Kristen Kish Transcript
Jessie Sheehan:
Hi peeps, you're listening to She's My Cherry Pie, the baking podcast from The Cherry Bombe Podcast Network. I'm your host, Jessie Sheehan. I'm a baker, recipe developer and the author of four baking books. Each Saturday, I'm hanging out with the sweetest bakers around and taking a deep dive into their signature bakes.
I'm super excited about today's show because it's our Thanksgiving episode. I love this holiday so much, and our guest is someone very special in the culinary world, Kristen Kish. Kristen is a chef, a cookbook author, and restaurateur. She won Season 10 of “Top Chef” and is now the host of the popular Bravo cooking competition. How cool is that? Kristen and I talk about how winning "Top Chef" changed her life in unexpected ways, about her new gig which she started earlier this year, and about her memoir, which is coming out this April. We also chat about her snickerdoodles and Texas sheet cake and her dad's excellent trick for drying out bread before using it in stuffing. And lucky us, she shares her family's two-bread stuffing recipe, which I happen to make every year. So when I tell you it's delicious, I know from whence I speak, you don't want to miss any of this, so stay tuned for our chat. If you'd like to follow along, you can find today's recipe at cherrybombe.com.
Today's episode is presented by King Arthur Baking Company. Okay, peeps, you know I'm all about easy-peasy baking, right? That's why I'm absolutely loving King Arthur's brand new bread mix kits. If you're looking to whip up delicious fresh bread in just one hour, King Arthur Baking's new line of bread mix kits has you covered. You can have focaccia, flatbread, pull apart garlic bread, or pretzel bites on the table without any fuss in no time because everything you need, including the yeast, is right in the box. These mixes will definitely have a place in my pantry this season and beyond. Visit kingarthurbaking.com to save 10% on these mixes with code bread.
This episode is presented by Kerrygold. Let's talk for a minute about butter, which is truly one of life's simple pleasures. Beautiful butters like those from Kerrygold are as good as gold to me and all the butter lovers in my life. Kerrygold butter is the most special of them all. It's made with milk from Irish grass-fed cows and has a rich flavor and creamy texture. Thanks to its naturally higher butterfat percentage, this also gives Kerrygold butter that beautiful, natural, golden, yellow color we all know and love. Think about how many simple, delicious moments involve butter making grilled cheese for a loved one. I can hear the butter sizzling in the pan right now, can't you? Slathering butter on an amazing scone or banana bread that you spent your Saturday morning baking, even just passing butter around a lively table. When you get together with friends and family for a meal, there's a whole world of Kerrygold butters for you to discover and enjoy. Learn more at kerrygoldusa.com.
Peeps, guess who's on the cover of Cherry Bombe's holiday issue? It's the one and only Ina Garten. The issue is beautiful and features a special section dedicated to the Barefoot Contessa with heartfelt essays, some of Ina's favorite things and more. What else? Recipes from the season's most exciting cookbooks, including some guests from our show like Paola Velez and Zoë Bakes. All of you Ina fans will love this issue. And the pink cover will look great on your bookshelf or coffee table. It's a snag a copy, head to cherrybombe.com or click the link in our show notes or visit your favorite bookstore or culinary shop to pick up an issue.
Let's chat with today's guest. Kristen, so excited to have you on She's My Cherry Pie and to talk to bread stuffing with you and so much more.
Kristen Kish:
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Jessie Sheehan:
So I really like to start interviews by asking guests about early food memories and influences, and you were born in South Korea and at four months, you were adopted by an American family from the Midwest, but from a very young age you showed an affinity for cooking.
And I read about two amazing early Kristen cooking stories that I would love you to share. First of all, can you tell us about soy sauce, chocolate pudding? And second of all, can you tell us about the kimchi hamburgers?
Kristen Kish:
Yes. So the soy sauce pudding is probably my first memory of being in the kitchen. I don't know how old I was, single digit age, and it coincidentally came about from Thanksgiving and gravy-making. So every year for Thanksgiving, my mom always made a really easy scrappy gravy where she's thickening it with a cornstarch slurry.
