How to Reverse Engineer a Recipe for Real Food Quality (2024)

I used to loooove getting the Kraft Food and Family magazine, chock full of simple, tasty recipes that I could peruse and add to my menu plans. Lately, though, I’m disheartened. So many of the recipes have processed foods in them already (which makes sense, since it’s published by a food processing company, but still). I figure, if I’m going to the trouble of cooking homemade foods instead of buying something in a box in the freezer section, why settle for additives, pseudo-foods, chemicals and other “junk” I don’t want my family eating?

Trouble is, I missed my old recipes. We had some stand-bys that everyone loved that I just couldn’t get myself to make anymore. When I started looking at the ingredients in things like onion soup mix, creamed canned soups and even pre-seasoned Italian tomatoes, I thought two things:

1. I don’t want to eat all these “foods” I can’t pronounce.
2. I bet I could make this taste just as good. Maybe better.

With promises of make-from-scratch recipes next week for things that come completely in a box or bottle (crackers, for example), here’s my best shot at Reverse Food Engineering 101!

The Basic Method

Got a recipe with undesirable packaged food? You can probably make it even better yourself. Grab the recipe and ingredients and get to work:

1. Read the ingredients on the packaged food you’re trying to avoid.
2. Ignore all the words you don’t understand. For real. They’re not in your kitchen anyway.
3. Figure out the main body – is it a liquid oil, a creamy base, dried vegetables, or what? Use olive oil for liquids, homemade cream of soup or yogurt for creamy stuff, and the real thing for dried veggies (as a general rule).
4. What spices are going on? Take your best guess at what would taste good in the dish if you’re not sure.
5. Corn syrup, High fructose corn syrup, or any other ingredient that ends in “-ose” are just sweeteners. Generally they’re included to enhance flavor, mask the lack of taste, replace some deleted fats, or as a preservative. The only time you need to bother adding sweetener back in is in the first instance. Many say tomatoes are enhanced by a teaspoon of sugar (try molasses!), for example.
6. Keep the overall recipe you’re making in mind. This especially comes into play with things like bouillon cubes. They work together with something else in your recipe (usually water), so to substitute, you need to take into account the finished product and adjust accordingly.
7. Don’t be afraid to fail. Most of the time, you get to taste what you’re making before you serve it. That’s the beauty of cooking over baking – you can add ingredients right up until the end and no one will know. It’s definitely an art, not a science.
8. The charts below might help you, especially if you feel like more of a scientist than an artist!

Main Dishes: Casseroles and Stovetop Meals

It’s a common complaint that so many casseroles call for one or more undesirable ingredients, especially the cream of {x} canned soup. Luckily, all processed food either starts with something you have in your kitchen or is trying to mimic the real thing. You can make any processed recipe without the processed stuff, I promise!

UPDATE: I forgot to include “chili hot beans” in a can. My sub is 1 1/2 cups cooked pinto beans, 1/2 can tomato paste and a tsp-Tbs of chili powder, depending on how “hot” your “hot” is!

UPDATE: Also see the comments for some discussion/ideas for homemade biscuit/baking mix in a box.

What am I missing? I know there are other boxes, cans and bags called for in tons of recipes, but I’ve been doing Real Food long enough that I’ve forgotten. I’ll update the post with ideas from the comments if you all have something you want me to tackle. 🙂

Don’t forget the other examples of recipes I’ve already upgraded to real food at the Monday Mission post from this week, including some main dishes and quickbreads.

Quickbreads and Muffins

With baking, it’s usually not so much getting rid of processed ingredients but in making sure your ingredients are as healthy as possible. You can try:

• Cutting the sugar by 1/4 cup at a time. No sugar is good for you, but if you’re going to have some, have less. (Baby steps!)
• Using honey instead of sugar. 3/4 cup honey = 1 cup sugar. When you sub honey, reduce liquid by 1/4 cup per cup sugar you delete. I’m sure maple syrup is about the same.
• Subbing half whole wheat, or even 100% whole wheat. Quick breads are very forgiving in this area! I like “white whole wheat”, sold under King Arthur’s brand (and others, but KA is fairly easy to find). It has a flavor and texture more like all-purpose white flour.
• If you are looking for a “soaked grain” muffin recipe, I’m working on one, hopefully successful by February when we tackle grains more in depth. I’ll teach you how to adapt regular recipes (when possible) for soaking at that time. Sarah also has a soaked grain oatmeal cranberry muffin (no longer available) that we enjoyed.
• Liquid oils: Instead of corn or canola, try melted butter or coconut oil.
• Solid fats: Instead of shortening or margarine, use butter, coconut oil, lard or non-hydrogenated palm shortening (oh yes, a review and giveaway of palm shortening coming soon!).
• Choose recipes that have some redeeming ingredients, like zucchini or pumpkin breads.
• Making Amish friendship bread? It tastes just as good without the pudding mix. You can add flavor with cocoa, vanilla, real bananas, etc.

Cookies and Desserts

Many of the tips for adapting quickbread recipes will also work with some desserts. It’s when you have a cake mix + cool whip + something else recipe that was your old favorite that real foodies run into trouble. My fruit pizza is an example of a total revamping/remodeling of a recipe. For healthy whole wheat chocolate chip cookies, I just had to find the *right* recipe.

Some dessert tips:

• Find dessert recipes that have redeeming qualities, too, like pumpkin, healthy fats, coconut, nuts, etc.
• You can cut sugar, but not much. Cookies will flatten too much (I think?) with too little sugar.
• You can always try whole wheat flour or other whole grains.
• Use real whipping cream for cool whip.
• Make yogurt cheese for cream cheese-based recipes.
• I don’t see many soaked cookie recipes. I had a total fail on my first attempt at soaked cookies, but I might be willing to try again! I’ll let you know when I do. I’m also planning to share the fail soon.
• Let yourself live a little. 😉 Enjoy it in moderation as long as it doesn’t make you feel terrible!

Hot Cocoa

A few people mentioned that they need a substitute for powdered hot cocoa. As you might expect, powdered cocoa is powdered milk, cocoa, sweetener, and fillers. You can use real milk, cocoa, sweetener, and a spoon. Here are some recipes I’ve been collecting, for I, too, am a “real cocoa” virgin as of this winter (we still have packets in our cupboard, because this stuff does take longer, but it’s worth it!):

• Simple hot cocoa from Musings of a Housewife
• Organic hot cocoa from Kelly the Kitchen Kop
• Special hot cocoa from Amy’s Finer Things
• Dairy and Sugar Free hot cocoa from The Nourishing Gourmet
• An alternative: Warm Vanilla Soother from Heavenly Homemakers

Darn it. Now I want to go make some hot chocolate. !! We’ve been using Kelly’s (more or less) this winter. Yum-O!

Got an example?

If you’ve had some success making over a favorite recipe, let me know in the comments! Families (and husbands!) can be tough when making the switch to real food. Here’s my treatise on How to Feed a Husband Real Food.

Photo credit: Mike Mozart, Andy Melton, Wilson Hui

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