Blue Kitchen 2024: Make it. Eat it. Think it. 

Terry Boyd is the creative force behind Blue Kitchen, a vibrant and approachable food blog dedicated to the joy of cooking and eating. With a passion for fresh ingredients and big flavors, Terry brings an adventurous spirit to his kitchen, drawing inspiration from diverse culinary traditions around the world. Despite his self-described "amateur chef" status, Terry's recipes and food writing have been featured in the Chicago Sun-Times, the Christian Science Monitor, and on platforms like Bon Appétit and Saveur. Blue Kitchen reflects Terry's philosophy that cooking should be fun, accessible, and never overly complicated—whether you're a novice home cook or a seasoned kitchen pro, you're sure to find inspiration here. DeliveryRank has the opportunity to converse with Terry.

Terry, what was the turning point that made you fall in love with cooking?

It was less of a single turning point and more of a gradual process, really. I started cooking when I was out on my own, out of necessity at first. Pretty soon, I had a handful of dishes I could serve to friends and they’d be impressed. That felt good, so I started looking at cookbooks and food magazines. Being able to read a recipe and have a pretty good idea of how the dish would taste evolved into thinking “that sounds good, but if I add this, it would be better.” And that evolved into not always needing a recipe, relying on techniques learned along the way. I don’t know about everyone, but for me, feeling like I’m getting reasonably good at a thing makes me enjoy it—and eventually love it.

And then there’s the cooking itself. Prepping and organizing ingredients (our daughters apparently used to have an inside joke about how often Marion and I say “ramekin”), the fragrant aromas filling the kitchen as ingredients go into skillets or saucepans, seeing (and smelling and tasting) a dish come together… and the ta-daaa moment—for family, for company or even just yourself—when the meal is ready, and is good, and sometimes, is just plain wonderful. What’s not to love?

What role does your wife Marion play in the creative process at Blue Kitchen, and how do you collaborate on recipes?

Marion and I have collaborated in the kitchen since long before Blue Kitchen. She is, if I’m being honest, a much better cook than I am, being more adventurous in what she chooses to make and doing much more tasting, adjusting and refining a dish as she cooks. Whoever is cooking for a given blog post, we discuss what we’re planning to make and possibly suggesting changes. And while we’re cooking, we’re saying, “Here, taste this. What does it need?” Often, the answer is nothing, it’s perfect.

And we’re often attracted to different dishes and cuisines, making things that wouldn’t have occurred to the other person. That gives Blue Kitchen greater range than if it were one of us cooking everything.

How do you balance creating recipes that are both quick and accessible for beginners while still offering something new and exciting for more experienced home cooks?

We love to cook, but we’re not obsessed with it. So we don’t tend to take on recipes that involve arcane, laborious processes or require you to start making something three days before you plan to serve it. Many of our recipes fall into the weeknight-quick category, in fact—because, hey, we all have other things to do. For home cooks who are just getting started, we offer recipes, techniques and ideas that sound doable and worth tackling. Readers have called our recipes bombproof—clear and easy to follow. For experienced home cooks, we try to offer surprises—ingredients or techniques borrowed from other cuisines, for instance, little tips that even experienced cooks need in their arsenal, things that make them think “wow, I didn’t know that” or “hey, I need to try that.”

Can you share a particular moment or dish that you cooked that made you realize the joy of borrowing techniques and ideas from global cuisines?

We are huge fans of the global pantry. Our fridge and pantry are filled with sauces, spices and herbs from all over. And while we do use them sometimes to make dishes they’re usually associated with, adding them to unexpected dishes from other cuisines is especially fun. 

One dish that stands out to me is our Garam Masala Oatmeal Raisin Cookies. Garam masala is a Northern Indian spice mix often used in chicken and vegetable dishes. These cookies don’t come across as ersatz Indian food, though. People trying them for the first time will take a bite, pause for a moment and then say “mmmm, what’s in this?” in a surprised, admiring tone.

(https://blue-kitchen.com/2007/03/21/borrowed-ingredients-garam-masala-oatmeal-raisin-cookies/)

Blue Kitchen is described as a place for creating and enjoying food without the pressure of a professional kitchen. How do you maintain this casual and approachable atmosphere in your recipes and writing?

If I ever had visions of working in a professional kitchen (and what decent home cook hasn’t) reading Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential quickly dispelled any such notions. In your home kitchen, it’s just dinner—or lunch or breakfast or dessert. Sometimes when I’m serving something new to Marion, I’ll say “if it’s awful we can throw it out and order a pizza, I won’t be offended.” (And for the record, we’ve maybe done that once.) So we offer approachable recipes that are easy to follow, but offer nice flavor surprises, squarely at the intersection of “hey, I can do that” and “that sounds really good.”

I think another thing we do is invite people to try new things—dishes, ingredients, cuisines. And again, make it sound doable.

Storytelling is also a big part of Blue Kitchen—a dish or ingredient history, how we came to discover it, what inspired us to try making it. In some ways, it feels like we’re hanging out in the kitchen talking. Some of our readers don’t cook, but just come for the stories. One person in particular claims not to cook, but then reports via social media that she’s bought the ingredients for our latest recipe and, later, how a dish turned out.

If you would like to find out more about Blue Kitchen, please visit https://blue-kitchen.com/