Quarantine fatigue! Guy Fieri has whipped up plenty of meals while cooped up inside amid the coronavirus pandemic with his family, but there’s one dish the Food Network star is pretty sick of making for his brood, which includes his wife, Lori Fieri, and their sons, Hunter, 24, and Ryder, 15.
“If my kid asks me to make pizza one more damn time I’m gonna lose it,” Fieri, 52, joked during an exclusive interview with Us Weekly on Wednesday, August 17, while promoting his recent partnership with Heluva Good! “We have a nice wood fired oven here at the house and my son Ryder thinks that pizza is one of the food groups, so that gets a little old.”
With “a pretty big arsenal of recipes” at the ready, the Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives host explained that his family begins mapping out their meals for each day over breakfast. “Everybody starts parlaying what’s going to be for dinner, like, ‘We should have this’ or ‘We should have that,’ or ‘What are we gonna have tomorrow night?’ or ‘What are we going to have this weekend?'” Fieri told Us. “So everybody’s negotiating their position on what we should be having.”
While tasty dishes like a layered french onion chicken bake, which Fieri created using some Heluva Good! ingredients, are frequently in the mealtime rotation, the Ohio native has also been using this time to experiment with foods and flavors that he doesn’t work with quite as often.
“Indian food is one of my new favorites and we’re always dabbling with that,” he said. “We’ve just been doing a show called Triple D Takeout where I was contacting a bunch of our favorite chefs from around the country that we’ve done Triple D with and having them send us recipes that weren’t finished and then we were preparing them here while they were on this big Zoom call. I was reaching out to all my friends that are chefs and saying, ‘Okay, Maneet Chauhan, send me some Indian dishes and let me prepare. Send me some stuff that I can work with the kids on.’ And there were crazy things that she sent us.”
The Guy’s Grocery Games star added: “I’m on a nonstop quest to always try different foods and always try unique foods and continue to open up my portfolio of styles.”
When it comes to cooking in quarantine, Fieri, who has yet to have a quarantine kitchen disaster, advises others not to be fearful of culinary mishaps, especially now. “Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. I don’t believe that every single time an artist writes a song that that song makes it to the top of the charts,” he told Us. “You have your good, your bad and you’re not so great, but we haven’t run into many of those recently.”
The Guy’s Big Bite alum also loves to make use of whatever ingredients he has on hand before they go bad, especially since supermarket runs are a bit more involved given the health crisis. “For instance, if you have mushrooms and you can’t use them as quickly as you need to, sauté them and then hold them in your fridge. Same thing with fresh spinach or any of your leafy greens. Buying what you can get when you can get it is the key and I’m a believer of making the recipe or making the dish or making what you’re having for dinner based upon what’s available and what’s fresh, especially starting with the vegetables. And then you just gotta adapt to it and overcome.”
Fieri, who developed a trio of recipes with Heluva Good!, recently took his own advice and even used one of the brand’s dips to upgrade a side dish. “We took some of the jalapeño cheddar dip and mixed it into leftover rice. We threw some vegetables into it,” he said. “You’ve got to become creative.”
Starting on August 25, Fieri will be sharing his bold and delicious fully loaded creations featuring Heluva Good! Dip on his and Heluva Good!’s Instagram channels. Social media users can submit their own dishes for the chance to win a private virtual chat with the Guy’s Ranch Kitchen star, where he’ll share his very own recipe tips. The giveaway runs through September 10.
With reporting by Carly Sloane
