Hilah Johnson knows how to make a cooking show sassy and fun. From her neat and tidy Austin-based kitchen, she and cameraman Christopher Sharpe put together some of her favorite recipes in a very casual and conversational style. After taking a break to spend the summer relaxing and a little bit of partying, Hilah Cooking is back in time for the holidays to give viewers some warm and fuzzy easy-to-make dishes. Poor Taste talked with Hilah about disastrous canned food, dirty dishes, user comments, and all the reasons why she’s October’s Blogger of the Month.
Why did you decide to start an online cooking show?
My friend Chris — who’s the producer and the director, and the marketing guy, and pretty much does everything except stand in front of the camera — had talked about making a web series for awhile as sort of a new project. So he was staying with us, and I was cooking all the time because that’s what I do at my house, and the idea of doing a cooking show seemed obvious to both of us — so we just started doing it to see what happens.
How did you get started cooking?
My parents both cooked, so I would just be in the kitchen “helping.”…I was allowed to do stuff on my own like baking (nothing really involving a knife) when I was about eight, and then I started reading cookbooks and sort of taught myself from there.
When did you realize you were good at cooking?
Probably around high school; I had a boyfriend that was always like, “oh, this is so good!” I don’t know, I guess I was pretty good. I like to cook for my friends and stuff. So far I’ve only made a couple of things that were inedible, so that’s probably a pretty good record.
What was the most disastrous recipe you tried to cook?
It was probably this smoked-oyster-and-eggplant casserole — which I totally should [have] known at the beginning that it was going to be pretty gross — but I was reading this cookbook from the ‘60s, and there was a lot more canned meat being used in recipes in that time period. I’ve never really been a big fan of oysters or anything, but I like smoked stuff and I like eggplant, and so I thought maybe this could be a way I will like oysters. But it was gross. It was horrible. So I’ve since stayed away from any smoked, canned seafood. I’m pretty sure that was the problem, but that’s how you learn! Now I know.
What’s your least favorite thing to cook?
I’m not a huge fan of cooking breakfast in general. I mean, I love eating tacos and bacon and stuff like that, but I guess just having to cook first thing in the morning just puts me off…then the kitchen is a mess, and then I don’t want to cook anything later in the day because I also hate washing dishes.
Do you and your husband have an agreement about the dishes?
It’s sort of an unspoken agreement. We don’t have a set agreement on how clean is considered clean. I like it to be pretty clean. I clean the shit out of it before we shoot, and then I’ll clean it up after we shoot. Sometimes we’re both just busy and it doesn’t get done every night, but that’s why I get to pick and choose when people get to see my kitchen.
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Why do you have a whole book on breakfast tacos if you don’t like cooking breakfast?
Because I love breakfast tacos! And even if I don’t feel like cooking them every morning, I love to eat them and I could probably eat them every meal. I came to realize a lot of people might not even know what a breakfast taco is, and that just seemed like a terrible shame because they are really easy to make — and I’m pretty sure everyone in the world likes breakfast tacos. I think I can make blanket statement for all the people in the world that they would all like breakfast tacos if they had them.
What’s your favorite part about doing the show?
I think hearing feedback from people. We’ve gotten a lot of personal emails from strangers that want to know about me, and about the show, and send me recipes that they found in some old cookbook that they thought I would like. It’s been really cool getting to meet all these people around the country that I never would have met before, so that’s fun.
How do you deal with criticism?
The funny thing is that, so far, I haven’t really had a whole lot of criticism. There’s been a couple “troller” kind of people on YouTube, where they just write really shitty comments like “you suck!” or “go to hell!” and it’s just like, that’s not very constructive. So it’s easy to write those people off because they’re not actually pinpointing what I did wrong. Although, I did get a lot of people complain that I did not put salsa or cheese on my chorizo-and-egg taco video. So I guess you can’t win [with] all the people all the time.
Have you had any failed episodes?
Our first two we made when we were just experimenting, we didn’t put up on public view. We did put them up on the website where the newsletter subscribers can watch them…nothing explodes, nothing excitingly bad happens. I was obviously like really nervous and acted like an idiot and said some weird stuff. We were thinking about putting together a blooper reel, because obviously sometimes something goes wrong, like something spills or something, but I don’t know if Chris is actually saving all those moments anywhere.
What’s in store for season two?
Most of October will be mostly Halloween-themed food. I kind of think because it’s Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, it’s pretty much scheduled up like that — it just seems appropriate to do themes for those holidays, but I’m sure there will be other stuff in there that’s not themed.
Anything else you want to tell the Poor Taste readers?
I welcome emails and comments. I try to respond to all of them and also suggestions. If there’s anything you’d like to see featured, anything that you’ve always wanted to know how to make, [send it over].
