Chef Tiffany Derry Says Southern Cooking Isn’t What You Think It Is

Celebrity chef Tiffany Derry says Americans have the wrong idea about Southern food, and she’s drawing on her own upbringing in Texas and Louisiana to make the case.

“I think a lot of times that criticism comes from folks who don’t actually understand the South,” Derry told Fox News Digital.

Derry, a Texas-born chef and restaurateur known for competing on “Top Chef” and now judging “MasterChef,” pointed to her family’s Louisiana roots. Her family ran a farm, and the food on her childhood table came straight from it.

“We had a farm,” she said. “I ate from the farm very much.” Long before restaurants began marketing “farm-to-table” menus, Derry said that was simply how her family ate. “It wasn’t this farm-to-table thing. It was what you did,” she said.

Neighbors traded what they grew, and meals centered on rice, peas, vegetables and beans, with protein served in smaller portions than people might assume, Derry recalled.

She pushed back on the idea that Southern cooking is defined by heavier fare like mac and cheese or biscuits and gravy. “It’s important to not just tell the story of the country cooking where we talk about mac and cheese and we talk about biscuits and biscuits and gravy,” Derry said, adding that those dishes made up “such a very small amount of the cooking” and weren’t part of everyday meals in her experience.

Cooking was a family affair growing up. Derry’s grandmother had 11 children, and Derry now has more than 50 cousins. As a child, she helped prepare greens, peas and green beans alongside relatives.

“People don’t really understand where food comes from,” she said.

A return to home cooking

After 27 years in the restaurant industry, Derry said she’s noticed a shift back toward home cooking. She recalled a stretch when Americans seemed to cook less, and some “just didn’t really know how to cook.” Now, she said, younger generations are turning to TikTok for recipes, entertaining at home and even taking up bread-making.

“I love the fact that people are interested in sourdough. Like, are you kidding me?” Derry said. “People are back making bread.”

She sees that change play out on “MasterChef,” where home cooks progress to plating food that looks restaurant-made. Derry noted that many of today’s younger cooks taught themselves, since “so many of their parents didn’t really cook.” Instead, she said, “they learned on their own, and they learned through watching and through chefs and TV and reading books and magazines and all of that.”

Derry spoke with Fox News Digital while promoting a partnership with Tostitos and its new Chunky Guacamole for football season. She said tailgating spreads have evolved too, moving from traditional burgers to Kobe beef sliders and increasingly elaborate dishes built for social media.

“Before, people weren’t taking pictures of it. They were just eating it,” Derry said. “Now I feel like people do first start taking pictures, you know? And I’m like, ‘This is for us to eat.'”