Giving Mama’s foods a healthy makeover

Bobby Deen’s trimmed-down Crispy Oven-Fried Chicken

Hands on: 15 minutes

Total time: 45 minutes, plus time for soaking

Serves: 4

Bobby Deen says the key to tender, delicious fried chicken is a good long soak in buttermilk. As it turns out, the same holds true for this roasted version of fried chicken. What you’ll end up with is moist, delicious chicken on the inside, with a crunchy, crispy coating.

1/3 cup 1 percent buttermilk

1/4 cup finely chopped fresh chives

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

1/4 teaspoon hot sauce

4 bone-in chicken breasts (about 12 ounces each)

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1/2 cup dried breadcrumbs

1. In a medium bowl, whisk together the buttermilk, chives, mustard and hot sauce. Remove the skin from the chicken breasts, add the chicken to the bowl, and let it soak for at least 30 minutes or overnight.

2. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Spray a rimmed baking sheet with cooking spray.

3. Remove the chicken from the marinade and season it with salt and pepper. Place the breadcrumbs in a wide, shallow bowl. Dip the chicken into the breadcrumbs and toss well to coat. Place the chicken on the prepared baking sheet. Spray the chicken generously with cooking spray and bake until it is just cooked through, 25 to 30 minutes.

The before and after

Before: 40 grams of fat and 797 calories

With this recipe: 10 grams of fat and 342 calories

Get cheesy

To make this dish just a little more decadent without adding too many more calories, Bobby Deen likes to grate some Parmesan or Pecorino Romano into the breadcrumbs. About 2 tablespoons should give you a nice cheesy flavor in your crust.

Bobby Deen grew up on the Southern comfort food his mother (star chef and TV personality Paula Deen) is famous for — fried chicken, deep-fried macaroni and cheese and of course, the Ooey Gooey Butter Layer Cake.

Full of flavor, butter and cream, the food was also full of fat and calories.

About 12 years ago, Bobby Deen was just 30 years old but found himself “not feeling so good and not looking so good.” He was 25 pounds overweight, working long hours at the family’s Savannah restaurant The Lady & Sons.

So Deen returned to the gym for regular workouts and started tweaking his mother’s calorie-laden recipes. He took on his mother’s chicken potpie and cheeseburger casserole and even boldly challenged his mother’s signature Ooey Gooey Butter Layer Cake.

“I am a Southern guy and I love my heritage and my food, and didn’t want to turn my back on it,” said Deen, who is now 42. “But that doesn’t mean you have to be eating out-of-control fattening stuff.”

So Deen, who hosts the Cooking Channel show “Not My Mama’s Meals,” now has a new cookbook featuring slimmed-down versions of some of his mother’s most applauded recipes. The book is called “From Mama’s Table to Mine” (Ballantine, $22). Written with food writer Melissa Clark, the book hits shelves this month with 120 recipes of Southern-food classics — all under 350 calories. He even has a light version of his mother’s Ooey Gooey Butter Layer Cake. His version? Gooey Less-Butter Layer Cake.

At 7 p.m. Feb. 19, Deen will take part in a discussion and book signing at the Atlanta History Center. Tickets are $10.

He said the keys to calorie-slimming include baking instead of frying, swapping out oil for applesauce, using fresh herbs and paying attention to portion size. He also started using more egg whites instead of the whole egg, and he found low-fat corn flakes give chicken and vegetables a crunchy, fried-like coating, even when he’s roasting the meat and vegetables.

“If you look at recipes, you see it calling for four cups of sugar and a stick of butter, and you ask yourself: Is that really necessary?” Deen said.

With colorful photographs and an upbeat tone, Deen’s recipes include Yes You Can Mac and Cheese and Warm-You-Up Cinnamon Streusel Oatmeal. Recipes include before-and-after calorie and fat breakdowns. A cornbread recipe, for example, goes from 7 grams of fat to just 1. And that Yes You Can Mac and Cheese shrinks the creamy dish from a whopping 30 grams of fat and 584 calories per serving to a more reasonable 7 grams of fat and 293 calories.

Tiffany Barrett, clinical dietitian at Emory University, agrees that healthy Southern fare is not an oxymoron, and she said little changes over time can add up to big health benefits.

“A big part of it is our palate and what we are used to: the fat and salt,” said Barrett, who said one of her favorite ways to flavor foods is with fresh herbs. “And it takes time to reduce that in our diet. I am not big on making drastic changes.”

In many cooking demonstrations, Barrett shows tricks such as adding more garlic and onion for flavoring to lower the desire for butter and salt, and she uses Greek yogurt instead of sour cream with potato dishes, soups and smoothies.

In many ways, dialing back the fat and calories has become a family affair for the Deens.

Paula Deen herself, the queen of high-calorie Southern fare, is eating a healthier diet after revealing a year ago she has Type 2 diabetes. Deen drew the ire of many in the health and culinary worlds for keeping her diagnosis private for three years, all the while she was cooking on TV dishes loaded with butter and bacon — the kinds of foods that can contribute to obesity and increase the risk for developing Type 2 diabetes. She also went public about her disease after lining up a deal with a diabetes drug company.

Paula Deen, still one of the most beloved food personalities in the world, recently announced she has shed 40 pounds, and she credits eating smaller portions and more vegetables as well as eating more baked chicken and less fried.

Not every low-fat overhaul in Bobby Deen’s new cookbook was easy. By using a combination of nonfat and low-fat cream cheese and fat-free Greek yogurt in a bittersweet chocolate cheesecake, he shrunk the calories from 562 to 248 and the fat from 38 grams to 12. He said he could have lowered the fat and calorie content more — but at too much of a sacrifice to taste.

“At the end of the day, I wanted the food to taste good, and a cheesecake is a cheesecake,” Deen said. “And if you want a dessert, you want a dessert.”

Deen, who was born in Albany and moved to Savannah as a teenager, credits his mother with teaching him how to cook calorie-rich classic Southern dishes, but also encouraging him to tweak recipes.

“She always told me the first time you make a dish, follow the recipe; after that, do what you want,” said Deen, who said he now is more lean, fit and healthy at 175 pounds.

His mother told him the kitchen is the heart of the home, which is true, Deen said. “But after I started to embrace a more active lifestyle and got back into the gym, it changed my relationship with food.”