November 16, 2021 • 27 mins
In this episode, tune in to hear all of the expert Thanksgiving tips that Bobby has previously only offered to close friends and family. Learn about which types of lists you should make, how to think about preparation, and even how to take your thanksgiving to a new level with a themed menu.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
All right, guys, welcome to Always Hungry from My Heart Radio.
My name is Bobby Flay and I'm here with my
daughter and co host, and I'm always hungry. Sophie and
I gather around my stove to cook together. Well, you cook,
I asked the questions, and eat the food. If does
any food left, you come to the table together to
share a meal, connect as a family, and tell the
stories that matter to us. Okay, we're talking about my
(00:27):
favorite day of the year. Thanksgiving is your favorite day
of the year, undisputed favorite day of the year. I
didn't know that about you. Seriously, Yeah, I really didn't
know that. Oh I wake up hungry and Thanksgiving and
if I'm hungry, that's a good day for me. And
Thanksgiving is the super Bowl of chefs. We have to
(00:47):
you gotta brandt a bran. Yeah, you gotta start early, Yes,
so early. And you know last year pandemic at three
people including myself. Usually it's thirty to forty people and
pay for them. I don't even know him. That's not true.
But people like you know, people know people are you know,
(01:09):
expect to get invited to my Thanksgiving That get invited
every year, And I have it in New York. Sometimes
I have it in the Hampton's. I've had it in
Los Angeles. You've had it in your restaurants. So here's
the way I approach Thanksgiving. I love the turkey dinner.
I love the Thanksgiving dinner. And every single year, while
I'm making the dinner, while I have the turkeys in
(01:30):
the oven, turkeys, we'll get to that in a second,
I think to myself, I'm going to do this a
few times this year, not during Thanksgiving, and it never happens.
What well, who goes and buys turkey when it's not
a Thanksgiving? I know, That's what I'm saying. I can't
believe you even kid yourself of that. Well, because you
should do it, because it's a really fun meal, but
(01:51):
it's a lot. It's exhausting. Yeah, it's exhausting, but but
I actually loved indulging in it. Yeah, I mean, your
Thanksgivings are iconic, and I am so appreciative now of
kind of your own variations of classic dishes. But I
remember when I was younger, I didn't like that, you know,
like what that you you wouldn't just do like everything
(02:13):
really classic Thanksgiving style, Like I did not like when
you switched it up. And I don't even know if
you knew that, but I didn't like it when I
was younger, how long ago, when you were younger, when
I was in elementary school and middle school. Okay, so
so um, that's an well listen, you're a kid, so
you're allowed to have you know, no, I know, but
(02:35):
how ridiculous. I mean, you have like one of the
best shafts in the world make you Thanksgiving. And I'm like, well,
see what can I say? I mean, thanks for trying.
I'm glad of mature. Yeah exactly. I mean, look here,
here's my feeling about Thanksgiving. I think thank Thanksgiving should
look like Thanksgiving. So what does that mean. I mean,
(02:56):
it looks like there should be turkey. There's plenty of
people who do not make a turkey. They make something
else that they'll make, like, I don't know, like a
prime rib or a ham or something like that instead
of honey. So anyway, I always come up with a theme,
and the theme is usually a lot of times I
think about the events of the world. So I remember
(03:17):
the first time I really thought about theming of Thanksgiving
was just just after the devastating hurricane and floods in
New Orleans. You're probably a little young to remember this, No,
I do remember, and I remember that I decided I
was going to flavor my Thanksgiving in a New Orleans
(03:38):
style or a Louisiana stylar should say, creole and occasion,
so to speak, you know a little bit of each.
But I really wanted to talk about Louisiana New Orleans specifically,
and I wanted to you know, think about them while
we were having this very sort of indulgent meal. So
what did that look like? So what does it look like? Um,
(04:00):
A black and spiced turkey, because blackening, blackening spices are
a very big part of that cuisine. So I use
a lot of those casun spices on the turkey itself.
I did a a black pepper and green onion gravy,
which is again very representational of that. And then you know,
(04:21):
we used crawfish to flavor things, and we made really
fun corn breads and you know a lot of sort
of that New Orleans flavor, you know, through and through.
And what I did was I put all the food
out and I made gumbo as an appetizer, as an advertiser,
(04:41):
so that you know, so that people had something warm
too when they came in. I just put like a
soup tureen of gumbo with some rice next to it.
And one of the things I like to do is,
so before we dive in, and your grandfather is always
number one, he's had he walks around with the plate
three hours before my dad, can you just chill for
(05:03):
one second? You know, he's ready for Thanksgiving? So I
and I said, and I just say a few words.
I just want to, like just let's just have you know,
a thought, maybe a prayer in your head about like
all the hardships that the people in New Orleans have
gone through, you know, like that kind of thing. And
so I we so I try to pick something like
that every single year. Honestly, there's been so many worldly
(05:26):
disasters it's hard to keep up. I mean, there's not
like that. That particular one that year was very prevalent.
It was very you know, front and center. And now
there's like there's so many unfortunate news stories. I don't
even know where to begin. So the bottom line is
we always figure something out to say to give thanks,
(05:47):
so to speak. And you know, as corny as that sounds,
and you know, I think it's important. So one of
the things that people love about Thanksgiving, besides the turkey
mashed potatoes, well, it's just like side dishes. I mean,
(06:10):
the side dishes become sort of the star of the show.
