JP Lambiase
Founder of Americanized
jplambiase.com · Americanized on YouTube · Instagram @jplaughs · LinkedIn
I'm JP. I founded HellthyJunkFood, which grew into one of the largest food channels on YouTube, and I built Americanized to take the pain out of shopping and cooking.
How it started: HellthyJunkFood
In 2013 I started filming copycat fast-food recipes in a kitchen. The idea was right there in the name: make the junk food everybody loves at home, then work out the calories and nutrition facts so you know exactly what you're eating.
Then a Mac n' Cheetos copycat video took off. The channel went from five new subscribers an hour to a hundred inside a day, and it kept going: 2.9 million subscribers, more than 608 million views, over 1,250 videos, and a production studio in downtown Orlando with a team on payroll. McDonald's sponsored us more than once.
An engineer in the kitchen
I'm an engineer by training, with a background in process engineering on the mechanical and aerospace side. That work comes down to one question: where does the process break, and how do you take that pain point out for good?
Calories and nutrition facts were where HellthyJunkFood started. My goal now is bigger: take the pain points out of the entire experience of shopping and cooking, and give you a little more of your time and sanity back. Americanized is where I'm doing that.
What that means on this site
- Timers built into the recipe. Every time in a step is a button, so nothing burns while you're busy with the next one.
- Cook along, hands free. Each step is read out loud and your screen stays awake, so your hands stay in the bowl.
- Use what you already have. Snap your fridge or pantry and see what you can make right now.
- One shopping list for the whole week, sorted by aisle, with what's already in your pantry crossed off.
- Recipes you can make your own. Change the servings or swap an ingredient and the amounts and calories follow.
The site will never be finished. We keep looking for the next mistake a cook can make, a missed step, a wrong amount, a forgotten timer, and design it out.
Where it's going
One day I'd like you to skip the grocery store entirely. The plan is to work with grocery delivery services like Instacart, so your shopping list shows up at your door. Think of a meal kit, except you decide exactly what goes in the box.
How the recipes are made
Every recipe sits next to the version it came from. Each one is adapted from a named source that's credited and linked on the page, and the history is checked against its sources before it goes up. When I've cooked a recipe myself, my kitchen notes appear at the top of it.