- Ingrid, hello, I think my mic was muted there for a minute, but I'm told that we're now on How are you this evening?

Let me welcome you, and say thank you so much for being with us and congratulations on being one of the contestants in episode one of season three of the "Great American Recipe."

It is a privilege to have you here with us this evening.

- Thank you for having me.

I'm excited to be here with all of you.

- So tell me, how did you become part of this show?

How did you wind up from your wonderful kitchen in Charlotte to this wonderful set that they built in Nashville?

- Well, I started posting recipes online, on Instagram, on TikTok, and one of the producers came across one of my videos and they reached out to me, and they told me about show, and they sent me a couple of links to go see the previous season.

So when I saw it, I was like, "Oh, this sounds awesome."

So we got together, and I was chosen to go on it.

[laughs] - Well, that is very exciting, and it obviously is born from a personal passion and expertise in cooking that you have.

So I watched with great interest you preparing your first recipe for them which was a dish that I believe was inspired by your grandmother, that wonderful sopa.

Tell us a little bit about that, and how you came to make it, and what it means to you.

- Well, actually that particular recipe is two of my favorite recipes my grandma made for me growing up in El Salvador.

I just happened to combine them.

The bean soup with, a lot of Salvadorian food is made, we use a lot of broths, and we use a lot of bones in it.

So growing up, I remember coming home from school, my grandma usually had like, we grew up with a lot of beans, like every Hispanic household has.

So when I would come from school she always like those are my memories, I always remember smelling beans cooking, and one of my favorite things was the tortitas, the little masa bowls.

And she made that I think a couple of times for me, and over the years I would make them separate, but they're my favorite.

That's home, when I make this, it reminds me of my grandma, and it's comfort food for me.

So over the years I just kind of combined both of them, I made my own recipe out of my grandma's recipe.

- I'm sure she would be incredibly proud, and I know I would be proud to get to taste something that delicious.

It was a perfect first step for you.

And you mentioned in the heritage of this recipe and in your practice of cooking, how much cooking is a family affair at your house?

You mentioned that your kids cook and so forth, and you said that family dinner is a priority.

Tell us a little bit about that.

- Well, you see, when I was growing up, my parents, we're immigrants, I wasn't born in the US, I was born in El Salvador, and my parents had been here, but they were working so hard.

My father, one point he had three jobs, and my mother she had two jobs.

So there was never any time for me to learn to make any of our meals.

And there were seven of us, so I couldn't waste no ingredients.

So I never really got into the kitchen until I was older.

And I wanted to learn, it was something very important for me because I have memories of these recipes, but I didn't know how to cook 'em.

So when we moved to North Carolina, and my kids, they were a little bit older, they wanted to get in the kitchen, I was like, okay, I'm gonna teach you what I know.

And every day it just became a habit.

Over time, it just became a habit that we continue to practice making Salvadorian dishes, and we added new ones And then my husband, he works very hard and on the days that he's off, we kind of make it a point where four of us get together and start cooking as a family.

There are things that when the four of us are cooking, my husband, my daughter, and our son, maybe we haven't had time to really discuss something that is bothering any of us.

But when we're cooking there, it's like everything comes out or the issue is sometimes, I have teenagers, and they have a lot of issues.

I mean, could do little things, but when we're cooking together, everything comes out, like sometimes the happy moments, and there's tears, or they're kind of mean to each other.

And my kids are kind of mean to each other sometimes.

There is boy and girl, and they're teenagers.

[laughs] So when they're mean to each other, this is the time where we kind of like, all right, get it out, let us know and what's bothering you or what's bothering me with husband and things like that.

So it's kind of like we put everything together when we're cooking.

- I understand that, I'm a parent myself.

My daughter is now a grown woman who has her own kitchen and so forth.

But I remember those days that we both let our guard down.

I often said when our mouths were full, our minds opened a little bit.

And you chose that wonderful recipe of your grandmother's to share with the audience and with the show for us.

If there was like one or two recipes that you hope that your children will always have in their back pocket to take into their lives as they continue to grow and become young adults, what might some of those things be?

- It would definitely be my grandma's recipe, but the way I make I make it now, which is making the bean soup, the meat and the patties, I guess, I don't even know what to call them in English because I'm so used to calling them in Spanish, I'm used to call them the tortitas.

So that and pupusas, like our national dish.

And for us, especially for me growing up, it was something that, believe it or not, we never had it.

It was like only having a special occasion at home because they're very labor intensive, and we really didn't know how to make 'em.

- So tell me how to make them, for those of us that have never had the pleasure of having one, what is a pupusa?

How do you make them?

- Well, it's basically, it's a tortilla.

You make it like, you make the masa, the flour, I guess, mix, in the US we use the flour, we don't make it from scratch with the corn, but you make the masa, you make the meat, like when I make it, I make it the day before, so it has time to flavor.