And so then I would love it that day of, and then the next morning I wake up and leftovers are my absolute favorite. But somehow that gravy never came out exactly how I remembered it to be. And so as a kid, I didn't understand really the science of why it doesn't really come back together, but I remembered this gravy that would just jiggle like pudding. And I was like, God, this is disgusting.
So you got maybe, I don't know how many months or weeks later, I'm watching cooking shows and I really, I'm craving to get into the kitchen and I'm like, well, I can make pudding because I remember this thing. My mom, the gravy that she puts in the refrigerator overnight and all of a sudden it turns into pudding. I can do that. I can make the chocolate pudding.
Well, we didn't have chocolate, we didn't really have pudding. I'm sure there was not a teaspoon of sugar anywhere to be found, but somehow I made a brown liquid colored by soy sauce. It was probably just mixed with water. And then I thickened it with a cornstarch slurry. I set it, I put it in the refrigerator and my dad came home from work, he took a spoonful, and I was like, "Dad, I made it."
And surely it didn't look like chocolate pudding. I can't imagine it did. But a great dad is one that Jess encourages her kid no matter how nasty it looks sometimes. And so he took a bite, he goes, "It's really good, Kristen." And that was the first I've had, oh my God, something I made can make someone else happy. So had he been like, "Oh man, this is awful." I don't know if at that age I would've bounced back, but that's the soy sauce chocolate pudding.
Jessie Sheehan:
What about the kimchi hamburger, which sounds so delicious.
Kristen Kish:
It really is really something special. I was, I don't know, six, seven. Every time I go back to my childhood, I'm always like six or seven, six or seven feels like the right age. I don't actually remember. But my mom would always want to introduce me to Korean culture in the best ways that she knew how. And so they would have local festivals, Polish festival, German fest, all these things. And so they had this all encompassing Asian fest and I have the air quotes going up.
So listen, at the end of the day, the Korean culture was in this Asian fest and I was pretty dang happy about it. And my mom saw an opportunity, and so she brought me and I remember tasting several different kinds of kimchi. And so it's something that perhaps a Midwestern Michigan born and bred mother might've caught her nose off guard a little bit.
But there's something about it that was intriguing. She was like, "Kristen, you should try this because this is from where you're from." Blah, blah, blah. And I tasted it. I was like, oh my God, this is good. But I remember being so sharp and so pungent and so aggressive that I was like, "Mom." Or I can't remember if I said it out loud, but this idea of putting it on top of a whopper sounded really good because I had whoppers before, they had those rehydrated onions and pickles in the same way that I thought of why I liked that.
I'm like, well, kimchi can also go on top of a burger too. And so then it became this journey for me where I would put kimchi on burgers and I have yet to make a very chefy gourmet version of it because it remains in my childhood, and that's how I always want to remember it and eat it.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love it. So I know that both your grandmothers influenced your love of cooking as they both cooked and your mom's mom also baked, which I do want to talk about. But what about your mom or your dad or your brother? Were any of them like cooks or bakers?
Kristen Kish:
I can't say they were. My mom was a teacher. Dad's an engineer. My brother is eight years older than me, so oftentimes he was out of the house. He was like, we had the age difference where overlap wasn't always happening. And so I can't remember always the gourmet meals. I don't think there were ever any, but I always remember sitting at the dinner table.
Like in a lot of families, you have your seat and you don't deviate from that seat. But the second my brother left the house, I went to his seat. I was like, I want to sit my big brother's chair. But I would always remember a few meals there was my dad would grill and we had baked potatoes, sour cream and dried chives, a salad with iceberg and carrots and cucumbers and ranch dressing and bagged croutons.
My mom would make meatloaf a lot. My dad would make homemade chicken tenders with dijonase, with Miracle Whip and Dijon Mustard. And these are the things that just remind me of my family. They're not fancy, but man, they fed all parts of me as a kid. And I think largely because it was just this moment of uninterrupted time, even if at a young age I was annoyed by it where we'd have to sit at the table and you'd sit and you would eat dinner together, and that's just what you did.
