This Johnson County woman brings her recipe for success to TV cooking competition

For Overland Park’s Khela Brewer, the biggest challenge of appearing on season two of PBS’ cooking competition series “Great American Recipe” can be found in the show’s title.

Brewer doesn’t use recipes when she cooks, but “Great American Recipe” is based on home cooks working off their family recipes.

“It is a foreign concept to me because my grandma and my mom never used a recipe unless they were baking, but they didn’t do much baking,” Brewer says. “The hard part for me (about being on the show) was writing all this stuff down. I’m dyslexic and kind of all over the place.”

The lack of recipe experience also played into how Brewer, 52, ended up on “Great American Recipe” (8 p.m. CT Monday, June 19, KCPT-TV). She routinely posts photos of her culinary creations to Instagram, mostly as a catalog so if a friend asks for a dish she can look back at what she made and come up with how to make it again or jot down preparation instructions. Brewer uses the hashtag #HomeCook on her posts, which is how the casting company for “Great American Recipe” found Brewer.

“She was great,” says “Great American Recipe” judge Graham Elliot. “She was wild, popping off at the mouth, like the crazy mom friend.”

As for her lack of concrete recipes, Elliot offers some reassurance.

“We always say in the kitchen that a recipe is a blueprint,” he says. “As they’re cooking and as they’ve received different input and tricks and comments from us judging, you’ll see them adapt as they go forward.”

Brewer was surprised she got picked for the show, which filmed its second season in a modern, swanky barn in Virginia last September.

“I am a hot mess,” Brewer says. “I’m old and chubby. I just didn’t think that I would be TV material necessarily.” (Brewer says producers asked her to refrain from calling herself a “chubby bunny” on camera.)

Brewer says for years when her two sons were growing up, she didn’t really do things for herself. Now that they’re 21 and 24, she says, “I’ve got time for me. And who gets asked to go on a cooking show? Holy mackerel!”

Brewer, whose day job is in operations for a retirement plan company, was recruited for season two just before season one aired last summer, so she could watch the show’s first season to know what she was saying yes to.

“I didn’t watch a lot of cooking shows prior, and here’s why: I don’t love cooking shows except for the ones with really good chefs or ‘Top Chef’ because a lot of cooking shows are kinda crazy,” Brewer says. “They’re a little bit demeaning or do things that aren’t great. But when I was in the process of getting picked for this show, I did go and watch it and that made me really happy because it was sweet and kind and portrayed people in a positive light. That really sealed the deal that this is a show that I wanted to be on.”

“Great American Recipe” aims for the upbeat tone of “The Great British Bake-Off” while highlighting the tastes, traditions and variety of America’s diverse cuisine. Alejandra Ramos returns as host, and renowned chefs Leah Cohen, Tiffany Derry and Elliot are back as judges and mentors.

Each week, one cook gets eliminated. The top prize lets the last remaining cook get the winning dish on the cover of this season’s “Great American Recipe” cookbook.

Brewer learned to cook from her mother and a Southern grandmother who lived in Asheville, North Carolina. Brewer’s interest in cooking intensified about 10 years ago when she joined a Kansas City Facebook foodies group and later a spinoff for more hardcore cooks. Those connections led Brewer to enter her culinary creations in multiple competitions, including the Mintahama Food Fight, a fundraiser for a summer camp program. Brewer often won.

“I love cooking. I love cooking contests,” Brewer says. “And in some of those groups. I’ve met some of my absolute best friends.”

For the series, Brewer wanted to show that Kansas City has more to offer than just traditional KC barbecue. In the season premiere, Brewer cooks up glazed chicken thighs and cucumber snap pea salad as a signature dish that defines her as a cook.

“That one was really the hardest one,” she says. “When I cook I don’t cook for myself. I cook for everybody else. I look at what they want and I have a catalog of that in my brain. I just make low-carb food for myself.”

For the first episode’s second challenge, creating a dish that represents each cook’s region, Brewer prepares baby back ribs with cheesy corn. She uses banana ketchup from the Philippines to make her barbecue sauce.

“I don’t like regular ketchup and I don’t like barbecue sauce, they both gross me out,” Brewer says. “I made my spin on Kansas City tradition.”

Judge Elliot says Brewer dispels stereotypes of Midwest cooking.

“When you think (of food from) the heartland, the middle of America, it’s not as exciting as maybe some other cities that you hear about, and that’s not justified because there’s a lot of great cooking going on,” Elliot says. “But for her to do certain dishes that almost had a hominess to them, but it was really delicious, you wanted to say, ‘Plate it like this,’ and now it’s world-class or restaurant-quality because the seasoning’s there, the cooking skill is there.”

Brewer says the best part of appearing on “GAR” was the friendships that developed with the other cooks.

“They are fantastic humans, every single one of them,” Brewer says, though she was particularly close to the youngest competitors. “My maternal instincts kick in.”

That included Maria Givens, 32, of Seattle, whose cooking station was near Brewer’s.

“She was always keeping us laughing the whole time,” Givens says. “Khela and I were a good yin and yang. I’m a lot more of the cool-under-pressure type of person and there were times where I was maybe done with my dish and it was three minutes left and Khela was freaking out about something and so I’d go back and help her. You do that a couple of times and you get close. Khela was like my big sister in the barn.”

Freelance writer Rob Owen: RobOwenTV@gmail.com or on Facebook and Twitter as RobOwenTV.