It’s the college of foodie knowledge weekends on Food Network
Whether you’re looking for new ideas or a novel approach to an old favorite, weekend mornings and afternoons on Food Network have gained a reputation as the place to go for culinary knowledge from pros in the know.
Yes, Saturdays and Sundays offer up a treasure trove of recipes, tricks, tips and conversation aimed at upping viewers’ kitchen game and enabling them to impress family and friends. In the industry, they’re know as “stand and stirs” and they’re in plentiful supply on the cablenet. The following are a few of the more noteworthy entries on the coming week’s schedule.
Sunday, Jan. 15, on “Girl Meets Farm,” Molly Yeh feeds a hungry crew of beet farmers with a hearty meal of pulled pork sandwiches with charred broccoli slaw and a side of beet chips with French onion yogurt. And for a sweet treat, comes up with her thick frosted speculoos cookie bars and S’mores puppy chow. Hope the dog doesn’t mind.
Mary Berg is a big fan of cooking smarter, not harder, and in Sunday’s edition of “Mary Makes It Easy,” she takes store-bought items and jazzes them up into a whole other meal. So a rotisserie chicken becomes coq au vin; frozen butternut squash, frozen chopped kale and day-old bakery bread becomes French toast; and bagged coleslaw becomes Japanese pancakes. Truly outside-the-box (or bag) cooking.
There are fewer greater foods than cheese and in the Saturday, Jan. 21, episode of “The Kitchen,” the chefs show off its ooey-gooey versatility as Katie Lee Biegel prepares baked brie topped with savory granola and fruit, Jeff Mauro creates his chiles rellenos and Geoffrey Zakarian presents a dessert of ginger lemon basque cheesecake with lemon curd topping. Simply irresistible.
Also that morning on “Trisha’s Southern Kitchen,” Trisha Yearwood invites in Reba McEntire for a tour of her exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame, then both get down to business by making a dinner of bacon-wrapped turkey meatloaf, Brussels sprouts with dried cranberries and almonds, and for dessert a lemon pound cake with Reba’s royal glaze. A downhome meal from down-home folks.
Then immediately following, Ree Drummond is cooking double time on “Pioneer Woman” as she whips up four meals – a steak frites salad, a onepot Cajun Alfredo, egg rolls bowls and a jalapeno pineapple pizza – all in the hour timeslot.
And on “Guy’s Ranch Kitchen,” sweet and sour is the theme as Guy Fieri welcomes in chef Rocco DiSpirito to make his Maine lobster peperonata and chef Aaron May to prepare his grilled quail pomegranate. Exotic twists on traditional dishes.