Scrolling through Deb Perelman’s recipes shared on her food blog The Smitten Kitchen and accompanying Instagram page, it’s easy to understand why she’s become such an authority amongst bloggers and foodies alike. Not one to fall for recent fads, her approach to cooking is one we can get behind with. Mainly: that cooking should be unfussy.
According to Perelman, you won’t find in her recipes any mention of pretentious ingredients such as truffle oil and Himalayan pink salt. What you can expect to find in her recipes is a conversational tone and blunt humor that make the cooking process all the more approachable (in a recent post about corn kernels she writes “this is my platonic ideal of a corn fritter”; in another, she stresses that “yes, we absolutely need a recipe for a cream cheese pound cake in our lives”).
Using the same cheeky tone, Perelman promotes The Smitten Kitchen as “the place to find your new favorite thing to cook.” On her website, she describes her work as “Fearless cooking from a tiny kitchen in New York City.”
With over 14 years of blogging experience, Perelman’s kitchen has a rich archive that includes over 100 salad recipes, a lot of comfort foods stepped up a bit (things like bread and birthday cakes made entirely from scratch), and tutorials on everything from how to poach an egg to how to make tart doughs that don’t shrink up on you.
But in an interview with A Cup of Jo Perelman stressed that her number one tip to beginners is to start small—find your one specialty and stick to it: “There’s this idea people have that ‘I need to learn to cook,’ but just pick one thing,” she notes. “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!”
With over 1.5 million followers on Instagram, Perelman’s advice has clearly found an approving audience. Join the hype!