Jessie Sheehan:
Let's take a quick break and we'll be right back. Today's episode is presented by California Prunes, the best kind of prunes out there. I am a big fan of California Prunes for two reasons, they're a great addition to your pantry when it comes to smart snacking and baking. You probably already know that prunes are good for your gut. You might even know that prunes are also good for your bone health. But what you really need to know is that prunes are absolutely delicious in both sweet and savory dishes. But don't just take it from me. Here's what some of the country's top culinary experts have to say. Chef Bronwyn Wyatt of Bayou Saint-Cake says prunes have an earthy whiny richness that pairs beautifully with the tart fresh flavor of berries. Chef Cat Turner from highly likely in L.A. says they are an incredibly versatile ingredient that strike a great balance between sweet and savory. They're incredibly sensual. Ana Castro from Acamaya in New Orleans says prunes have a sultriness to them. They're very rich and like velvet. I like to use prune puree in my baked goods to give them great flavor and also to replace some of the sugar, eggs or fat in the recipe. It's super easy to whip up, just blend prunes and water together and voila. For recipe ideas and more, be sure to check out the California Prunes website at californiaprunes.org. Happy baking and happy snacking.
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Tell us about your paternal grandmother's stuffed cabbage, which I think was one of your favorite dishes. And maybe again, I know you'll say six or seven, but you were younger than 10, standing on a step stool, helping her make that. Can you tell us about that dish?
Kristen Kish:
My parents, every weekend during the fall, well, and also probably all year round, they were Michigan State fanatics. They both went to Michigan State. They've always had big 10 basketball games, football game tickets, and they would go on the weekends. And so, one of my grandmothers, and oftentimes it was my dad's mother who lived closer to the Michigan State Stadium and would be in charge of babysitting.
So I would go over there on a Saturday and she would oftentimes be cooking. It would be for when my parents got done and my aunts and uncles and we'd all gather. She oftentimes made it for my grandpa who passed when I was quite young, but it just became the staple in family celebrations of stuffed cabbage. It was stuffed with pork and beef. She would use Jimmy Dean sausage and then rice, roll it in blanched cabbage leaves, and then cook the whole thing in sauerkraut.
Kimchi adjacent perhaps. But I loved it so much. I loved the smell of sauerkraut all through the house. And she would serve it with thinly shaved cucumbers, soaked in vinegar, and then mixed with sour cream and dill. Oh my God, it's just everything about it. I can still smell her house and the way that it smelled and eating that at her home, but I would stand up on a step stool and I would just watch her. It was a tedious job cooking for that many.
And she would take the heads of cabbage and take off the leaves, steam them, take them off, put them all on kitchen towels all around the kitchen to let them cool off and drain, and then she would start mixing it. I never touched it at all. She didn't let me help her cook, but I would watch the process and then I would just have to wait four hours, which felt like eternity to eat it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Your maternal grandma, I think liked to bake, so I feel like she would make snickerdoodles and maybe even homemade bread. And so I wanted to hear about the bread, if you remember anything about it. And also, were there any other sweet treats or baked goods in general that you remember?
Kristen Kish:
Both my grandmothers actually liked to bake. My paternal grandmother, she was famous for her apple pie. And then my maternal grandmother, her snickerdoodle cookies were by far the greatest thing on the planet. She also made Texas sheet cake for my grandfather.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh my gosh, I love Texas sheet cake.
Kristen Kish:
Yeah, and it was so good. It's just a great chocolate cake. And so she would make that. She would do sugar cookies and stuff for the holidays to let us decorate it, but I think the snickerdoodles and the Texas sheet cake were the two things that I associate her with. The bread, I think, was a lot during my mother's upbringing. I remember having it, but the snickerdoodles and the sheet cake were first and foremost for me.
Jessie Sheehan:
All right, so now I want to jump to the "Top Chef". So you are not only an Emmy nominated host on the show, but you won the 10th season at age 28 in 2012, the second female ever to win. And you've said that the show changes lives, which I can imagine the obvious ways it does. Can you tell us about ways specifically for you that the show changed your life?
Kristen Kish:
Yeah, I think in ways that I wasn't necessarily prepared for. Prior to "Top Chef," I was living my life. I was working in a restaurant, I was doing just fine. I was fine. But I also have always been this crippling social anxiety where sometimes I wouldn't leave my house. If I didn't have to work, I would forever be at home. I know that about myself.
