Welcome to Cooking with Virginia!
Here you will find delicious and doable, seasonal, chef-driven recipes for home cooks along with tips, techniques, and stories. Each post features mouth-watering food photography, easy-to-follow instructions, and helpful hints for well-tested recipes from Southern chef, Food Network Kitchen Instructor, and James Beard award-winning cookbook author Virginia Willis.
You’ll also find Virginia’s signature stories chronicling formational childhood experiences gained baking in her grandmother’s and mother’s kitchen, her extensive professional experience from working in patisserie in a Michelin-starred restaurant, to the hot lights of food television, and her culinary centric far-flung travels. The recipes build on this practical knowledge and are written so that the reader feels that Virginia is by their side in the kitchen, as she walks the reader through surefire recipes that work every time. The recipes are rigorously tested and are essential, foolproof dishes you actually want to make and eat!
Bon Appétit, Y’all!
Virginia Willis


Mother’s Day: Spaghetti with Venison Bolognese
One of my fondest earlier memories is of my mother teaching me to swim. She floated on her back and I held to her ankles






Planting Gardens & Being Thankful: Beet Red Velvet Cupcakes
This week I kicked off chefs cooking at the at the Atlanta Botanical Garden in their awesome outdoor kitchen. It’s a lovely space and Atlanta






Faith and Uncertainty in Cookbook Publishing
While walking the trade floor of the Paris Cookbook Festival I caught a glimpse of the quote above by super chef Paul Bocuse, “Without books






Mama Love & Breast Cancer Awareness Month
I am a “mama’s girl.” Mama and I travel quite a bit together. I love to ask her to come with me to book signings






My Day in NYC on 9/11
This picture of my sister was taken in August, just a few weeks before the tragedy in 2001. Last year when I wrote my original post,






Labor Day Appetizers and Summer’s Sweet End
Country Living I grew up in the country. Montezuma, Georgia. The population at the time hovered around 3000. I love the country, living in the






How to Make Biscuits: Baking Secrets and Five Recipes
What’s The Secret to a Perfect Biscuit? I’m asked quite often about biscuits. Folks pull me aside at book-signings. As I am spending the summer






Setting Things Straight
A friend of mine recently sent me a note that said that Anna and Kristina’s Grocery Bag, a show on Oprah’s OWN (the Oprah Winfrey






Southern Saturdays with Virginia: Vidalia Onion Quiche
Spring may mean lamb to some, asparagus to others, and perhaps for a lucky few, spring means morel mushrooms. Not for me. Spring for me






Bon Appétit, Y’all in Paris! Fried Chicken, Grits & Greens, and Biscuits
I’m in Paris at the Paris Cookbook Fair — and, that would be Paris, France, not Paris, Texas! It’s been crazy. I’ve been interviewed by