Smitten in the Kitchen
Deb Perelman started her blog on a whim almost 15 years ago. Now she's cooking for her family of four - as well as more than a million dedicated fans.
Blogger Deb Perelman dishes out doable meals to her million-plus followers.
Every day, Deb Perelman invites more than a million people into the sun- soaked kitchen of her New York apartment.
Of course, those people aren’t huddled next to her—they’re the dedicated followers of her cooking blog, Smitten Kitchen.
Photos of homemade
Fig Newtons, sesame seedsprinkled breakfast buns, cream of mushroom soup and cheesy baked pasta are a sampling of her Instagram posts. These tempting dishes aren’t just made to feed the camera and her followers, they’re the real meals Deb serves herself and her family.
Cooking in a tiny NYC kitchen means Deb doesn’t feature elaborate recipes that require an armful of equipment on her blog. The small space is a constant reminder that if she can make dinner without too much clutter, so can the engaged readers who cook her recipes in their own homes.
“Deb, there is no way I was going to take out a second pan there” is a typical comment from an audience accustomed to delicious recipes that are still practical on a weeknight.
Comments like that have been fueling Smitten Kitchen since Deb started it in 2006 as a project she thought would last about six months. “But that’s not what happened... people showed up, and the more questions they asked, the more I wanted to learn things to answer them,” she says.
She’s not a trained chef— she’s completely self-taught, and she’s learned alongside her readers over the years. During that time, her family has grown, too.
First came her son, who “eats most things,” then a daughter, who, “practically speaking, eats nothing.”
When she and her husband, Alex, entered “two-kid land,” she was worried. “I’ve found from listening to other people that this is where cooking stops being fun.”
In order to preserve the joy in creating recipes, taking pictures and writing (yes, Deb is a total one-woman show!) she made an unexpected choice: to keep cooking what she likes instead of making meals that will satisfy the whole family.
The challenges don’t phase her. “If three-quarters of us are eating it, I consider it a success.”
When possible, Deb leans on seasonal ingredients—like the snappy asparagus that stars in her Asparagus & Egg Salad with Walnuts & Mint, a recipe she developed with spring dreams in mind—even though sometimes Mother Nature has other plans. “It snowed here in April, and I just gave up,” she says. Because she couldn’t wait until asparagus popped up at the farmers market, she improvised.
“The grocery store was the greenest place I knew then, and I couldn’t imagine a more perfect use of what was there.” Try her recipe on toast or on crackers—or by the spoonful— and you’ll find the spring magic Deb dreamed of, too.