When I went on the show. I think obviously I was going as a chef and I knew possibly in ways that it could change my professional career. But when you are someone that deeply struggled with social anxiety being smashed in a house with 17 other people, scared completely out of my mind out of the idea of judgment and putting myself out there, someone that had a lot of struggle and reckoning with the idea of self-worth.
When you are that person and you go on that show, that challenges every bit of all those pieces of you, you are either going to walk out better or worse because of it. I think it was the right time. I think I was ready for it. I don't know. There are a lot of things coming together that made it an experience that I will never do again. That made me so anxious. I want to throw up every single day, but it was one of the best things to ever happen to me.
Winning aside, professional stuff aside, I learned that I was good at something. I learned that the world didn't hate me. When you hate yourself, you assume everyone else hates you at the same time. Because of all that, and then obviously the outcome and the fan base that happens after that, I realized that I was the one looking at myself wrong and I was like, the world's not looking at me this way, so why am I? And so that started a journey of this deep therapy of loving myself. For me, that's what "Top Chef" was the greatest single gift that it gave to me.
Jessie Sheehan:
That's incredible. Thank you for sharing that with us. So now you're a host on the show, crazy, like 180 degrees. Kind of a loaded question, but I've listened to you talk about it or read. Tell us about replacing Padma. Was that just like, oh my gosh, what am I doing?
Kristen Kish:
Yes, can I describe to you going into "Top Chef" as being a contestant, those things don't go away. That is a lifelong journey of self-worth. So when this job came about, it shook me and jarred me and surprised me to my core because here I am doing great things that I'm so proud of, but none of them were in comparison to someone else. It was like, this is my journey.
And now here I am. And it is unique to the first season, that first handover where she wrapped the season 20, and I was the first person people saw as the host in season 21. And so that pressure that I put on myself was immeasurable. It was unhealthy at points, but I quickly got myself out of that where I was just like, I'm never going to live up to everyone's expectations.
The truth is, I will not live up to everyone's expectations nor will I ever in any of my jobs because people's expectations of you are sometimes, most of the time are unattainable. They don't even know what they're expecting of you. They're just expecting something mind-blowing. Newsflash, you watch "Top Chef" for the chefs, not for the host. Just saying that.
And I say that because if you're so concerned about me and my job you've expect of me, then you maybe they're watching the show for the wrong reason. I'm not sure. So once I started to really connect all the reality of things that were happening, I was able to settle into it, but I think it would be a natural feeling of nerves for anyone to step into anybody's role after that long of a time in such an iconic run.
And when you look at "Top Chef" in the way that I had in the lens of Season 10, it was Tom, Gail, Padma. Never thought that was going to change. And then here I was being part of that change, it took a minute for me to wrap my brain around it.
Jessie Sheehan:
So I want to talk about the memoir, which is coming out in April of 2025, “Accidentally On Purpose.” And I love this, I guess the part of the title, ‘A Memoir of Life So Far,’ such a great title. Tell us why a memoir and why not a cookbook.
Kristen Kish:
So I put out my first cookbook in 2017. It was great. After that, I realized, you've written plenty of books yourself, either sometimes love it or sometimes it can feel a little like a chore. And sometimes you're really good at it and sometimes you have to work to be good at it. I'm the work to have to be good at it.
It's a lot of sitting down, testing recipes, writing, doing all the things, and it's just a lot of brain space and physical time that I didn't have to think about again. And it wasn't until two years ago, I don't know, this could be one of those moments where I'm like, six or seven, I don't know. I don't know. Not long ago I signed the deal with my publisher while I was in Wisconsin filming my first season. So it wasn't that long ago.
And so someone reached out to my literary agent and said, "Hey, is Kristen interested in writing a memoir?" And so then she calls me, she's like, "Are you interested in writing a memoir?" I was like, "How much do I have to say?" She's like, "Well, I think you have a lot to say." I was like, okay. It took a minute to, again, here's the self-worth thing. It's like, am I good enough? Do I have enough to say to share that with the world? I'm also like, I'm 40. A memoir, this feels also really soon.
But when I really think back to my life, all the things that got me to where I am and how I can sometimes step out of my body and see how other people see me, I do have stuff to say and I have a lot of things that I feel like can resonate not just to culinary world, but just being human in general.