A lot of people don't even like turkey. I mean,
I like turkey. I love turkey. But this you know
what this is? Is it a sweet potato. It's a
Japanese sweet potato. It's a purple sweet potato. Oh, it's
so pretty. It's it's huge. Well wait till you cut
(06:30):
into it. So I just roasted this in tinfoil and
I'm gonna slice. It's like a bake sweet potato. Look
at this. Oh my gosh. Have you ever had one
of these? I don't know. They're amazing. It's beautiful. So
I made a flavored butter. Oh I love when you
do that. This is maple and mustard butter. It is
magenta magenta. Potato is magenta. Oh yeah, put the butter
(06:54):
in and I'm definitely gonna I'm definitely using these form
Thanks for having this year. Um yeah, have you ever
done that before? What made you want to do this time? Well?
I was gonna make brussels sprouts today and I just
didn't see any of that I really liked. And then
I harpened to get I ran into a Japanese I mean,
(07:17):
a purple sweet potato. How good is that? Oh? My god, dad,
it's not nacho. It's not too sweet actually with the
maple butter. The sweet potato, I mean, the sweet potato
in general is not that sweet. Um, yeah, this is good.
(07:41):
Oh these are big too? There where is this big?
That's a very big one. I mean they don't they're
not all that size. How long did you roast this for?
And at what time? About an hour and twenty minutes.
I just put it, well, I just put it in
tinfoil and I cooked it for because it's delicious. It's
so good. I can't get over the color. It's so bright. Yeah. Thanks, okay, So,
(08:28):
you know, and then some years I'll do a Southwestern one,
or I'll do a South of France one. South of
France absolutely, or what I mean, what did that look
like south of France? You know, it could be like,
you know, roasted garlic and like lots of fresh lemon,
thyme on the on the turkey, some maybe some like
(08:50):
potatoes gratin, you know, so that's it's a it's a
French style potato dish. You know, you just you sort
of bring in those flavors, you know, maybe some lavender,
because lavender is very prevalent in in the South of France.
Like you walk around the South of the Friend, it
smells like lavender everywhere. You were with me in Lavender.
You were with me in the South of Friend. You
don't remember, yes, I do you remember being there? Yes?
(09:13):
But back to back to Thanksgiving? Yeah, and then like
you know, I've done an Italian Thanksgiving where you know,
I flavor the turkey with rosemary and lemons and garlic,
and then I make like the cranberries or campari and grapefruit,
like a classic. So I betto that people make. You know,
in Italy, what else do we do? I don't even
(09:34):
I mean, we'll make like some kind of polenta as
opposed to I think we did white didn't we do
like white truffle mashed potatoes? Something crazy like that sounds delicious?
I mean usually you have a pretty big crowd regardless,
but one year you cooked at Gatto for Thanksgiving and
we had so many people there it was crazy. You
(09:54):
basically let like anyone come, you know. You know what
happened was Gatto had just opened. Maybe we closed on Thanksgiving.
We weren't we weren't, you know, we gave all the
employees off. We were not open Thanksgiving. So the restaurant
was closed, and I was actually waiting for my apartment
to be constructive. So I was living in a hotel,
which is fun for about two weeks and then it's
(10:17):
not fun. And so I had nowhere to cook my
my annual Thanksgiving. And I was like, wait a second,
I have a restaurant that's closed. Perfect, So I went,
I mean, you know, what, what's better to have than
a restaurant kitchen? And I make, you know, I make
a lot of turkeys. I get three thirty pound turkeys
no matter what, because I want leftovers and people take
(10:38):
people show up to my house with their own I
mean because and and so I always make more than
we really need, because I want people to take some
stuff home, you know, maybe to some of their loved
ones and well to who couldn't make it or whatever.
And then also I want leftovers for myself and my
(11:00):
you guys, because like, my day is not over on Thanksgiving.
The problem with like sometimes I've had my I've had
Thanksgiving in the Hamptons. Here's the problem with the Hamptons.
It's it's not the summer, so people come out for
the weekend, so Thursdays Thanksgiving. Of course, then you have
to make brunch for people on Friday, and then it's
(11:21):
the weekend. They're not leaving. So now you have like
you run, you're basically running a bed and breakfast for
three meals a day for four days. One of my favorite,
one of my favorite Thanksgivings was out an emiganst and
you made a smoked turkey and it was It's my
favorite turkey I've ever had on Thanksgiving. It was so good,
(11:43):
and I think it was almost better the next day. Well,
here we made when we made turkey like leftover sandwiches.
Here's the thing you don't remember about that. The smoked
turkey was the day after Thanksgiving. Oh you didn't smoke
it until the day after. Yeah, we roasted turkeys the
first day. I guess I out that wrong. Then, Well,
who I mean, it's all a blur. We roasted turkeys. No,
(12:05):
we were there all weekends, so like we roasted turkeys
for things. You didn't make it for Thanksgiving. I didn't
smoke it next day and I woke up and I
was like, I'm gonna throw this on the smoker Big
Green Egg. And it was insane. It was insane. Okay,
So I've been present for a lot of your Thanksgivings
(12:27):
and you get a lot of calls on Thanksgiving. I mean,
I don't even know how you focus on your own Thanksgiving.
I feel like people are calling, texting, face timing you
NonStop all day. Well, one of my I'm gonna blow
her up on this because she did it to me.
So I'm just I'm just gonna I'm gonna be right
back at her. This is a total name drop situation
(12:47):
because she's one of the most famous actresses in the world.
But I'm friends with Scarlett Johansson and Scarlett and I
have we talk a lot about cooking. She's a really
good cook, I mean really good cook. And but for
some reason on holidays, I'm like her butter ball pine,
which is look, by the way, I'm you're my friend.
(13:10):
You have a cooking question, I'm answering it. But I've
spent hours on the phone. I remember like we were
in l A, I think, and I was cooking Thanksgiving,
and like Scarlett called me how many times thirty you know,
and then and I would not generally talk about this publicly,
but she went on Kelly and Ryan and told the story.
