Crowned as the original food bloggers, Deb Perelman’s The Smitten Kitchen has been around for some 14 years now, promoting triumphant but unfussy cooking (meaning there’s no mention of pretentious ingredients such as truffle oil and Himalayan pink salt in any of her recipes). Based in New York City, Perelman’s down-to-earth approach tied in with her conversational tone and blunt humor has attracted an ever-growing audience online (her Instagram page alone has some 1.5 million followers).
Amongst her celebrated recipes, you’ll find the classic spaghetti and meatballs, the scrumptious caramel pretzel blondies, and the oh-I-really-shouldn’t chocolate peanut butter cup cookies.
On her website, Perelman describes herself as the kind of person you might innocently ask what the difference is between summer and winter squash and realize she’ll go on for about twenty minutes before coming up for air to a cleared room and you soundly snoring. Perelman jokes that it’s taken some time, but she’s finally realized that there are people out there that might forgive her for such food, cooking and ingredient-obsessed blathering and possibly, even come back for more.
But behind the scenes, Perelman admits she’s actually a rather picky eater. “I’m a closet picky eater,” she shared in an interview with A Cup of Jo. “I’ve never been into salmon. I don’t like beets. It was a rough couple years when every restaurant had a beet and goat cheese salad on the menu. I love love love snacking on cheese but I don’t love cheese on top of things and inside sandwiches. We all have our things!” Among the foods she does enjoy she counts bourbon, artichokes, french fries, things that taste like burnt sugar, and baked goods with funny names.
Her tip to aspiring cooks: find that one specialty. “There’s this idea people have that ‘I need to learn to cook,’ but just pick one thing,” says Perelman. “Learn to roast chicken or learn to make a great pasta sauce. And focus on the things you can’t get good versions of. The delivery you order and it tastes like trash? Cook that!”
According to Perelman, in order to retain her passion for cooking, she makes sure she has some boundaries. “I don’t cook on weekends,” she clears. “We either go out to eat or have cereal. That way, I start to miss cooking and want to get back to it on Monday. I need that pendulum swing.”