I was like, all right, well sure, let's entertain it. So I got a writer who I had worked with before. We wrote a proposal, we shopped it around and newsflash, it took a long time to get sold. No one wanted it. I don't know, maybe it didn't have enough gossip or drama, all this stuff. My life is dramatic enough. I don't need to make more dramatic. Life is dramatic in general.
So we put it on hold because it really wasn't going anywhere. And then a woman from Little Brown, her name's Vivian Lee and I will forever be grateful to her. She wanted a call and I said, "Well, listen, all these people have passed and I can assume why they passed, but I'm not sure." And she was like, "Well, send me the proposal." So I sent it to her. She read it and she was like, "I think people are passing because of XYZ."
We had this very honest conversation. And so I rewrote the proposal. She was like, "There it is". She was like, "I don't know what it was, but there was this missing wire." And so she was like, "That's it." I think maybe I got a little bit more vulnerable with myself. But she was like, "I love it."
And I said, "Just so you know, it's not going to be dropping names. I have plenty of people that have done me wrong, that are horrible human beings that I could probably throw under the bus, but I'm not going to because that's not the point of the story. The point of the story is the lessons learned in all of those moments of challenge."
And she said, "I don't want to know." She was like, "You don't have to." She was like, "You write it how you want to write it. There'll be natural highs and natural lows and great storytelling and moments in your life where things worked and things didn't work, and this is how you're going to live and tell your story."
She said, "Ultimately, it's your name, your story out there for the rest of time." And I was like, "Okay." And that was it. I ended up going with Little Brown and Vivian Lee is my editor and she let me write the book how I wanted to write the book. There are things that I've learned in my life and one of them is I am very decisive and I know what works for me and I know what is right for me. That's a very, very clear thing and it has been for quite some time. And so I'm so proud for this book to come out there.
Jessie Sheehan:
And was she one of those moments where you just knew, you were like, this is the person who needs to buy my book and I will write this book. This person will edit it for me?
Kristen Kish:
Yes. She took that second pass at the proposal and she was like, "This is it." She was like, "This is it." And I was like, okay, great. That felt really good how we wrote that. So I can do that for 18 chapters or however long it is.
Jessie Sheehan:
So I imagine writing a memoir, it's going to be both super cathartic. You get to kind of move through and work through the good stuff, the bad stuff, but also so cathartic, positive, but also painful. Is it hard? Did it feel like stirring up stuff and then you had to put it into words? Or by the time you were writing, you'd stirred that stuff so you were ready to write it down?
Kristen Kish:
It's a lesson in forgiveness when you start digging up these things. I've reconciled a lot with the things that I had to forgive myself for because of that, because it's been years and years and years. It doesn't feel painful, but it definitely creates a little bit of like, oh my God, oh God. You throw your head down, you're like, damn it. I did these things.
And largely a lot of my forgiveness wasn't a bad, I didn't make horrible, horrible decisions, but where I had to give myself the most forgiveness and grace was when I was dealing with all of the things and the pain that I had and the pain and the shame I had internally for several reasons how I treated my parents, the two people that I would do anything for always that I had to forgive and reconcile that part of my upbringing and that point in my life where I took it out on the people I love the most. And that was the hardest one.
There's a section in one restaurant where it was my hardest professional time, but God, so many lessons learned in that I realized I had more therapy work to do from that point of my life because as I started to talk about it, my writer was like, "Are you angry?" I was like, "Angry? I haven't let it go yet. I'm angry." And so I've done a lot of work since writing that. So some of it was going back and looking at my growth and some of it was looking back and saying, oh gosh, I need to do a little bit more work on that right now.
Jessie Sheehan:
Have your parents read it or are they going to wait until it's in print and does that make you anxious, the idea of them reading it or?
Kristen Kish:
No, not at all.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, good.
Kristen Kish:
It does not bring me any anxiety for this to go anywhere, for strangers to read. I don't know. I think it's important. I think it's important for a lot of reasons and hopefully, like I had said before, it resonates not just with chefs. It's a book about being human and the things that we go through. No, if there's any two people that know, well, three my wife now, but if there's any three people that really know me, it's my mom, my dad, and my brother. There's nothing in there that my mother, she might be like, "Oh my God, Kristen, why are you telling that story?" Kind of thing.
