He's cooked for Oprah, now Chef Art Smith reveals his must-have Thanksgiving recipe in Holiday Home & Tell
Celebrity chef Art Smith knows his way around the kitchen — and plenty of famous ones. He's cooked for Oprah Winfrey, other celebrities, heads of state and even royalty.
But Chef Smith, like so many others, has his own memories of Thanksgiving that he tries to bring to his family holiday celebrations. "Every day, we create and make our own traditions," Smith tells Yahoo Life as part of the Yahoo Life Holiday Home and Tell series. "Many traditions that we think of are traditions that are established in our families over 100 years ago."
Chef says he loves to make bread and serve it on his Thanksgiving table every year. "Bread-making to me is something that I really enjoy because [of] the senses of it, the smells," he says. "I remember as a little kid, the smell of my grandmother Georgia's dressing, this wonderful cornbread dressing."
Video Transcript
ART SMITH: One of the great things about a Chef Art Smith Thanksgiving, there's always delicious bread, there's always something sweet. So we take bread and something sweet and put it together for something absolutely delicious. Many traditions that we think of are traditions that were established in our families over 100 years ago. For me, tradition again, it's every day.
I traditionally love to have our meal in the early afternoon, because it's a big meal. My kids are kind of like, um, Daddy, when we're going to eat? I said soon. Because I'm ready.
This recipe comes from a little bit of everywhere. It's part of my grandma's, my aunt's, everything. We always had yeasto for Thanksgiving or Christmas, and this is why I make it. And then I added my little twist on it.
Now, I put a little oil. In fact, I put a little olive oil. OK, you know what? I'm a chef to the stars. Should I tell you what this olive oil came from?
Do you want to know? Mr. George Lucas, do you know who that is? Mr. Skywalker himself sent me this olive oil. Let that rest just a little bit.
I'm going to take some cinnamon sugar and I'm going to take my pre-oiled mold and I just take it and I just kind of roll it around like that. Why? Because that's going to make it a really sugary, sugary, nice glaze.
I take some butter. OK, what is life without butter? Don't tell me how much I put in there. You don't want to know.
Bread baking, to me, is something that I really enjoy because, one, the senses of it, the smells. I remember as a little kid, the smell of my grandmother Georgia's dressing. You know, in the South, we don't stuff a bird, we dress a bird and it's wonderful cornbread dressing.
What was cool was I took that same recipe and created Thanksgiving at the Oprah Winfrey Girls Leadership Academy outside of Johannesburg. Oprah wanted her little girls to be able to enjoy and celebrate an American Thanksgiving. And what was wonderful, again, is that recipes that have been taught to me that I had enjoyed as a child, I was able to share those with other children from around the world.
Like, imagine you're making, like, a cranberry pizza, OK? And then what we can do too is, we can add a little bit of more cinnamon sugar in that. And the next thing I'm going to do is I'm going to roll it, and boom, there we go. Can you believe I stuck it in there all at the same time? Lord have mercy.
Being I come from a multicultural family, I'm married to the Venezuelan Jesus, Jesus, Jesus Salgueiro, and we bring in a lot of Venezuelan dishes. And my children also are Cuban and Puerto Rican, so we throw a little bit of that in there. When you're giving thanks, doesn't really make any difference what you're serving. It's the fact is that you're thankful that you're serving it and you have it to serve. Can you say beautiful?
And then what you do is, you see here? This is like a flavor well. So what you do is you just fill that flavor well full of more cranberry.
What I love about this bread is it brings back those memories of my grandmother's wonderful pan yeast rolls and the smell of those with the butter and everything. Happy Thanksgiving to all of you and may you have many, many delicious, wonderful meals together. And more cranberry swirl bread.
