Celebs take to the kitchen on ‘Breakfast With Besser’
Foodies who like to take their culinary content on the go will want to check out a series currently running on a popular mobile app.
In “Breakfast With Besser” on Food Network Kitchen, host and chef Elena Besser (“The Best Thing I Ever Ate”) honors the day’s first meal by inviting on celebrity guests – be they Tonywinning Broadway stars such as André De Shields (“Hadestown”) and James Monroe Iglehart (“Aladdin”), comedians like Dulcé Sloan and Chris Redd (“Saturday Night Live”) and film actors like
Lea DeLaria and Bowen Yang – and having them help prepare a breakfast that she created specifically for them.
“Our recipe development process comes from the research that we do for all of our guests,” Besser explains. “So to us, getting a really great show in that short period of time requires a lot of research. So as soon as we found out what guests were booked, we dove deep into everything we could possibly learn about them.”
So for instance for Redd, Besser – a Chicago native – created a dish that honors Redd’s own Windy City upbringing – the Chicago-style breakfast biscuit egg sandwich.
“It combines every component of a Chicago-style hot dog into an ultimate breakfast biscuit sandwich ...,” Besser notes. “And when I learned that he was from Chicago and that he loved biscuits and he loved eggs, I was like, ‘We’ve got to turn this into an ultimate biscuit sandwich.’ So it is a buttermilk biscuit with poppy seeds, white onion and sport peppers tossed throughout. It is celery salt-spiced scrambled eggs, griddle hot dogs, a relish-with-mustard special sauce and some sliced tomatoes on top.”
If that sounds a little involved for the average kitchen novice – which a few of her guests are – Besser says that’s by design.
“We definitely didn’t want to make it too easy for the guest,” she says. “We still wanted to make sure that all of the recipes were interesting and dynamic, and it was so exciting to watch someone that isn’t comfortable in the kitchen create a biscuit. Like
Chris had never made biscuits in his life ... but it was his first time making them and he did an excellent job.