If this year has taught us anything, it’s that the nation is permanently torn between wanting dinner now and wanting dinner that won’t derail the week. Enter Alex Hughes – the NHS-worker-turned-recipe-creator whose “kitchen bangers” have amassed a 1.5 million-strong following and proved, convincingly, that calorie-conscious food doesn’t have to taste like penance.
Her new book, 20 Minute Low-Cal Kitchen Bangers, is essentially a love letter to people who are hungry, busy and frankly bored of being told they can’t have tacos. Everything here lands under 600 calories, hits the table in the time it takes you to scroll TikTok once (fine, twice), and still tastes like something you actually want to eat. Think breakfast burrito bowls stacked with smoky potatoes, lasagne soup that eats like the real thing without the faff, and those crispy chicken snack wraps that the fast-food chains abandoned but Hughes has resurrected – only lighter, crunchier and with more protein.