But no, there was a section actually in the book and when we talk about forgiveness is that I wrote this scene that I remember so vividly that I carried up until my mid to late thirties. I was like, I never talked to my mom about it. I was like, gosh, I don't want to bring it up. And so when I was writing the book, I said, "Mom, do you remember this time, this moment?"
And then she was like, what are you talking about? And I explained the whole thing to her, what happened. I call it a scene, but very real scene. And she goes, "Well, Kristen, you were just figuring out life and it's okay." In that moment, I don't know if there's been any greater therapy in my entire life. She was like, "I remember it, but I don't remember it the way you remember it." And she was like, "It's okay." She was like, "I don't remember feeling the way you thought I felt." And I was like a million pounds of bricks just lifted off my shoulders.
Jessie Sheehan:
I think now for the third time in our interview, I've gotten chills. I can't wait for the memoir, but that's so beautiful and important and I can so relate to that kind of mom or parent stuff where we see it one way, it didn't impact them the way we thought it did. We are the ones carrying it, that really resonates.
Kristen Kish:
And that's a lesson in bringing it up, talking about it, like bringing it to the surface and not completely just assuming you don't want to bring it up because you feel shame around it. So that was huge.
Jessie Sheehan:
I always say that about people who are like, I mean, that's great talking to your mom or a friend, someone in your life. But I also always think that about talk therapy because people can be really negative about it and I get it. It doesn't work for everyone.
On the other hand, there is something I think physiological about saying words about something that is hard that you're holding onto. Saying those words and letting them out is a gift. It can make you feel better, the other person, whatever it is, it's just saying the words out loud can get rid of some of that pain or whatever it is.
Kristen Kish:
It's like in the same way that you write to journal, you just got to sometimes move it out of your space.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. Okay. From talk therapy and memoirs, to Kish family two-bread stuffing, I love all of our transitions here. All right, so I am actually a huge fan of this stuffing. I make it every Thanksgiving, I can't remember what year it was originally published in Food and Wine.
Kristen Kish:
2018.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. So then for the last, this will be the sixth year I make the stuffing. I'm absolutely in love with it. I can't wait to talk about it with you. So first of all, was this always part of your Thanksgiving meal growing up or was this a new addition that your mom came up with?
Kristen Kish:
For as long as I remember, this is the stuffing from the table and she learned it from her mom. And from her mom, I don't know where my grandmother learned it from or where evolved and adapted over time. But from my grandmother to my mom, I think the only difference is the uses of fresh herbs over dried herbs sometimes.
But for the most part, it is exactly the same. And I have tried to evolve it even further. Just being a professional chef and doing things a lot more from scratch, sometimes it just doesn't turn out the way that I want it to, and I want it to be exactly the same as how I had it growing up.
Jessie Sheehan:
Well, what I love about it, and obviously we're going to talk about it, I just love its simplicity. It is not a ton of ingredients and yet it packs such a delicious and perfect punch. So I assume when you were little you liked it. You weren't like, oh no mom stuff. You loved it. Good, good, good.
You didn't help cook it because you weren't really cooking until your 20s. You were just enjoying it. And then also, I just have to ask, was there special Thanksgiving desserts as well as this stuffing that were always on the table? And do you mind, just because it is a baking podcast, will you just mention a dessert or two before we jump into the stuffing?
Kristen Kish:
Yes. So there were several, a lot of them not homemade. So they were bought from DNW, which was the local grocery store where I grew up. There'd always be a pumpkin pie, cool whip of course, depending on which side of the family we were with, there would be either this snickerdoodle cookies or a sheet cake that were cut into little bites, almost like brownies.
The other side there was always apple pie. The apple pie and the sheet cake and the cookie is always varied, but store-bought pumpkin pie with cool whip that I liked semi-frozen was the best. I don't love pumpkin pie now, probably because I had too much store-bought, but cool whip remains a number one.
Jessie Sheehan:
Well, can I just say, first of all, I never have liked pumpkin pie and sorry, haters, just not my thing to this day. And again, sorry, haters, love cool whip and love it frozen. It is so good frozen, literally out of the tub.
