Thanksgiving Cooking With Chef Christy Rost

Air Date:
Heard On The Larry Meiller Show
Butternut squash pie, photo courtesy of Chef Christy Rost
butternut squash pie, photo courtesy of Chef Christy Rost

PBS TV Host and Chef Christy Rost joins Judith Siers-Poisson to talk about making a delicious Thanksgiving dinner to share with friends and family. Her program, A Home for Christy Rost: Thanksgiving, will be shown on Wisconsin Public Television the weekend before Thanksgiving.

Featured in this Show

  • Chef Offers 4 Thanksgiving Recipes For Holiday Table

    There are foods and traditions that surround just about every holiday, but pound for pound, there’s more eating and dining expectations for Thanksgiving than just about any other time of year.

    Whether one is hosting a large gathering at home or keeping it low-key, renowned chef Christy Rost has some ideas to make any Thanksgiving meal better than ever and without too much stress. Rost is the author of three cookbooks and her annual PBS special, “A Home For Christy Rost: Thanksgiving,” will air this weekend on Wisconsin Public Television.

    For Rost, Thanksgiving is a special time to gather with family, a time when the weather is cooling down and everybody starts to nest again in the house. It’s a holiday that allows us to be with and celebrate family members who aren’t physically with us anymore.

    “It’s like setting a place for them at the table even though their not there because their dish has presence,” Rost said.

    Those dishes often come from family recipes passed down through the generations, often incorporating new elements as families welcome in new blood through marriage and partnerships. And though it can be hard to replicate the exact flavors or grandma’s turkey gravy, Rost said it feels good just to get it close.

    “Thanksgiving is especially important for young couples who are just starting out to really build their own traditions, too. We all start with traditions we grew up on. And I think a lot of that is because we stood in the kitchen and we either watched and or we helped,” said Rost. “But then, as you start to gain your own comfort and blend the traditions of the spouse or partner, then you start to maybe feel like experimenting and bring in some of that so you create new traditions.”

    One of Rost’s crossover traditions is her cornbread dressing, a recipe of which can be found below. She thought the dish too dry and lacking flavor.

    “I thought there’s got to be a way to soup this up. And so actually over the years, I adopted making cornbread dressing. So I brought in a very Southern tradition to my very Northern approach to Thanksgiving,” she said.

    Rost also offers an interesting twist on dessert.

    “People always think of butternut squash as a vegetable that you cook and put on the table,” Rost said. “But butternut squash has a very similar flavor to pumpkin so that if you roast it and then puree it and use that as your filling instead of pumpkin, it has a slightly lighter flavor, but absolutely divine.”

Episode Credits

  • Judith Siers-Poisson Host
  • Judith Siers-Poisson Producer
  • Christy Rost Guest

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