(13:32):
She's like, I have what did she say, I have,
like some kind of I have a secret trick or
something like Bobby Flay to call, you know, and so yeah,
but listen, I mean, but you know, she's just one
of the lineup of people who trolled me looking you know,
looking for um, you know, for tips. Listen, I will
tell you Thanksgiving is a monster to cook. Because I'm
(13:57):
a professional cook. I cook for hundreds of p bool
at a clip, you know, with my eyes closed. I mean,
I've been doing it for a long time. Thanksgiving is
really hard for me. I mean, first of all, nobody
has enough room, right, how big your kitchen is. You
run out of you run out of out of space
to put stuff. That's why it is like people have
(14:17):
like mashed potatoes on the floor, like in the pots,
but you know, the gravies. Like, I mean, there's just
not enough room. There's too many dishes and too many
people to feed, and so like, I don't understand how
lay people or people who don't cook professionally actually get
the food out warm. And whenever I say it's somebody,
they're like, guess what we don't right, And it's like
(14:38):
and but it's it's really really hard, but I love it.
And so you know, there's a strategy to Thanksgiving. I
if you walk into my house a day or two
before Thanksgiving, you will see literally handwritten legal pad notes
all over my cupboards, and I have lit I make lists.
I have the menu, I have the prep list, I
(14:59):
have the shopping list. I have the list of things
I'm going to do first, second, third, fourth, fifth, twenty
thirtieth time. You know, I make a list in terms
of priorities, in terms of what I'm what I'm going
to do in what order. And then one of my
best strategies is everybody wants to know what to bring.
Mm hmm. Here's where you can really help yourself as
(15:22):
the host or hostess. Don't you say you don't need
to bring anything? Or do I just don't say I
don't know, bring whatever you want. No, like strategize I
will not make dessert on Thanksgiving. I don't want to
make dessert. I'm not that good at it. It's not
that important to me, but but in general, dessert on
(15:43):
Thanksgiving it is important and we need some wine. Okay,
So here, if you're coming to my house, I am
happy to nourish you a Thanksgiving meal. The anti na
is the following. I'm going to tell you to bring
a bottle of white rand wine or a bottle of wine,
one or the other. And I'm going to tell you
which one I want, because I don't want to wind
(16:04):
up with twelve bottles of white wine and two botles
of ready, right, and then I'm going to divvy out
some desserts as well. You don't have to make the desserts.
Do you assign a specific dessert to I don't. I
don't assign specific desserts. I assigned specific categories of desserts.
So I'll say Sophie pumpkin. So if you want to
(16:27):
bring a pumpkin pie or pumpkin bread pudding, be my guest.
I don't want fifteen pumpkin pies. Tom, Please something apple
cheryl chocolate. Let's let's use real people's name, Lawrence. Lawrence,
bring like a fruit pie of some sort cranberry, or
bring like some rice pudding or or and then, and
(16:50):
then and then one person who who I think like
is probably not going to pick out a great dessert
or a wine I might sell them. Do me a
favorite Get a lot of ice? Oh, you just expose yourself.
I listen, we're all friends. Looks at me on Thanksgiving?
(17:14):
So what do you think of some ice? Can you
get me some ice? What's your favorite side Thanksgiving side?
(17:34):
I think my most my well, I have a couple
of very successful side dishes that I make. The I
think probably the most successful one ever is the mashed
potatoes with the green chili caeso sauce. That is like me,
it's not it's not fair. No, it's not. It's complete cheating.
I mean it's it's a first of all, mashed potatoes
(17:57):
with cream and butter, salt and pepper. It and I
make a giant well in the bottom of the bowl,
and then I pour in this homemade queso sauce, which
is a cheese sauce with green roasted green chilies running
through it. And then you say you take a little
bit of the sauce, a little bit of mashed potatoes
kill my mouth is water. And then the roasted Brussels
(18:19):
sprouts with pomegranates and either pecans or walnuts or pistachio.
So good. Yeah, and I and from my um My
South of France menu, one of the better dishes was
the Colie flower gratan with coat cheese. Yeah, that's so good.
And then like myself, one of my south Western dishes
was a sweet potato gratan with chippotle, chilies and honey.
(18:44):
That's good. That sounds really good. But now I think
this purple sweet potato with the maple mustard butter is
going to make the game. That's very California, isn't it.
Do you like pumpkin pie? Love? Do you? Yeah? You
like pumpkin flavor a lot? Well, pumpkin does and taste
like anything. I did a story on CBS about this
like years ago. I don't think pumpkin itself has a
(19:06):
lot of flavor. It's it tastes like cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger,
and all spice. Well those are those, aren't That's not
pumping That's what people think of its pumpkin interest. But
the bottom line is, yeah, I love pumpkin. I love
pumpkin bread pudding, I love pumpkin pie. I like apple.
I like apple like some sort of apple Pie or
(19:26):
Apple's Heart. Yeah, apple pie and apple tie. So Suzanne Lyon, okay,
good friend of ours. One day she's like, I I
invited it to Thanksgiving and she was like, I mean
I can't go. I have to be with my family.
And I was like, invite him. She's like, are you serious?
I was like absolutely, I mean you know how I am.
It's like I am, and I hope that, like you've
(19:49):
picked up a lot of this, like being inclusive is
really important to me. And so she said, can I
bring my family? It's like, so she rolls in with
her mom and dad, her sister, and a couple of
other people, her brother maybe and her brother's wife. Yeah.
But this family brought the game when so basically dessert
(20:16):
that year was them, sponsored by them. But let me
just say something about the Lion family. The dad especially
is the is the craziest baker I've ever seen who
doesn't have a bakery. I mean, the desserts that they
rolled in with were absolute works of art. They were spectacular.
