Ben Starr

The Ultimate Food Geek

Category: Recipes

  • Whole Grain Low Fat Banana Bread

    My parents raised me on a whole grain diet with NO processed sugars.  I’m talking course whole wheat and cornmeal, brown rice, with honey as the only permitted sweetener.  Needless to say, many of my mom’s dessert recipes, particularly cakes and quick breads, suffered as a result.  The texture was never comparable to recipes made…

  • Pumpkin Apple Gingerbread

    I made this recipe for a demonstration at Le Cordon Bleu’s campus in Scottsdale.  An instructional video is at the bottom of this recipe.  This is a loaf-style gingerbread, with enormous depth of flavor thanks to molasses and coffee in the mix, lightened and brightened with bits of apple, earthy with pumpkin, and spicy with…

  • Cranberry Pumpkin Muffins

    I’m famous for cooking with pumpkin, and I use it all year, not just during the holidays.  This is a recipe that always brings them running.  The sweet spiciness of the pumpkin bread is countered by the tartness of the cranberries. While canned pumpkin is available year-round, fresh cranberries are not.  So I buy about…

  • MasterChef Green Chili Cornbread

    This recipe is adapted from my grandmother’s cast iron skillet cornbread, which is made in true Texas style…course and savory, not cakey and sweet.  I love the flavors of roasted corn and green chilis and onion and cheese in my cornbread, so I overloaded this recipe with good stuff.  I made this on MasterChef, and…

  • Mashed Root Veggies

    Mashed potatoes are tasty, but are almost entirely empty carbs.  I’ve developed this PHENOMENAL recipe for mashed root veggies that tastes WAY better than mashed potatoes, and it’s healthier for you, too. 1 large rutabaga or 2-3 small turnips 1 bag parsnips (these look like white carrots) 3 sweet potatoes 2 potatoes 1 whole bulb…

  • Meemaw’s Cornbread Dressing

    I know it may be traditional to “stuff” the Thanksgiving turkey, but a food scientist will tell you that it can be dangerous to do this.  Stuffing soaks up uncooked turkey juices, and unless you get the stuffing to the right temperature (165F), you risk a harmful buildup of bacteria.  (And you’re never gonna get…

  • Meemaw’s Skillet Buttermilk Cornbread

    My maternal grandmother Meemaw and her mother, Granny Proctor, and her mother, Granny Williams, all used cast-iron skillets to cook the majority of their meals, and they did it right on the top of a wood-fired cast-iron stove.  Mom still makes cornbread in the cast-iron skillets she inherited from Meemaw, who got them from Granny…

  • Benny’s Legendary Cranberry Sauce

    Feed this to your family alongside the Thanksgiving turkey and they will never, ever, ever go back to canned cranberry sauce as long as they live.  This stuff is AMAZING.  Make a double batch, because the leftovers are brilliant served warm or cold over ice cream, as a filling for crepes or on top of…

  • French Onion Soup

    This seems to be everyone’s favorite soup.  From the instant that I posted on Facebook and Twitter tonight that I was making French Onion Soup for dinner, I had over 20 requests for the recipe. In France, one of the first things a chef learns to master is onion soup.  It’s such a simple soup…

  • Caribbean-style Pumpkin Soup

    I was asked to develop a good pumpkin soup recipe for Le Cordon Bleu culinary school, while I was filming cooking demonstrations for them to promote their MasterChef Enthusiast Classes which are geared toward the home cook.  I wanted to develop something new that I had never heard of, and they wanted me to emphasize…