Top TV chef Tom Kerridge drops incredible 12st after ditching booze on dopamine diet where happiness is the main ingredient - we reveal three of his new recipes here (2024)

SUPERCHEF Tom Kerridge is half the man he was after dropping 12st with his new diet where happiness is the main ingredient.

When the Michelin-starred TV favourite hit 40, he realised the lifestyle of being a top chef was killing him.

He was sinking 15 pints a night and heading towards 30st.

The Great British Menu winner said: “In our business it becomes an obsession to party, play hard, drink hard and eat rubbish food.

“In an industry full of party animals and hard-drinking mentalists who’ll stay up drinking all night, I’d built a reputation as the last man standing. The biggest drinker in an industry full of big drinkers.”

Father-of-one Tom realised things needed to change and researched all sorts of diets, from calorie counting to Atkins-style regimes.

Eventually he developed his revolutionary Dopamine Diet — a low-carb, high-protein diet with a twist.

In it, the proteins are chosen to trigger the release of the “happy hormone” dopamine.

It is the focus of Tom’s latest book, where his “dopamine heroes” include dairy products such as double cream and yoghurt, high-quality meat including beef, chicken and turkey, along with chocolate, coffee and vanilla.

The Wiltshire-born chef shed his weight over three years and admitted it was difficult to give up carbs and sugar at first.

Tom, 43, who now weighs just under 18st, said: “It was terrible, absolutely horrible.

“I had headaches and the sweats but ­gradually I realised how much I hated the sugar spikes and all those highs and lows.

“I realised that rather than missing other things, eating just protein was making me feel pretty good and very energetic.

“I was enjoying it. You can’t do a diet that makes you feel bad.”

Instead of steak and chips, Tom will tuck into two steaks. He will eat eggs and bacon for breakfast and feast on joints of roasted meat with crispy skin.

But he credits much of the joy of his diet on an unlikely snack.

He said: “Pork scratchings contain no ­carbohydrate, they’re all protein.

“I’ve lost the best part of 11st while eating pork scratchings. That’s got to be the perfect diet, surely?”

Tom, who owns the two Michelin-starred The Hand And Flowers restaurant in Marlow, Bucks, with wife Beth, also knocked booze on the head and has not touched a drink in more than three years.

He said: “If I tried to have half a pint now, I know that straight away I would just be back on it.”

Tom also claims his new lifestyle has helped him adjust to life as a father after the birth of his son Acey, now 14 months old.

He said: “Being a dad helps you to keep focused on staying healthy.

“You are conscious of what you are eating and what you are doing.

“Although I don’t mind coming last in the sports day race, I want to be just last. I don’t want to be left miles behind.”

Here, we present three mouth-watering but low-carb recipes from Tom’s latest bestselling book.

Shepherd's pie with cauliflower topping

Serves: 6. Carb count: 22g per person

YOU NEED:

800g good-quality minced lamb

8 merguez sausages

Vegetable oil, for cooking

2 onions, diced

4 garlic cloves, grated

1 tbsp fennel seeds

2 tsp curry powder

2 tsp cracked black pepper

1 tsp ground cinnamon

4 celery sticks, strings off, diced

500ml strong beef stock

Dash of Worcestershire sauce

Sea salt, freshly ground black pepper

For the topping:

2 cauliflowers, cut into large florets

50g butter, softened

70ml double cream

200g strong blue cheese, crumbled

METHOD:

Preheat oven to 200C/fan 180C/Gas 6. Put lamb mince in large roasting tin and roast, stirring 3 or 4 times to break up mince, for 35-40 minutes until dark brown.

Bake merguez sausages in another roasting tin, alongside the lamb, for 10-15 minutes until cooked through.

Tip mince into a colander to drain. Let sausages cool, cut into chunks.

Pour a splash of oil into a large saucepan and warm over medium-low heat.

Add onions and garlic and sweat gently, stirring from time to time, for 10-15 minutes until soft.

Stir in fennel seeds, curry powder, cracked pepper and cinnamon, stirring for 2-3 minutes.

Stir in celery and browned mince.

Pour in stock and add Worcestershire sauce and some salt.

Bring to boil, lower heat and simmer for 1-1½ hours, until thick and rich. Take off heat and allow to cool.

Preheat oven to 190C/fan 170C/Gas 5. Stir sausages into cooled lamb, spoon into shallow ovenproof dish, about 30x22cm and 8cm deep. Level surface with back of a spoon.

