment is shorter than most …

3 min read food.fast editors
Menus & prices

How Chains Actually Price a Menu Board

The order of the items, the size of the numbers and the position of the meal deal are all decisions. Knowing what the decis…

4 min read food.fast editors
Cost of eating out

Cost Per Portion, Not Per Packet

A recipe that uses two tablespoons of something does not cost the price of the jar. Here is how to think about marginal cos…

3 min read food.fast editors
Copycat method

How to Read a Chain's Own Ingredient List

Food law requires most chains to publish what is in their food. Those lists are in descending order by weight, which makes …

5 min read food.fast editors