I was like embarrassed by my meal. I was like,
(20:39):
wait a minute, I'm like throwing you some roast turkey
and you have these beautiful apple tarts that are just
pristine and beautiful. I mean they were spectacular. You know,
you also made good, good cocktails on on Thanksgiving one year.
This is a long time ago. You were like a
year old. We made cranberry martinis to start out the night.
(21:03):
Oh god, I never did it again. It ruined the night.
I mean, people were trounced. I mean what I did
was I took fresh cranberries and some sugar and I
let it steep in vodka. So basically what happened was
the vodka just turned red. Right then I strained out
(21:25):
the cranberries and we made we made Martiniz with the
red vodka. So people thought it was like cranberry juice,
but it wasn't. I mean we were picking people off
the floor and it was like we hadn't even eaten yet. Yeah,
so you have to be careful. I think we did.
I think at your house we did like a cranberry
(21:47):
Moscow mule. Yeah, that's really good. Those are so good. Well,
you're you're a Moscule moscow mule aficionado, gal. Yeah, I
love a Moscow mule. What do you like about the ginger?
I love the gin, Yeah, I mean, and that's perfect
for that time of a year or two. Absolutely. I
like the little candy ginger too. I think that's important. Also,
like I like I like having the football games on parade.
(22:12):
May's Day Parade, then the football game. The first game
is on the twelve thirty. I make a bet so
I can like do something while I'm well. The problem
is that nobody's there at twelve thirty but me, so
and if it's in Los Angeles, it's right. So I'm
really by myself. It's just me and Scarlett exactly. Okay,
(22:36):
So what do you think your Thanksgiving theme is going
to be this year? I mean, is it's going to
be something to do with Italy? I mean I've done
that and now I have an Italian restaurant, so I
don't feel like I need to do an Italian Thanksgiving,
although I want to do everything Italian. I want to
speak Italian, I want to live Italian, I want to
drink Italian. So I don't know what do you want
(22:58):
to do? I would love for you to ring back
the smoked turkey, that's all you want. Yeah, I haven't
had it since high school. Well, what I could do
is like a we could do sort of a barbecue
that sounds amazing Thanksgiving. You know, we can really like,
you know, borrow from the barbecue belt. I love that idea.
You know, maybe like, yeah, I have like a smoked turkey,
(23:21):
but like we do like a like a vinegar mustard
barbecue situation. Yes, and then you know a bunch of
like beautiful Southern vegetable dishes. Corn bread like a cornbread
stuffing for sure. That sounds divine toasted cornbread stuffing. You know.
I spent some time with Rodney Scott this year. He's
(23:42):
one of the judges on my Barbecue Brawl show. I
hadn't really spend a lot of time Rodney. I really
liked him. And he cooks whole hog whoa, it's the
whole shooting match and um, you know he's down there
in Carolina. It's like it's just I just love those flavors.
They're so good. That's have you ever done not before?
(24:03):
Have you ever done a barbecue inspired I don't think
I've done a barbecue inspired things. I think it's a
really good idea. What do you do with the gravy?
What do you do with the gravy? I mean, I
think it has to have like it has to have
like I want to do like vinegar and mustard gravy,
so like it has that kind of like it has
(24:24):
that acidity, has that like spiciness from the mustard. You know,
it has that kind of flavor to it. And then
what do you do the mashed potatoes? I think you
do smashed potatoes. Smashed potatoes. I think you do smashed
potatoes with like I don't know, sour cream and green
on you. This sounds so good. Yeah, and then you
know corn bread stuffing. I'm just I'm just shooting off
(24:47):
the top of my head. Uh, what else will we do?
You know? Definitely some college greens for sure. Maybe some
green beans, college greens with smoked chilies. We don't have
to do hamhocks. We could do hamhocks. Would you say,
is it maybe some green beans? Definitely, some green beans,
some black eyed peas? Um you do like a black
eyed peas salad, or we could do like a warm
like like barbecued black eyed peas. Oh, you know, like
(25:10):
barbecue sauce. I was gonna say, where does the barbecue
sauce fit in? That's a good idea, So you could do.
What you could do is like you could make the
black eyed peas. You know, you could cook the black
eyed piece a little soft and then do like a
barbecued like a barbecued black eyed peace situation. So like
you put the barbecue sauce in there and you put
it in the oven so that the edges of it
get like crusty, but the beans, the black eyed peas
(25:31):
are cooked, and then the cranberry sauce. What do you
do with the cranberry sauce? I think you add another
fruit to it, you know, like like you know, this
isn't the season for it, but like you know, peaches
would be like peaches and cranberries with gray or nectarin,
So would have to be some m what would it be?
(25:52):
Maybe some kind of berry, maybe BlackBerry and cranberry or
something like that. And then maybe we're doing like a
bourbon cocktail for sure. Great, I mean yeah, we could
do like BlackBerry bourbon cocktail. I mean, or you could
do something like Tennessee where it's like you know, Jack
Daniels or yeah, totally maybe like a whiskey ginger or something. Yeah,
(26:15):
and there's nothing wrong with you know, I love Kentucky.
So it's like we could definitely do that as well.
All right, Bob, get cooking, Yeah, barbecue some kind of
slow ah right, duh, But the slaw would be great
for leftovers. So good for leftovers, right, because I mean,
I don't know. Slaw is such a summary thing. But
(26:38):
we have to figure something out with cabbage, alright, Sophie,
I like you movie. Yeah, I'm excited. What are you
gonna bring ice? You got it? Always Hungary is created
by Bobby Flay and Sophie Flight. Our executive producer is
Christopher Hasiotis. Always Hungary is produced, edited, and mixed by
(26:59):
John nith In Stress. Always Hungry is engineered by Sophie Flay.