For the topping, bring a pan of lightly salted water to the boil, add cauliflower florets and simmer until tender – about 5 minutes.

Drain cauliflower and place in a food processor with the butter, cream and some salt and pepper.

Blend until smooth. Add blue cheese and blitz.

Spoon the cauliflower topping evenly over the lamb and sausage mixture. Stand the dish on an oven tray and bake in the oven for 30–35 minutes until the meat mixture is bubbling and the topping is starting to brown. Serve immediately.

Piri piri chicken & little gem salad

Serves: 4. Carb count: 10g per person

YOU NEED:

1 large free-range chicken (about 2kg)

For the chilli paste:

2 dried hot red chillies

100ml red wine vinegar

6 fresh red chillies, roughly chopped

6 garlic cloves, peeled

2 tsp flaky sea salt

2 tsp smoked paprika

1 tsp dried oregano

1 tsp dried thyme

1 tsp erythritol (sugar replacement)

Juice of 2 lemons

For the salad:

2 little gem lettuces, leaves separated

½ cucumber, halved, deseeded, sliced

6 pickled green chillies, roughly chopped

½ bunch mint, leaves picked from stems

½ bunch of coriander, leaves picked from the stems

2 tbsp salad cream

Sea salt, freshly ground black pepper

METHOD: Remove skin from chicken: Work fingers under skin, over flesh, until it is loose enough to pull off.

Score chicken all over, making cuts about 1cm deep. For chilli paste, put dried chillies in a small saucepan with wine vinegar and bring to the boil.

Remove from heat, leave to cool and allow chillies to rehydrate.

Put fresh chillies, garlic and rehydrated chillies and the soaking vinegar into a food processor and blitz.

Add salt, paprika, oregano, thyme, erythritol and lemon juice and blitz to a paste.

Spread over chicken and massage in. Put chicken in a roasting tin, cover with clingfilm and put into the fridge.

Leave to marinate for at least 4 hours.

Preheat oven to 140C/fan 120C/Gas 1. Unwrap chicken and cook for 2½ hours.

Turn oven up to 220C/fan 200C/Gas 7 and cook for a further 25-30 minutes, until a golden crust forms on outside of chicken.

Remove from the oven and leave to rest for 20 minutes.

While chicken is resting, put all the salad ingredients in a bowl and toss, seasoning with salt and pepper.

Carve chicken and serve with the salad. Also good served cold.

Steak, red onion and tomato salad

Serves: 2. Carb count: 14g per person

YOU NEED:

4 plum tomatoes, thinly sliced

1 small red onion, halved and thinly sliced

½ tsp cracked black pepper

Vegetable oil, for cooking

2 bavette steaks (250g each)

20g butter

Juice of ½ lemon

1 ball of mozzarella (about 125g), drained and diced

½ bunch of basil (about 15g), large stems discarded

2 tbsp roughly chopped sun-dried tomatoes

1 red chilli, thinly sliced, seeds and all

1 tbsp best-quality balsamic vinegar

¾ tbsp extra virgin olive oil

Flaky sea salt

25g Parmesan cheese, to finish

METHOD:

Arrange the sliced tomatoes on a large serving plate.

Scatter over the red onion, sprinkle with half of the cracked black pepper and season with salt to taste.

Heat a splash of oil in a frying pan over a medium-high heat.

Season the steaks with salt and the remaining cracked pepper and place them in the hot pan.

Add the butter and let it brown and colour the steaks well. This will take 4-5 minutes.

Flip the steaks over, add the lemon juice and cook, basting the meat with the lemony butter, for 1-2 minutes.

Lift the steaks out of the frying pan on to a warm plate and leave to rest in a warm place for 10 minutes.

Drain off any liquid from the tomato plate.

Scatter the mozzarella, basil leaves, sun-dried tomatoes and chilli over the tomatoes.

Slice the beef against the grain and arrange it over the tomato salad.

Pour over any juices that have accumulated on the steak plate too.

Mix the balsamic vinegar and olive oil together and drizzle all over the salad.

Grate over the Parmesan just before serving.

Bavette, sometimes called skirt steak, has a fantastic flavour and is great value for money. But it can be tough if you overcook it, so make sure you keep it nice and pink.

Of course, you can swap the bavette for sirloin or rib eye if you prefer.

- Tom Kerridge’s Dopamine Diet (Absolute Press, £20, hardback). Photography © Cristian Barnett.