And then we make the curtido, which is the coleslaw, also I make that like the day before.

So it has time to pickle with the pineapple vinegar, which is like-- - Ooh ooh, pineapple vinegar.

- Yes, and it's something that I have had a hard time finding in the US, so I make it from scratch.

I make the pineapple vinegar.

It's like I always have a batch going on and it's very labor intensive.

You can make it with meat, usually pork, chicharrones, with cheese or just itself.

And you put any type of vegetables in there, and then you grill them up.

- Well, that sounds amazing.

And if you should see me on your doorstep in a few days, standing there waiting for some, don't be surprised, but so you have obviously this great passion for home cooking.

Your enthusiasm is contagious, and I can see why it landed you on the show.

But let's talk about the phenomenon of cooking on television, which is very different from cooking in our home kitchens.

Tell me a little bit about your experience, what it felt like to be there, the help they gave you, the help they didn't give you, just make that experience come alive for us, because it's something few people ever get to do.

- It was, I mean, with my kids in my small kitchen, not having a camera in my face all the time.

It's like it get out the way like we need to get the food, we don't need media and all this type of things that, it was, I mean, I like the experience.

I have fun, but I dunno, it was something different.

- So were there certain things that happened behind the scenes that surprised you or would surprise us to hear about it?

Tell us about how like a typical cooking session went.

Were you, the one thing that's different about this se this season is that no one goes home.

It's a big reveal at the end.

And I'm certainly not asking you to give us any spoilers, but did you stay in Tennessee the entire time?

Did you cook every day?

What was the pacing like?

- I will say that it was long hours for one episode, but we did have that one hour to cook where that was like, you have 60 minutes from the time Alejandra said go.

You had 60 minutes.

But there's just so many things behind the scene that it was a lot.

But it was awesome.

- So did they do your grocery shopping?

Did they do any prep work when you walked up to that lovely station, and it looked like a very well appointed station?

What did it look like from your side of that?

- I was like, when I saw that stuff, I'm like, okay, why don't I have this workstation in my home?

It was like everything, well, they did the grocery shopping for us, they got everything ready.

I guess in a way prepped it to make it cleaner.

Like they had meat to I guess package it, clean it, but everything else was, you had 60 minutes to prep.

That's it.

You did not have more than the 60 minutes to, if you had a lot of vegetables to chop up, you had to get going-- - Had to get going, exactly.

- Did not have a second to spare.

- Well, I'm sure, and 60 minutes sounds like a long time until those minutes start flying.

I'm sure it felt like it was the blink of an eye at the time So each of you had 60 minutes, and it looked at least to us viewers like you were cooking at the same time, but yet you went in order to present your dish.

What happens in those minutes between when you take something out of the oven or off the stove and when that dish goes and in front of the judges, tell us a little bit about how that worked.

- Well, like I said, from the moment you go in there, you would not notice if you're not standing in front of the pot how long it takes a pot to start boiling - Right.

- To be quite honest, as of right now, I'm like, I dunno, all I can think of you as I'm talking to you right now is like I'm panicking.

I'm thinking I'm back in there, trying in the moment where you just like, you know you have 60 minutes, and then there at least Alejandra will tell you, you got 20 minutes, you got 15 minutes.

We know what we had a couple of minutes.

But it's kind of a blur, you autopilot you have to get it done, you have to get it done.

- You have to get it done.

So let's talk about the judges.

They have new judges on this season, some from last season and a couple of new ones and so forth.

And one of the things I appreciate so much about about this particular show is that it seems to be very encouraging, very warm looking for the best part.

There are no dire consequences.

It's not a cutthroat competition.

It brings up that sense of community and camaraderie in cooking.

Tell us a little bit about the judges, how you interacted with them and some of your impressions and maybe something you've learned from them in addition to teaching them about your food.

- I love that we're having more diversity.

- Yes.

- The show.

And when you have diversity, you kind of identify with one of them more versus the other.

And I don't know, I just felt at ease with all of them.

Like they were there more than to criticize us.

They were there to teach us, to help us more than anything.

And I don't know, I just like, I love the fact that I gotta talk with Francis in Spanish.

I did not know that.

And his Spanish is amazing, and I love that.

- Yeah, that's, I expected, I know Francis a little bit from, I used to work with him a little bit, it's been a number of years ago and so forth.

And I think that, that he is such an expert, such an incredible depth of knowledge about food and culture and so forth.

I can see why there would be rapport with him and so forth.

But your fellow contestants coming from all around the United States, did they present food that was new to you?

Were you able to taste one another's recipes?

Tell me about the dynamics among the contestants.

- Oh, I loved Adjo's, like she had, I'm not familiar with African cuisine, - Right.