For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I
Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
All right, guys, welcome to Always Hungry from My Heart Radio.
My name is Bobby Flay and I'm here with my
daughter and co host, and I'm always hungry. Sophie and
I gather around my stove to cook together. Well, you cook,
I asked the questions, and eat the food. If does
any food left, you come to the table together to
share a meal, connect as a family, and tell the
stories that matter to us. Okay, we're talking about my
(00:27):
favorite day of the year. Thanksgiving is your favorite day
of the year, undisputed favorite day of the year. I
didn't know that about you. Seriously, Yeah, I really didn't
know that. Oh I wake up hungry and Thanksgiving and
if I'm hungry, that's a good day for me. And
Thanksgiving is the super Bowl of chefs. We have to
(00:47):
you gotta brandt a bran. Yeah, you gotta start early, Yes,
so early. And you know last year pandemic at three
people including myself. Usually it's thirty to forty people and
pay for them. I don't even know him. That's not true.
But people like you know, people know people are you know,
(01:09):
expect to get invited to my Thanksgiving That get invited
every year, And I have it in New York. Sometimes
I have it in the Hampton's. I've had it in
Los Angeles. You've had it in your restaurants. So here's
the way I approach Thanksgiving. I love the turkey dinner.
I love the Thanksgiving dinner. And every single year, while
I'm making the dinner, while I have the turkeys in
(01:30):
the oven, turkeys, we'll get to that in a second,
I think to myself, I'm going to do this a
few times this year, not during Thanksgiving, and it never happens.
What well, who goes and buys turkey when it's not
a Thanksgiving? I know, That's what I'm saying. I can't
believe you even kid yourself of that. Well, because you
should do it, because it's a really fun meal, but
(01:51):
it's a lot. It's exhausting. Yeah, it's exhausting, but but
I actually loved indulging in it. Yeah, I mean, your
Thanksgivings are iconic, and I am so appreciative now of
kind of your own variations of classic dishes. But I
remember when I was younger, I didn't like that, you know,
like what that you you wouldn't just do like everything
(02:13):
really classic Thanksgiving style, Like I did not like when
you switched it up. And I don't even know if
you knew that, but I didn't like it when I
was younger, how long ago, when you were younger, when
I was in elementary school and middle school. Okay, so
so um, that's an well listen, you're a kid, so
you're allowed to have you know, no, I know, but
(02:35):
how ridiculous. I mean, you have like one of the
best shafts in the world make you Thanksgiving. And I'm like, well,
see what can I say? I mean, thanks for trying.
I'm glad of mature. Yeah exactly. I mean, look here,
here's my feeling about Thanksgiving. I think thank Thanksgiving should
look like Thanksgiving. So what does that mean. I mean,
(02:56):
it looks like there should be turkey. There's plenty of
people who do not make a turkey. They make something
else that they'll make, like, I don't know, like a
prime rib or a ham or something like that instead
of honey. So anyway, I always come up with a theme,
and the theme is usually a lot of times I
think about the events of the world. So I remember
(03:17):
the first time I really thought about theming of Thanksgiving
was just just after the devastating hurricane and floods in
New Orleans. You're probably a little young to remember this, No,
I do remember, and I remember that I decided I
was going to flavor my Thanksgiving in a New Orleans
(03:38):
style or a Louisiana stylar should say, creole and occasion,
so to speak, you know a little bit of each.
But I really wanted to talk about Louisiana New Orleans specifically,
and I wanted to you know, think about them while
we were having this very sort of indulgent meal. So
what did that look like? So what does it look like? Um,
(04:00):
A black and spiced turkey, because blackening, blackening spices are
a very big part of that cuisine. So I use
a lot of those casun spices on the turkey itself.
I did a a black pepper and green onion gravy,
which is again very representational of that. And then you know,
(04:21):
we used crawfish to flavor things, and we made really
fun corn breads and you know a lot of sort
of that New Orleans flavor, you know, through and through.
And what I did was I put all the food
out and I made gumbo as an appetizer, as an advertiser,
(04:41):
so that you know, so that people had something warm
too when they came in. I just put like a
soup tureen of gumbo with some rice next to it.
And one of the things I like to do is,
so before we dive in, and your grandfather is always
number one, he's had he walks around with the plate
three hours before my dad, can you just chill for
(05:03):
one second? You know, he's ready for Thanksgiving? So I
and I said, and I just say a few words.
I just want to, like just let's just have you know,
a thought, maybe a prayer in your head about like
all the hardships that the people in New Orleans have
gone through, you know, like that kind of thing. And
so I we so I try to pick something like
that every single year. Honestly, there's been so many worldly
(05:26):
disasters it's hard to keep up. I mean, there's not
like that. That particular one that year was very prevalent.
It was very you know, front and center. And now
there's like there's so many unfortunate news stories. I don't
even know where to begin. So the bottom line is
we always figure something out to say to give thanks,
(05:47):
so to speak. And you know, as corny as that sounds,
and you know, I think it's important. So one of
the things that people love about Thanksgiving, besides the turkey
mashed potatoes, well, it's just like side dishes. I mean,
(06:10):
the side dishes become sort of the star of the show.
A lot of people don't even like turkey. I mean,
I like turkey. I love turkey. But this you know
what this is? Is it a sweet potato. It's a
Japanese sweet potato. It's a purple sweet potato. Oh, it's
so pretty. It's it's huge. Well wait till you cut
(06:30):
into it. So I just roasted this in tinfoil and
I'm gonna slice. It's like a bake sweet potato. Look
at this. Oh my gosh. Have you ever had one
of these? I don't know. They're amazing. It's beautiful. So
I made a flavored butter. Oh I love when you
do that. This is maple and mustard butter. It is
magenta magenta. Potato is magenta. Oh yeah, put the butter
(06:54):
in and I'm definitely gonna I'm definitely using these form
Thanks for having this year. Um yeah, have you ever
done that before? What made you want to do this time? Well?
