Ron Douglas - Delicious Recipes from Your Familys Favorite Restaurants

This cookbook is a compilation of the most beloved restaurant dishes in America based on research and consumer surveys. These recipes generate billions of dollars for the restaurant industry every year. But while everyone enjoys eating out, theres nothing like a home-cooked meal made from scratch. Why not have the best of both worlds? With these secret recipes, you can enjoy your favorite restaurant dishes at home and save money in the process!

To give you a little background, I grew up in a family of people with southern roots who loved to cook. As a kid, I used to be my grandmothers personal assistant, helping her at the grocery store and in the kitchen as we prepared dinner for the family. The best feeling came from the smiles on their faces and the quiet in the room as they enjoyed the meal.

It is no wonder that Im a foodie today. But it wasnt until my wife challenged me to make KFCs famous fried chicken for her that I became hooked on the idea of re-creating restaurant recipes that tasted just like the originals. The first place I went to research recipes was the Internet, which was a frustrating experience at the time. I found lots of recipes that were either incomplete or not even close to the originals. But I also discovered that there were thousands of people who were into recipe cloning and were searching the Internet every day for new secret recipes to try at home. Having been in e-commerce at the time, I thought it would be a great idea to set up a community Web site where these people could share their results and work together to create accurate clone recipes. The Secret Recipe Forum was launched and became the research hub and virtual think tank that inspired this cookbook. Today, RecipeSecrets.net has more than 70,000 recipe cloners and over 179,000 newsletter subscribers.

Each week, I would try to clone a new restaurant recipe and share the results with my members. Needless to say, I became a regular at many of the restaurants and was on a first-name basis with a lot of the servers.

Members of the Web site would also try the recipes and add their feedback and recommendations. As the Web site grew, it became more than just a hobby. Cooking experts and even professional chefs began getting involved with our recipe-cloning movement.

For many people, re-creating restaurant recipes at home was not just a fun way to impress their family and dinner guests, it was also a great way to save money.

HOW MUCH MONEY CAN YOU SAVE?

Studies show that nearly half of all U.S. adults are eating out each day. According to Nielsen Consumer Research:

The restaurant industry in the U.S. is projected to top $558 billion in food and drink sales in 2008, an average of over $1.5 billion a day. Approximately 133 million Americans are food-service patrons on any given day, making the average check size nearly $12 per person. This level of spending is a 13-fold increase in sales since 1970 and today accounts for about 4% of total U.S. GDP. There are nearly 950 thousand places to eat in the U.S., employing over 13 million people. Nearly one in five persons (18%) visits quick-serve restaurants ten or more times per month, and 19% visit sit-down restaurants six or more times per month.

Eating out is typically more expensive than preparing a home-cooked meal because restaurants have to price their food to pay high overhead expenses such as salaries to chefs, managers, and servers, and rent and advertising. By making these dishes at home, you can cut out all the excess costs and prepare each meal to your liking.

The table shows the potential savings per serving for a sampling of ten restaurant dishes featured in this cookbook.

Lets consider the following example of how much you can save over time (assuming an average restaurant bill of $25 and an average at-home cost of $10) if you prepare these dishes at home instead of eating out three times per week:

Approximate savings per week = $45

Approximate savings per month = $180

Approximate savings per year = $2,160