Trisha Yearwood to Host Cooking Show on Food Network
Trisha Yearwood will soon put her culinary skills to work on the small screen. The singer and best-selling cookbook author has been tapped to host a new daytime series for the Food Network for their 2011-12 season. The yet-to-be-titled show will feature the country songstress "inviting viewers into her kitchen for some southern hospitality and traditional family recipes."
Having written two successful cookbooks, 'Georgia Cooking in an Oklahoma Kitchen' and 'Home Cooking With Trisha Yearwood,' with her mother, Gwen, and sister, Beth, as well as cooking for her hubby Garth Brooks and three daughters, the singer certainly knows her way around a mixer and a frying pan.
In fact, two of the kitchen gadgets she cannot live without and feels everyone should have in their home are a really good mixer and a pressure cooker. "A KitchenAid mixer -- something that can really mix things up for you -- because there's a southern recipe for cheese straws in 'Georgia Kitchen,' and you have to have a really strong mixer to do that," says Trisha. "And then a pressure cooker ... a lot of people don't have a pressure cooker because they're afraid to use them because there's all these horror stories of them blowing up and stuff. That really doesn't happen anymore. [laughs] So, for instance when I make mashed potatoes -- which is probably my family's favorite thing I make -- instead of taking half an hour to cook potatoes, you do it in five minutes in a pressure cooker. And when you've got three kids and you've got soccer and homework, that can really save time. I'm always on the soapbox –- buy a pressure cooker, it's safe and it's really good, and it'll make everything go a lot quicker in the kitchen."
Expect to see a lot of the recipes on the new TV series from both of her cookbooks, which she says are pretty simple. "They're very basic. Most of the big exotic spices are salt and pepper," explains Trisha. "They're very easy to make, and it's what we grew up on."
After doing a special in 2008 for Great American Country (GAC), 'Trisha Yearwood: From Our Kitchen to Yours,' the singer was hesitant to host her own cooking show. "We didn't have a host. It's easy for me to answer your questions, but [it's hard] to have to come up with, 'Well, here's our show,'" she recalls. "I watch the shows that are regular, the Martha Stewart, Rachael Ray and Paula Deen shows, and there's a real art to being able to do that, and the time it takes to do it -- just learning how to kind of make it look the way it's supposed to look; definitely singing is a lot easier. My mother, however, was a real natural for the camera. I think maybe she'll have the Yearwood Women cooking show, but not me. [laughs]"
While she may have doubts about her show-hosting abilities, the Georgia native showed how comfortable she is in the kitchen when she held a cooking demonstration at last fall's third annual Food Network New York City Wine and Food Festival, as well as last summer's food and wine festival in Los Angeles.
"I cooked in front of a crowd and just loved it," Trisha told the Boot. "I'm not very serious, as you know, and I opened it up to let people ask questions while I was cooking. I had a great time and it was really fun ... It's a chance to entertain on a different level. Music, of course, is my first love, but I love to cook, too."
Trisha's new cooking series is set to premiere in September 2011 on the Food Network.
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