I was gonna make brussels sprouts today and I just
didn't see any of that I really liked. And then
I harpened to get I ran into a Japanese I mean,
(07:17):
a purple sweet potato. How good is that? Oh? My god, dad,
it's not nacho. It's not too sweet actually with the
maple butter. The sweet potato, I mean, the sweet potato
in general is not that sweet. Um, yeah, this is good.
(07:41):
Oh these are big too? There where is this big?
That's a very big one. I mean they don't they're
not all that size. How long did you roast this for?
And at what time? About an hour and twenty minutes.
I just put it, well, I just put it in
tinfoil and I cooked it for because it's delicious. It's
so good. I can't get over the color. It's so bright. Yeah. Thanks, okay, So,
(08:28):
you know, and then some years I'll do a Southwestern one,
or I'll do a South of France one. South of
France absolutely, or what I mean, what did that look
like south of France? You know, it could be like,
you know, roasted garlic and like lots of fresh lemon,
thyme on the on the turkey, some maybe some like
(08:50):
potatoes gratin, you know, so that's it's a it's a
French style potato dish. You know, you just you sort
of bring in those flavors, you know, maybe some lavender,
because lavender is very prevalent in in the South of France.
Like you walk around the South of the Friend, it
smells like lavender everywhere. You were with me in Lavender.
You were with me in the South of Friend. You
don't remember, yes, I do you remember being there? Yes?
(09:13):
But back to back to Thanksgiving? Yeah, and then like
you know, I've done an Italian Thanksgiving where you know,
I flavor the turkey with rosemary and lemons and garlic,
and then I make like the cranberries or campari and grapefruit,
like a classic. So I betto that people make. You know,
in Italy, what else do we do? I don't even
(09:34):
I mean, we'll make like some kind of polenta as
opposed to I think we did white didn't we do
like white truffle mashed potatoes? Something crazy like that sounds delicious?
I mean usually you have a pretty big crowd regardless,
but one year you cooked at Gatto for Thanksgiving and
we had so many people there it was crazy. You
(09:54):
basically let like anyone come, you know. You know what
happened was Gatto had just opened. Maybe we closed on Thanksgiving.
We weren't we weren't, you know, we gave all the
employees off. We were not open Thanksgiving. So the restaurant
was closed, and I was actually waiting for my apartment
to be constructive. So I was living in a hotel,
which is fun for about two weeks and then it's
(10:17):
not fun. And so I had nowhere to cook my
my annual Thanksgiving. And I was like, wait a second,
I have a restaurant that's closed. Perfect, So I went,
I mean, you know, what, what's better to have than
a restaurant kitchen? And I make, you know, I make
a lot of turkeys. I get three thirty pound turkeys
no matter what, because I want leftovers and people take
(10:38):
people show up to my house with their own I
mean because and and so I always make more than
we really need, because I want people to take some
stuff home, you know, maybe to some of their loved
ones and well to who couldn't make it or whatever.
And then also I want leftovers for myself and my
(11:00):
you guys, because like, my day is not over on Thanksgiving.
The problem with like sometimes I've had my I've had
Thanksgiving in the Hamptons. Here's the problem with the Hamptons.
It's it's not the summer, so people come out for
the weekend, so Thursdays Thanksgiving. Of course, then you have
to make brunch for people on Friday, and then it's
(11:21):
the weekend. They're not leaving. So now you have like
you run, you're basically running a bed and breakfast for
three meals a day for four days. One of my favorite,
one of my favorite Thanksgivings was out an emiganst and
you made a smoked turkey and it was It's my
favorite turkey I've ever had on Thanksgiving. It was so good,
(11:43):
and I think it was almost better the next day. Well,
here we made when we made turkey like leftover sandwiches.
Here's the thing you don't remember about that. The smoked
turkey was the day after Thanksgiving. Oh you didn't smoke
it until the day after. Yeah, we roasted turkeys the
first day. I guess I out that wrong. Then, Well,
who I mean, it's all a blur. We roasted turkeys. No,
(12:05):
we were there all weekends, so like we roasted turkeys
for things. You didn't make it for Thanksgiving. I didn't
smoke it next day and I woke up and I
was like, I'm gonna throw this on the smoker Big
Green Egg. And it was insane. It was insane. Okay,
So I've been present for a lot of your Thanksgivings
(12:27):
and you get a lot of calls on Thanksgiving. I mean,
I don't even know how you focus on your own Thanksgiving.
I feel like people are calling, texting, face timing you
NonStop all day. Well, one of my I'm gonna blow
her up on this because she did it to me.
So I'm just I'm just gonna I'm gonna be right
back at her. This is a total name drop situation
(12:47):
because she's one of the most famous actresses in the world.
But I'm friends with Scarlett Johansson and Scarlett and I
have we talk a lot about cooking. She's a really
good cook, I mean really good cook. And but for
some reason on holidays, I'm like her butter ball pine,
which is look, by the way, I'm you're my friend.
(13:10):
You have a cooking question, I'm answering it. But I've
spent hours on the phone. I remember like we were
in l A, I think, and I was cooking Thanksgiving,
and like Scarlett called me how many times thirty you know,
and then and I would not generally talk about this publicly,
but she went on Kelly and Ryan and told the story.