- And I wish we could, her food, it looks delicious.

And the smells that were coming outta it, it was something that when she was talking about her African food, it was like her face would light up.

It's like we have had some after being there, we have had food that I would've never been introduced had she not been there or I had been there.

Another one that I love the fact that we had Jon, he's Mexican American, I'm Salvadorian, and our food tends to get blended in together as one.

And in Central America, South America, Mexico, the Caribbeans is Latin, but there's so many different layers to our food, and I'm glad people got to see us working.

We were stationed next to each other.

We actually got to try each other's food.

- Good.

- And it was amazing for the audience to see like, okay, there's more than just Mexican food, and this other food, it's similar, we may have the same ingredients, but we have our own Latin flavor to it.

- I love that.

I love yeah, the range, even seeing in that first episode, seeing the range of different ways that people combine flavors, that they combine ingredients that we're familiar with while enticing us to try some new things and so forth.

Were there any of the ingredients that you perhaps discovered from a fellow contestant that is now part of your kitchen?

- Doug's, I never flour, what's it called, I never knew, like that's a grain that I'm not familiar with and I have to master, his dishes looked so good.

And it's something that my kids are so intrigued by because, how come we're not grain, you eat carbs!

But that's something that never came across us in the Alaskan, Kim from Alaska.

Oh, her food looks so delicious.

There's just so many different, like I wanted to try the moose meat so bad.

[laughs] I don't think I'm ever gonna get a chance to.

- Yeah, exactly.

That's intriguing that we know that moose meat is coming because I remember the reindeer sausage from the clip we just watched and so forth.

And just showing that in many communities you make the most of whatever the specialty ingredient is in the area where you live.

And I think that that's it broadens our minds to all kinds of deliciousness and so forth.

So I cannot wait as a fellow viewer to see what is coming down down the road as we go along.

So people ask me this question all the time, and it's both a great question and a hard one to answer, but I'm gonna see what your answer might be to this.

If you had only let's say one ingredient, all right, let's make it three that you would take with you to a desert island.

It's like, man, I cannot get along with this.

Tell us some of the ingredients are just essential to who you are, how you cook, and what you crave.

- Well, I think one of the most important thing would be corn, I'm Salvadorian, I'm Central American.

It's the mother of all grain for us.

And I don't think I live without tortillas.

I need tortillas.

And then another thing probably would be my spices, especially cumin, that is one of my favorite spice.

And lemme see, what's another thing?

Oof getting hard, ooh, this is hard.

- It is hard, it is hard when you think about, tell me a little bit, because I love so much how you describe the pupusas and so forth, and a lot of us have never had a freshly made warm tortilla.

I think that they can get that those of us have that describe tortillas the way that you make them and how you love them.

Because I think that's different from the experience of taking a cold tortilla out of a pack from the grocery store.

- Well, you see tortillas, the ones you find in the store, they're the Mexican type of tortillas.

- So tell us about your tortillas.

- Our tortillas, Salvadorian tortillas, and I think most of the South American countries, we make them by hands, we don't use a press.

So ours are a little bit thicker, and my tortillas, usually how it goes in our house is like the size of the tortillas, like how big your hands are.

- Oh, I love that.

- So you shape it to the size where you can stretch it, right?

My mom, she makes tortillas like bigger than my head.

I dunno how she does if she does it by hands, my tortillas could never, and the difference they popped up, but Salvadorian tortillas are really thick, you kind of overeat a little bit more because they're thicker, so there's more masa on there, but they're really, you don't find them in the stores.

I never have.

So you have to make them from scratch.

I make mine as if I were to, my tortillas, I gotta make them, otherwise I'm not gonna find them in the stores.

- Right, well again, that just sounds so tempting, and I wish I was in your kitchen about to have some right now, but like the the essential ingredients, is there a tool or a gadget or a vessel or even a favorite pot that you turn to time and time again?

Like for me that would be a cast iron skillet.

It's like I could get a lot done with a cast iron skillet.

Is there something in your kitchen that thing you turn to time and again to use for cooking?

- I have two, I have two things that I don't think I can live without.

And it's a griddle, again-- - Really?

Like a stovetop griddle?

- Yes.

- Not a grill, a griddle, is it flat?

- Yeah, flat, you'll see it on my stove, it lives there on one side, I have the Davo burner one.

It lives on one, I have multiple ones, it lives there.

I make everything there.

I make pupusas, you need a grill to make pupusas, you need 'em to make tortillas, or if I'm making steak or anything like that.

So I need a griddle, we call it comal.

- Yes, I've seen that word, yes, thank you for helping me make that connection.

I have seen that word before.

- Yeah, so it has to be a comal and something.

I call it a hammer, it's like hammer time.

