Hey Reader!

In the 78th issue of The MF Kitchen, you'll slice into the details of:

• Recipes for my Buffalo Chicken Chalupas and 12” Cosmic Brownie Protein Dessert Pizza!
• Does guilt free ice cream exist?
• The meaning behind a chef's hat (size matters lol)...
• Pro tips for anyone making macro friendly recipes...
• A protein monopoly is forming (plus an incredible new snack bar)...

Preheat your ovens…

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Weekly Recipe Roundup 🍽️

Buffalo Chicken Chalupas These Buffalo Chicken Chalupas are only 247 calories with 35g protein! Aka this whole plate is less than 500 calories and is quite literally a flavor bomb 🔥 Click below to download the recipe and make it easy yourself: ​​​Buffalo Chicken Chalupas.pdf​

12” Cosmic Brownie Protein Dessert Pizza A Dessert Pizza that can be made in minutes, requires one bowl, no kneading, no rolling out of the dough with extra flour, etc! All with 95g of protein 🤯 ​​Click below to download the recipe and make it easy yourself: ​​​12” Cosmic Brownie Protein Dessert Pizza.pdf​

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Recipe Recreations Of The Week 🤌

OREO Blended Overnight Protein Cookie Dough Oats!

Macros for the WHOLE Bowl:​
404 Cals, 45g Carbs, 8g Fat, 36g Protein

Here's the recipe:
👉 https://www.instagram.com/reel/C-Imzzuulq8/?hl=en​

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Zach's Beats 🎧

​FEELINS - Fasion​

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This Week’s Flavor 🎥

Does guilt-free ice cream exist? Yes! You can enjoy a full pint of ice cream for less than 500 calories (300 calories for some of the recipes!). ​Click here to watch the video.​

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Weird Food Fact 🤓

Ever wondered why chefs wear those tall, kinda goofy-looking hats?

It turns out they have a pretty interesting history behind them.

These hats (called "toques") date back to the 16th century.

At that time, chefs didn't exactly have celebrity status.

Kitchens were crowded, messy, and hot.

The tall hats helped chefs stand out clearly as the leader of the kitchen (almost like a captain wearing a badge).

But here’s the fun twist...

The pleats (aka the wrinkle looking things) on a chef’s hat actually have meaning.

According to tradition, the number of folds represented how many different ways a chef could prepare eggs.

Apparently, the ultimate flex was being able to cook an egg in 100 different ways!

And the height of the hat was also symbolic.

The taller it was, the more senior the chef.

A towering hat meant experience, skill, and authority.

Today, chefs wear these hats mostly for tradition and hygiene (keeping hair out of food).

But it’s cool to think they originally started as symbols of expertise and leadership.

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One FAQ ❓

Answer: This is the worst. You see all these “macro-friendly” recipes on social media promising that they are delicious AND macro-friendly.

You save like 20 of the recipes with the best intentions of making them.

But you never do lol.

So when you are ready to make one of them...

Here are my top 5 mistakes beginner macro-friendly cooks make (and how to avoid them).

1.) Not all recipes are made equal.

This is a HUGE problem on social media.

People post recipes that look amazing but actually taste like shit.

Developing truly authentic macro-friendly recipes is really difficult.

It takes a TON of trial and error (aka a ton of failures).

And most macro-friendly food creators don’t want to put in that work.

So they will resort to stealing recipes and/or putting out really low-quality original recipes.

Unless this person has a track record of people actually making their recipes, I’d tread carefully with the recipe you decide to try.

Always look in the comments for someone validating that they made the recipe and how it went.

Here’s an example from my Breakfast Burrito IG post.

It was posted about a year and a half ago (70+ weeks).

But you’ll see a bunch of comments from relatively recent people who made the recipe.

2.) The Top 3 Macro Friendly Recipe Creators

I wanted to share some of my favorite food creators (besides myself) whose recipes I trust are amazing starting points.

​Tom is the man and one of my really good friends.

His recipes are incredible for meal prep. He’s literally the meal prep king at this point.

Def an amazing follow.

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​Dez holds it down in Australia for the macro-friendly cooking community!

He’s got a ton of bangers on his page and I highly recommend checking him out.

To be honest, they are the only two I can wholeheartedly recommend right now.

So between myself and all their content, there is a lot to play with!

Reply to this email with any other creators that you like and what recipe you've made of theirs (i'd love to check them out!).

3.) “I made your recipe and it didn’t turn out well.”

Whenever I see this, my first question is, “did you follow the recipe exactly?”

And sure enough, like clockwork, the answer is always the same...

“Yes! Well actually, I did substitute out this and this but that’s all I changed!”

I can promise you with all my heart that I don’t just add ingredients just for the hell of it.