(13:32):
She's like, I have what did she say, I have,
like some kind of I have a secret trick or
something like Bobby Flay to call, you know, and so yeah,
but listen, I mean, but you know, she's just one
of the lineup of people who trolled me looking you know,
looking for um, you know, for tips. Listen, I will
tell you Thanksgiving is a monster to cook. Because I'm
(13:57):
a professional cook. I cook for hundreds of p bool
at a clip, you know, with my eyes closed. I mean,
I've been doing it for a long time. Thanksgiving is
really hard for me. I mean, first of all, nobody
has enough room, right, how big your kitchen is. You
run out of you run out of out of space
to put stuff. That's why it is like people have
(14:17):
like mashed potatoes on the floor, like in the pots,
but you know, the gravies. Like, I mean, there's just
not enough room. There's too many dishes and too many
people to feed, and so like, I don't understand how
lay people or people who don't cook professionally actually get
the food out warm. And whenever I say it's somebody,
they're like, guess what we don't right, And it's like
(14:38):
and but it's it's really really hard, but I love it.
And so you know, there's a strategy to Thanksgiving. I
if you walk into my house a day or two
before Thanksgiving, you will see literally handwritten legal pad notes
all over my cupboards, and I have lit I make lists.
I have the menu, I have the prep list, I
(14:59):
have the shopping list. I have the list of things
I'm going to do first, second, third, fourth, fifth, twenty
thirtieth time. You know, I make a list in terms
of priorities, in terms of what I'm what I'm going
to do in what order. And then one of my
best strategies is everybody wants to know what to bring.
Mm hmm. Here's where you can really help yourself as
(15:22):
the host or hostess. Don't you say you don't need
to bring anything? Or do I just don't say I
don't know, bring whatever you want. No, like strategize I
will not make dessert on Thanksgiving. I don't want to
make dessert. I'm not that good at it. It's not
that important to me, but but in general, dessert on
(15:43):
Thanksgiving it is important and we need some wine. Okay,
So here, if you're coming to my house, I am
happy to nourish you a Thanksgiving meal. The anti na
is the following. I'm going to tell you to bring
a bottle of white rand wine or a bottle of wine,
one or the other. And I'm going to tell you
which one I want, because I don't want to wind
(16:04):
up with twelve bottles of white wine and two botles
of ready, right, and then I'm going to divvy out
some desserts as well. You don't have to make the desserts.
Do you assign a specific dessert to I don't. I
don't assign specific desserts. I assigned specific categories of desserts.
So I'll say Sophie pumpkin. So if you want to
(16:27):
bring a pumpkin pie or pumpkin bread pudding, be my guest.
I don't want fifteen pumpkin pies. Tom, Please something apple
cheryl chocolate. Let's let's use real people's name, Lawrence. Lawrence,
bring like a fruit pie of some sort cranberry, or
bring like some rice pudding or or and then, and
(16:50):
then and then one person who who I think like
is probably not going to pick out a great dessert
or a wine I might sell them. Do me a
favorite Get a lot of ice? Oh, you just expose yourself.
I listen, we're all friends. Looks at me on Thanksgiving?
(17:14):
So what do you think of some ice? Can you
get me some ice? What's your favorite side Thanksgiving side?
(17:34):
I think my most my well, I have a couple
of very successful side dishes that I make. The I
think probably the most successful one ever is the mashed
potatoes with the green chili caeso sauce. That is like me,
it's not it's not fair. No, it's not. It's complete cheating.
I mean it's it's a first of all, mashed potatoes
(17:57):
with cream and butter, salt and pepper. It and I
make a giant well in the bottom of the bowl,
and then I pour in this homemade queso sauce, which
is a cheese sauce with green roasted green chilies running
through it. And then you say you take a little
bit of the sauce, a little bit of mashed potatoes
kill my mouth is water. And then the roasted Brussels
(18:19):
sprouts with pomegranates and either pecans or walnuts or pistachio.
So good. Yeah, and I and from my um My
South of France menu, one of the better dishes was
the Colie flower gratan with coat cheese. Yeah, that's so good.
And then like myself, one of my south Western dishes
was a sweet potato gratan with chippotle, chilies and honey.
(18:44):
That's good. That sounds really good. But now I think
this purple sweet potato with the maple mustard butter is
going to make the game. That's very California, isn't it.
Do you like pumpkin pie? Love? Do you? Yeah? You
like pumpkin flavor a lot? Well, pumpkin does and taste
like anything. I did a story on CBS about this
like years ago. I don't think pumpkin itself has a
(19:06):
lot of flavor. It's it tastes like cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger,
and all spice. Well those are those, aren't That's not
pumping That's what people think of its pumpkin interest. But
the bottom line is, yeah, I love pumpkin. I love
pumpkin bread pudding, I love pumpkin pie. I like apple.
I like apple like some sort of apple Pie or
(19:26):
Apple's Heart. Yeah, apple pie and apple tie. So Suzanne Lyon, okay,
good friend of ours. One day she's like, I I
invited it to Thanksgiving and she was like, I mean
I can't go. I have to be with my family.
And I was like, invite him. She's like, are you serious?
I was like absolutely, I mean you know how I am.
It's like I am, and I hope that, like you've
(19:49):
picked up a lot of this, like being inclusive is
really important to me. And so she said, can I
bring my family? It's like, so she rolls in with
her mom and dad, her sister, and a couple of
other people, her brother maybe and her brother's wife. Yeah.
But this family brought the game when so basically dessert
(20:16):
that year was them, sponsored by them. But let me
just say something about the Lion family. The dad especially
is the is the craziest baker I've ever seen who
doesn't have a bakery. I mean, the desserts that they
rolled in with were absolute works of art. They were spectacular.