[both laughing] And the meat tenderizer, I mean I used it.

You'll see-- Yeah, that's where I feel about my skillet, you can cook with it.

It's a home security device.

It's all kinds of things.

- Yeah, because if I wanna pound meat or if I wanna make a dessert, I have my hammer.

- That is good, so when your kids are raised, leave the nest and go out into the world, would that be one of the things you pack for them to take with them to ha their own just establish their household with?

- That's a hard question for me because I have an uprising senior coming up.

- That's exciting.

- This morning we actually went to take a senior pictures.

So it's been a very emotional day today, and I think I'm gonna be like this all year.

- Probably so, that'd probably so.

Well, I think bringing in all those personal traits, and those family stories is one of the things that makes the show so special.

And you know, again, we've got the whole season to go.

I really we get excited to see who those finalists are gonna be.

I have my fingers crossed that you're one of them, but now that it's been a little while, and you're back home, are you staying in touch with any of these folks?

Have they become confidants and lifelong friends or has everybody sort of gone back to their own kitchen?

What's your relationship with them now?

- Listen, this morning we have a chat where we talked about the episodes, and little things, what's going on in our lives.

We were going over the memes, some of the things that we were saying last night that became memes that became GIF, I think they're called.

That's new for me, I mean we keep in touch, and it's amazing.

Like we follow each other on our social medias.

'Cause everything is so scheduled on the show.

You have from the moment you rise to the moment you go to bed, you have a schedule.

So we got to talk to each other when we were not filming on little breaks that we had.

But I feel like by keeping in touch we really got to know each other more, versus running around - Right.

That's why you become fast friends with people isn't it?

To be sharing their experience and sharing that space and everything.

Well, Ingrid, I believe it or not, we have already come almost to the end of our conversation time.

I want to thank you again for being with us, and since you were willing to share a few things about season three of the Great American recipe, if you would indulge me, would like to share a little bit about my show, which is the Key Ingredient with Sheri Castle.

And we are busily making a season three of that that will come out this fall.

And it's all new ingredients.

I go through eight ingredients a season.

We've got all new ingredients, wonderful field trips where things I went out and learned how to pick crabs.

I was fishing for crabs off the end of a pier.

I went foraging for wild mushrooms in the Appalachian mountains.

We've gone from the seat of the mountains and everything for this new season.

And I believe that we are now gonna see a little quick preview, what we call a sizzle reel about season three of the Key Ingredient.

[upbeat music] I'm Sheri Castle, welcome to a whole new season of the Key Ingredient.

You're gonna love this.

It is one of my favorite sweet potato recipes I have ever made.

So good.

I've got a brand new list of my favorite ingredients.

I've got culinary buddies coming over to show me how they prepare those ingredients.

So I've got a good coating.

- And we're gonna bring the bottom corners together.

- That smells good.

You think bears are gonna come?

- Probably out here.

- Yeah.

I went to places where those ingredients are grown and harvested and fished and put into baskets.

Look at this baby.

It's beautiful.

So you got these literally in your yard.

- Yeah.

- I picked peaches, I fished for crab, I foraged from mushrooms, and then I brought it all back to my kitchen where I'm gonna make my favorite recipes with those ingredients to share with you.

Join me.

[upbeat music ends] Well, there you go.

There is a quick preview of season three of the Key Ingredient.

Like I said, we're busily filming episodes now.

It will be out in October.

And I'm having the time of my life, and I hope that everyone that is viewing the show will have as much fun as we did.

You will be able to watch it on PBS North Carolina, of course.

And any way that you might stream PBS North Carolina through the free PBS app and through social media and so forth.

And so again, I would love to thank Ingrid for being a wonderful guest this evening and a wonderful participant in the Great American Recipe, and I hope a new kitchen culinary buddy of mine, I love good cooks never stop learning, and they certainly never stop learning from one another.

So I would like to, again, thank everyone that is viewing, everyone that has joined us this evening.

And I would like to ask if you could to please jot down, you viewers, that the Great American Recipe comes on PBS North Carolina at 9:00 PM on Monday nights with new episodes airing through July 29th, the big reveal.

And you can also of course stream them online or on the free PBS app, and there's so much going on, so much good stuff in the kitchens and so forth, and I am delighted to be part of all of that.

Now here at the end, for those of you that are watching us this evening, I would like for you to follow us on social media through Facebook and through Instagram and visit the PBS North Carolina website.

And please take a moment to complete the brief event survey.

The link is in the virtual chat to the right of your screen, and it will also be sent to you in an email early next week along with a recording of tonight's phone conversation with Ingrid and info on when and where to watch both the Great American Recipe and my show, the Key Ingredient with Sheri Castle.

Let me see if we've got any questions from friends, and if not, friends, I think we have had this wonderful time together.