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. And, given Virginia’s health journey and 65# weight loss, the recipes are not only good — they are good for you, too!
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
Cornmeal Cake with Strawberries and Vanilla Cream
Cornmeal Cake is somewhere between a cobbler and cake. Unlike a cobbler, the fruit is served on the side. And, unlike most cakes, the batter
Steel Magnolias Armadillo Butt Cupcakes
A couple of weeks ago cohosted the Sunday afternoon matinee of Steel Magnolias! (I also shared a recipe for a shrub I call “The Shelby.”)
Golden Vidalia Onion Cheesy Pull-Apart Biscuits
Who doesn’t love Vidalia onions!? Georgia grown Vidalia onions are America’s favorite and perhaps its most well-known sweet onion. Vidalia onions are my absolute go-to.
Strawberry Shrub aka “The Shelby”
Are you concerned your liver might cry uncle before lockdown ends? Need an NA alternative? Or, you need to spritz up your afternoon cocktail? Check
Comfort Food: One Pot Pasta
I hope this finds you and your family safe and well. I feel like I have started every email with that sentence for the past
Cooking with Virginia: Crunchy Creole Ranch Salmon
Ranch dressing is as American as apple pie and baseball. Americans love ranch dressing. Everyone loves ranch dressing. Even snooty chefs and foodies that look
Tips on Preventing Food Waste + Clementine Marmalade
My friends and family have laughed at me “getting my inner homesteader on” while we are social distancing. I am always pretty good about food
Stress Baking: Button Shortbread
My first baking experience was making biscuits with my grandmother, standing on a chair all of three years old. Before the home was air-conditioned an
Stovetop Low Country Boil
Think Spanish moss hanging from live oaks and pluff mud and you’re thinking Low Country. Think benne seeds and Carolina Gold rice and you’re thinking
Skillet Suppers: Pork Chops with Cabbage and Sweet Potatoes
Skillet suppers, one-pot meals, sheet pan suppers — I’m sure you hear these terms all the time. They’re popular not only for their simplicity