Kristen Kish:
How does oil be that texture?
Jessie Sheehan:
It's incredible.
Kristen Kish:
It's wild.
Jessie Sheehan:
It's incredible. All right. Your mom first made this blended bread stuffing recipe, or maybe her mom did. It's part white bread. It's part cornbread. As a compromise between Michigan, which is like a white bread stuffing kind of place and Texas, which is a cornbread stuffing kind of place, did your mom have family from Texas? Is that why she was combining the Texas and the Michigan?
Kristen Kish:
Yeah. My grandfather was from Texas.
Jessie Sheehan:
Gotcha.
Kristen Kish:
So even though she grew up in Michigan and whatever, he was brought up in Texas and he always had this little twang that I remember. But the cornbread was the nod to my grandfather that my grandmother influenced in that stuffing.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we're going to heat the oven to 350 and this stuffing, which is one of the reasons I love it so much. It makes a lot. So we're going to grease two 13 by nine inch baking dishes. We're going to grease them with butter. So the recipe is a hundred percent for a crowd, or I have been known to make it this big and just freeze one and have it later.
Why can't you have stuffing on another day that's not Thanksgiving? A spoiler alert, you can. Just wondering, when you're making it, are we talking just like a metal nine by 13? Is it in a ceramic dish?
Kristen Kish:
Growing up, my mom would use everything because like you said, it creates a lot. So she would brummage into the cabinet and sometimes it would be the glass Pyrex and then we'd have an aluminum one, and then we'd have a different darker glass one because you use what you have. And so she would just pull whatever she had and then some of it does go into the bird.
Jessie Sheehan:
So then we're going to heat some extra virgin olive oil in a large skillet. Are we thinking cast iron skillet really any skillet?
Kristen Kish:
If you're asking Kristen Kish, the chef, yes. If you're asking Judy Kish, the mother, I don't know what it was.
Jessie Sheehan:
Love the distinction. So we're heating the oil over medium high heat. We're going to add some finely chopped yellow onions, some finely chopped celery. We're going to cook stirring occasionally. What are we stirring with? Should I picture like a flexible spatula? A wooden spoon?
Kristen Kish:
Again, Kristen Kish, I'm probably using a wooden spoon or a great stainless steel spoon in my repertoire. If you're asking my mother, it was probably some not great heatproof, black coated something or another. Or she had these giant serving spoons, stainless steel serving spoons that were too big for the pan. She would be using those.
Jessie Sheehan:
This was going to be my new, I want to do this. Every podcast I do the recipe, I'm like your mom's point of view and your point. It's hilarious. Okay, so we're stirring up a variety of tools will work until softened but not browned. And this is just like an example of my cooking ignorance. I'm a baker at less than a cook. Why don't we want it to brown?
Kristen Kish:
Because Judy Kish didn't brown it. It was sweated to where once it was done being baked, the celery still had texture. So you didn't want to take it so far.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. And we're going to do this for about 10 minutes. Then we're going to add some finely chopped sage and some grated garlic. Are we grating on a microplane?
Kristen Kish:
Kristen Kish? Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes. And we're going to cook stirring often until fragrant. About two minutes now we're going to transfer. Also, can I just say, mid-recipe just talking about is getting me excited. But the other thing I love about this recipe is it doesn't have a lot of ingredients, but it's also so simple. The only complicated thing, and you do not have to do this is, at least what I do, maybe you do, maybe your mother, Judy, maybe Judy Kish didn't.
But the only thing you might have to make and you don't have to is cornbread to go inside of it. But still, anyway, I'm just getting excited so I to interrupt myself. But anyway, we're transferring all the cooked veggies to a large bowl glass metal. Does it even really matter?
Kristen Kish:
My mom is a teacher and so she would always have to be sometimes chaperone to these high school dances. And for some reason, we had these giant like restaurant-sized stainless steel mixing bowls that stuffed above the cabinet, above the refrigerator that only came out during holidays. So we had this abnormally, appropriately sized stainless steel mixing bowl.
