Category: Recipes
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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Potato Onion Soup
Potato leek soup is really one of the most delicious yet simple things on earth. But we can’t always find leeks year round, and they’re typically pretty expensive. AND, they can be downright impossible to clean, with all the grit that accumulates between their layers. (And when you wash out that grit, you wash away…
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Curried Pumpkin Soup
Soup is my favorite food. Pumpkin is my favorite ingredient. So naturally, I love pumpkin soups. Here is a foundational pumpkin soup recipe that I make all year long, and people can’t get enough of it. I first had this soup on a cruise ship in 1998, which is really the first time my pallate…
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Tom Kha Gai (Thai coconut lemongrass soup)
This is my favorite soup. From the first moment I tasted this soup in Thailand, I was dumbfounded by the flavors. It was so rich, so spicy, so tangy. Every time I eat it, I’m reminded of the time I was stranded in a cave in Thailand with my friend Ricky and two other backpackers…