I wish I could make every single recipe possible with the same 3-4 ingredients.

It’s just not the case and would be really weird if it was lol.

But my mindset for each recipe is, “How can I make this with as few ingredients as possible without sacrificing flavor, consistency, or macros?”

And the recipe you see posted is a finalized version of that.

It’s food science.

And subbing ingredients messes with the food science equation.

Thus giving you an end recipe that is much different than the original recipe would’ve given you.

Don’t substitute ingredients until you know the rules of the game.

It’s a recipe for disaster (punny I know 🙃).

4.) Don’t skip steps.

So let’s say your recipe still didn’t turn out amazing even though you used all the right ingredients (in the right amounts).

Why did the recipe still not turn out well?

My next question for you would be, “Did you follow the directions to a T? Literally every single step?”

And most times when I get an answer to this question, it’s that they skipped or modified a few different steps but didn’t think they were a big deal.

We are going for a truly rare outcome in the culinary space.

Delicious & macro friendly.

So each step is super important because all the details matter.

We don’t have incredible amounts of extra calories in the recipes that make it more resilient to a little extra cooking time.

Attention to detail is rewarded with you being able to eat delicious food, in large amounts, while reaching your goals.

5.) It’s ok to eat the same foods all the time.

For most people, they eat the same 5-7 meals all the time.

I kinda wish I could just eat the same foods all the time but it's my job to innovate.

So that means I have a ton of meal variety in my diet due to all the R&D.

But my point is, all you are trying to do on this macro-friendly cooking journey is to find 5-7 recipes you'll use for the rest of your life.

Yes, it might end up being 20-30 truly amazing ones you use all the time.

The best example I have for this is comparing it to the gym.

When you first start working out, you learn the basic movements.

And you do those a lot until you get really good at them.

Then as you go on, you learn more and more movements targeting different muscle groups.

And before you know it, you have like 40-50 different exercises in the gym that you can use to build your training program around!

So just like the gym, you need to learn the basics.

Your short-term goal is to get to that base of 5-7 recipes.

Then you can expand over time. There’s no rush!

I really hope these 5 tips helped. Let me know if you have any follow-up questions on this!

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Serving Surprise 😮

A little over a year ago, I had a call with Peter Rahal (the founder of RXBar, who is now working on a new project called David Bar).

He wanted my thoughts on the first formulation of the David Bars.

What was supposed to be a quick check-in turned into a nearly 2-hour deep dive.

Protein sources, ingredient blends, texture, structure, you name it.

At the time, I already knew about EPG.

I’d been tracking it for 3–4 years after an early intro through one of my best friends (Layne Norton), who met the Epogee team when they were just starting out.

The concept behind EPG was wild:

A fat replacement with all the texture and melt of real fat… but with only a fraction of the calories?

Game-changing.

But I was skeptical (especially around digestion).

Fast forward to the David Bars:
150 calories. 28g protein.

And they taste way better than a bar with those macros should.

The reason why? EPG.

At one point in the call, I told Peter:

“I don’t think you’re building a protein bar company. I think you’re building an EPG-led food brand.”

He didn’t say much. But the look on his face said I wasn’t far off.

Now fast forward to this year:

David just acquired Epogee (the exclusive supplier of EPG) and immediately started cutting off access to other brands.

Which brings me to one of my new favorite products that uses EPG:

Hormbles Chormbles.

Terrible name if you ask me haha.

But the bars are incredible!

Literally a crunch bar with insane macros (100 calories, 10g protein).

But they are an example of a product that is in limbo with the supply chain of EPG being cut off.

Multiple brands are suing David Bar/Peter Rahal for ingredient hoarding and trying to monopolize the EPG-powered snack market before it ever truly takes off.

Will be interesting to see how this plays out because it's hard to find many examples of this style of ingredient monopolizing taking place.

I can see where David is coming from with this decision to ensure their pivotal ingredient for their bars and future products' success.

But it is pretty fucked for other brands who's products main value prop is from using EPG to help lower the calories while the taste/texture/volume of food are on point.

I am hoping everyone wins here.

I was skeptical of EPG but imagine a world where we could make recipes with it.

The recipes I would come up with would be insane.

Regardless, the future of food will be a lot of fun and I'll always be sharing my innovations with you 👨🏻‍🍳

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Just me walking around looking like I have half done lip fillers lol.

I took a gnarly shoulder to my mouth when playing basketball the other day and my tooth went through my upper lip.

I am not going to post the pic of what it actually looked like on the inside because it’s gross.

Anyways, on a soft food no spicy diet for now.

I’ll survive but sucks since this will be a week or two till I can eat normal again haha.

Much love and happy cooking,​
Zach

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