Jessie Sheehan:
Love and I love it has a story. So we're transferring the cooked veggies to this large bowl that we got from the top of the fridge. We're going to add cornbread torn into one inch pieces. Like I said, I make my own. Assume you do too. Would your mom have made her own or would she have purchased it?
Kristen Kish:
Nope. She would make her own, but she would make it from a box.
Jessie Sheehan:
Like a jiffy situation?
Kristen Kish:
Jiffy, a hundred percent. That's exactly what she did.
Jessie Sheehan:
Love, love. But anyway, just for the listeners, again, the beauty of the recipe is making your own cornbread, which as we know, cornbread is easy to make, is the only part of this recipe that's even remotely time-consuming. That's why one of the reasons I love it so much, but I think I've said that now like 12 times. Okay, so then we're going to also add some sandwich bread. Would that have been like Wonder or Pepperidge Farm? What would Judy have used?
Kristen Kish:
It would be the equivalent of a Pepperidge farm back in, I don't even remember what brand we would use, but just a white sliced sandwich
Jessie Sheehan:
Bread. Yeah. Nice. So we have our sandwich bread. We're tearing that into one inch pieces as well. We're adding some finely chopped flat leaf parsley, kosher salt and pepper stirring until combined. Then we're going to gradually stir in chicken stock. Would Judy have made her own or would she have purchased it?
Kristen Kish:
No, she would've purchased it and it was back in the day when it always came in cans, not boxes.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yep, yep. I won't lie, when I make this, I'm not usually using a homemade stock. It's still very delicious. I'm sure Kristen is using a homemade stock.
Kristen Kish:
Most of the time, yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes. Okay, that's okay. We have Judy, Jesse and Kristen all making stuffing. We are going to have a stuffing bake off. So gradually stirring in our chicken stock until the bread is evenly moistened. Then we're going to scrape the mixture into our baking dishes. Bake until hot and lightly browned about 30 minutes. And ta-da, delicious. Peeps, I am telling you I make this stuffing. It is so delicious.
Kristen Kish:
I'm going to give you pro-tip too.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh yeah, please. Any pro-tips.
Kristen Kish:
So there's two. There's one that my mother would do and she would take all the white bread because we don't plan ahead time, mise en place isn't really a thing that we did when I was a kid, but so the night of everyone's scrambling, my dad's trying to fix the Turkey, things are happening, and she would put this plastic tablecloth over the dining room table and over then this section of our kitchen island, and she would lay out the cornbread and all the white bread and my dad would put fans on it to try to dry it out because it does work really well if it's slightly stale.
So if you can plan ahead, stale bread works even better. It soaks up more of that chicken stock and so it'd just be lined all over the house just like fans and bread. It was such a bizarre thing, but something that makes me happy at the same time, I'm like, why didn't we learn after how many years to start putting the bread out days before and let it get stale, not the night before with fans? Anyways.
Jessie Sheehan:
I also love the ingenuity of your dad with the fan.
Kristen Kish:
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Love that. It was panic. It was panic in the Kish household, getting that bread stale. So stale bread is a pro-tip. You don't have to, but it works sometimes even better.
And then also one of my personal favorites, and this is adapted as Kristen Kish, the professional chef adult, is that, I don't know if in the recipe you put pads of butter on it before it goes in the oven.
Jessie Sheehan:
No. Oh my gosh.
Kristen Kish:
Pads of butter on it. Like you would like a pie or an apple pie before you put the top crust on and then you bake it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh my god. Mind blown. I'm a hundred percent doing that. Thank you so much for chatting with me today, Kristen, and I just want to say that you are my cherry pie.
Kristen Kish:
Oh, you're so sweet. Thank you.
Jessie Sheehan:
That's it for today's show. Thank you to King Arthur Baking Company, Kerrygold, California Prunes, and Ghirardelli for supporting this episode. Don't forget to follow She's My Cherry Pie on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen and tell your pals about us. You can find today's recipe at cherrybombe.com. She's My Cherry Pie is a production of The Cherry Bombe Podcast Network. Thank you to CityVox Studio in Manhattan. Our producers are Kerry Diamond, Catherine Baker, and Jenna Sadhu. Thank you so much for listening to She's My Cherry Pie and happy baking.