A man re-creates dishes from restaurants like McDonald's, Krispy Kreme, and Red Lobster in his kitchen and spends months on making them perfect
- Australian home cook Rob Nixon has been re-creating recipes from chain restaurants since 2008.
- At the time of writing, Nixon's tutorial for Krispy Kreme glazed doughnuts has nearly 800,000 views on TikTok.
- He also has a series of shows on his YouTube channel, Nicko's Kitchen.
- The father of two told Insider that his best re-creations include the McDonald's Big Mac, Taco Bell's burrito supreme, and Panda Express' orange chicken.
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Australian foodie Rob Nixon has been re-creating popular fast-food and chain restaurant dishes at home for years on YouTube, where he has an online cooking show called Nicko's Kitchen. And now he's giving new life to his older recipes by sharing short videos on TikTok that show users how to re-create the dishes for themselves.
When Nixon shared his recipe for Krispy Kreme doughnuts on TikTok back in January, it became wildly popular with users; at the time of writing, his video has nearly 800,000 views.
Nixon told Insider that the recipe took him more than two months to perfect and that he ate around a dozen of the chain's own doughnuts in the process to make sure he had the texture and flavors right.
Nixon has also shared recipes for popular items like Subway's meatball sub and the McDonald's Big Mac. He said it took a lot of trial and error to perfect his version of the Big Mac sauce, but the recipe that's proved the toughest to master has been KFC fried chicken.
The father of two told Insider that he thinks he nailed the recipe for Taco Bell's burrito supreme and that his Chipotle steak bowl is "spot on."
Some other recipes he says are perfect include his homemade Panda Express orange chicken and Ben and Jerry's cookie dough ice cream.
Nixon told Insider he's been working on re-creating recipes since 2008 and has traveled from Perth, Australia, to the US to get his hands on fast-food menu items he can't get at home
He said he's been to California, New York, Chicago, and Florida all in the name of trying different chain restaurants for ideas, and likened his process of reverse-engineering recipes to "unlocking a code."
"You take what's worked, you change what didn't work, and you do it until you think you've gotten it right," he said.
Since he first started, Nixon has recreated recipes from fast-food joints like Chick-fil-A and In-N-Out. He's also tackled recipes from chain restaurants like the cheddar bay biscuits from Red Lobster.
Nixon said his hope is to help home cooks and their guests create special memories. It's rare someone will remember all the times they went to McDonald's, he said, but they will remember that time someone made them a Big Mac in their kitchen.
He also wants to get people into their kitchens and excited about cooking.
"The endgame for me is to get people reconnected with their farmers market, with their butcher, with their grain grocer [...] I think that's something we've lost," he said. "It's something special we should still hold onto."
You can find his tutorials on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
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