I was like embarrassed by my meal. I was like,
(20:39):
wait a minute, I'm like throwing you some roast turkey
and you have these beautiful apple tarts that are just
pristine and beautiful. I mean they were spectacular. You know,
you also made good, good cocktails on on Thanksgiving one year.
This is a long time ago. You were like a
year old. We made cranberry martinis to start out the night.
(21:03):
Oh god, I never did it again. It ruined the night.
I mean, people were trounced. I mean what I did
was I took fresh cranberries and some sugar and I
let it steep in vodka. So basically what happened was
the vodka just turned red. Right then I strained out
(21:25):
the cranberries and we made we made Martiniz with the
red vodka. So people thought it was like cranberry juice,
but it wasn't. I mean we were picking people off
the floor and it was like we hadn't even eaten yet. Yeah,
so you have to be careful. I think we did.
I think at your house we did like a cranberry
(21:47):
Moscow mule. Yeah, that's really good. Those are so good. Well,
you're you're a Moscule moscow mule aficionado, gal. Yeah, I
love a Moscow mule. What do you like about the ginger?
I love the gin, Yeah, I mean, and that's perfect
for that time of a year or two. Absolutely. I
like the little candy ginger too. I think that's important. Also,
like I like I like having the football games on parade.
(22:12):
May's Day Parade, then the football game. The first game
is on the twelve thirty. I make a bet so
I can like do something while I'm well. The problem
is that nobody's there at twelve thirty but me, so
and if it's in Los Angeles, it's right. So I'm
really by myself. It's just me and Scarlett exactly. Okay,
(22:36):
So what do you think your Thanksgiving theme is going
to be this year? I mean, is it's going to
be something to do with Italy? I mean I've done
that and now I have an Italian restaurant, so I
don't feel like I need to do an Italian Thanksgiving,
although I want to do everything Italian. I want to
speak Italian, I want to live Italian, I want to
drink Italian. So I don't know what do you want
(22:58):
to do? I would love for you to ring back
the smoked turkey, that's all you want. Yeah, I haven't
had it since high school. Well, what I could do
is like a we could do sort of a barbecue
that sounds amazing Thanksgiving. You know, we can really like,
you know, borrow from the barbecue belt. I love that idea.
You know, maybe like, yeah, I have like a smoked turkey,
(23:21):
but like we do like a like a vinegar mustard
barbecue situation. Yes, and then you know a bunch of
like beautiful Southern vegetable dishes. Corn bread like a cornbread
stuffing for sure. That sounds divine toasted cornbread stuffing. You know.
I spent some time with Rodney Scott this year. He's
(23:42):
one of the judges on my Barbecue Brawl show. I
hadn't really spend a lot of time Rodney. I really
liked him. And he cooks whole hog whoa, it's the
whole shooting match and um, you know he's down there
in Carolina. It's like it's just I just love those flavors.
They're so good. That's have you ever done not before?
(24:03):
Have you ever done a barbecue inspired I don't think
I've done a barbecue inspired things. I think it's a
really good idea. What do you do with the gravy?
What do you do with the gravy? I mean, I
think it has to have like it has to have
like I want to do like vinegar and mustard gravy,
so like it has that kind of like it has
(24:24):
that acidity, has that like spiciness from the mustard. You know,
it has that kind of flavor to it. And then
what do you do the mashed potatoes? I think you
do smashed potatoes. Smashed potatoes. I think you do smashed
potatoes with like I don't know, sour cream and green
on you. This sounds so good. Yeah, and then you
know corn bread stuffing. I'm just I'm just shooting off
(24:47):
the top of my head. Uh, what else will we do?
You know? Definitely some college greens for sure. Maybe some
green beans, college greens with smoked chilies. We don't have
to do hamhocks. We could do hamhocks. Would you say,
is it maybe some green beans? Definitely, some green beans,
some black eyed peas? Um you do like a black
eyed peas salad, or we could do like a warm
like like barbecued black eyed peas. Oh, you know, like
(25:10):
barbecue sauce. I was gonna say, where does the barbecue
sauce fit in? That's a good idea, So you could do.
What you could do is like you could make the
black eyed peas. You know, you could cook the black
eyed piece a little soft and then do like a
barbecued like a barbecued black eyed peace situation. So like
you put the barbecue sauce in there and you put
it in the oven so that the edges of it
get like crusty, but the beans, the black eyed peas
(25:31):
are cooked, and then the cranberry sauce. What do you
do with the cranberry sauce? I think you add another
fruit to it, you know, like like you know, this
isn't the season for it, but like you know, peaches
would be like peaches and cranberries with gray or nectarin,
So would have to be some m what would it be?
(25:52):
Maybe some kind of berry, maybe BlackBerry and cranberry or
something like that. And then maybe we're doing like a
bourbon cocktail for sure. Great, I mean yeah, we could
do like BlackBerry bourbon cocktail. I mean, or you could
do something like Tennessee where it's like you know, Jack
Daniels or yeah, totally maybe like a whiskey ginger or something. Yeah,
(26:15):
and there's nothing wrong with you know, I love Kentucky.
So it's like we could definitely do that as well.
All right, Bob, get cooking, Yeah, barbecue some kind of
slow ah right, duh, But the slaw would be great
for leftovers. So good for leftovers, right, because I mean,
I don't know. Slaw is such a summary thing. But
(26:38):
we have to figure something out with cabbage, alright, Sophie,
I like you movie. Yeah, I'm excited. What are you
gonna bring ice? You got it? Always Hungary is created
by Bobby Flay and Sophie Flight. Our executive producer is
Christopher Hasiotis. Always Hungary is produced, edited, and mixed by
(26:59):
John nith In Stress. Always Hungry is engineered by Sophie Flay.
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