‘Great American Recipe’ searches for hidden tastes (and tacos)

According to Alejandra Ramos, host of “The Great American Recipe,” judges often heard about someone serving tacos, “but it was always with this completely different spin. We had Korean tacos. We had Mexican tacos. We had the all-American ground-beef-style tacos. All these different interpretations of this one dish.”

And, no matter where the recipes emerged, there were surprises.

While contestants may have represented a certain area, their dishes weren’t site specific. One was from New England, but he didn’t do typical chowder. One was from New York, but her food was Puerto Rican. More likely, officials say, the recipes were inspired by family.

Executive Produce Jilly Pearce says the PBS series is really about “love and family and connection. The recipes tell the story of who we are.”

The secret ingredient: Stories.

In the casting process, producers looked at the recipes, the contestants’ heritage and their personalities. The goal was to find the best home cooks living in the United States.

Because it was produced during the pandemic, contestants, show personnel and judges were separated from their families. Food, then, became a way for everyone to connect.

Jonathan Barzilay, the chief operating officer for PBS, called it a “recipe for optimism.”

“The show really evolved as a concept during the pandemic,” Pearce says. “Hopefully, the audience will connect with that.”

Because contestants are amateurs, they had to adapt to the changes found in a television cooking setting. “When somebody is used to being able to cook something for like five hours and they have to adapt to one of our competition times, that’s a big challenge,” Pearce says.

Tiffany Derry, one of the show’s judges, says contestants weren’t prepared for the intensity of the stovetops they were using. “They’d go, ‘It’s so hot. How did it cook so fast?’ It definitely was a challenge for them.”

Those contestants also had to adapt their recipes to work in the setting. If they needed special tools, they were able to bring them from home.

“It really told a story about their heritage,” Pearce says. “Some of those things had been in their family for years.”

Because the contestants weren’t attempting anything too complex, home chefs could easily re-create the dishes.

“Hopefully every viewer is going to see that with so many different cultures being represented, ingredients that they use and have in their pantry are probably different than what everybody has at home,” judge Graham Elliot says. “Hopefully, this will encourage them to go out and try some new things and experiment when those ingredients.”

To make it a bit easier, there will be a cookbook to accompany the series.

If there’s a challenge, it’s in sourcing the ingredients, says judge Leah Cohen. Find the right ones – at a Mexican or Asian grocery, for example – and a new world could open. “I don’t think we always value how great simple, delicious food is.”

“The Great American Recipe” airs on PBS.