There was a time, Emmy-award winning chef Kardea Brown writes in her latest cookbook, "when I had but a can of Libby's corn in the cupboard." What she did have was creativity, energy and spirit, shaped and supported by her upbringing in the church and her Gullah Geechee heritage. Kardea, who was born in South Carolina, was living near New York City when her passion and joy for experimenting with recipes caught fire, and her then-boyfriend sent an audition tape of her talents to Food Network.

Four and a half years later, she was hosting her first Food Network show, Delicious Miss Brown, featuring her contemporary Southern recipes. Her first cookbook followed; it was a New York Times best-seller filled with recipes passed down through her family, Sea Island dishes and West African cooking traditions. She also launched a traveling, pop-up dining experience, The New Gullah Supper Club.

Kardea's second cookbook, Make Do With What You Have: 100 Delicious New Recipes From Favorite Old-School Meals (Amistad, Nov. 11, 2025), is packed with tips and recipes for using simple pantry staples to turn favorite childhood foods into mouthwatering meals. “Every recipe carries a family story, " she says. "Being raised by a single mother taught me to cook with resourcefulness, heart and a deep respect for the meals that brought us together.”

Kardea has been a guest on other Food Network shows, including Beat Bobby Flay, Chopped Junior, Cooks vs. Cons, Family Food Showdown and Farmhouse Rules. She's also the co-host of Food Network's Baking Championship: Next Gen with pastry chef, artist, entrepreneur and TV personality Duff Goldman.

Make Do With What You Have is packed with new twists on what Kardea calls "old-school favorites," so dishes like Ma's Cucumber Pasta Salad are fresh, innovative updates to recipes passed down from one generation to the next. If you have some uncooked spaghetti, a bottle of Italian salad dressing and a few ingredients like cherry tomatoes, cucumbers and onions, you're on the way to serving up a healthy, flavor-filled pasta salad. Kardea chills hers in the fridge for at least 30 minutes or covers it and leaves it in overnight.

Food prices climbed almost 24% from 2020 to 2024, Kardea notes, citing research from the US Department of Agriculture. When beef is expensive, she looks for different kinds of cuts and meats that have been tucked away in the freezer because she didn't know what to do with them. Her Grilled "Poke" Chops use thin, bone-in pork loin chops marinated in a tasty mixture of olive oil, soy sauce, yellow mustard and other ingredients. After soaking up the marinade for an hour — or up to eight hours, if you keep them in the fridge — they're cooked in an indoor grill pan or a heavy-duty skillet. Plate them up with sides like slaw, potatoes or what you have on hand.

Since beef prices have increased, Kardea looks for ways to stretch things like stew meat, sirloin tips and ground beef. If you want to dress up hamburger, skip buying the prepackaged ground beef additives and make your own with onions, garlic, ketchup, elbow macaroni, cubed cheese and other ingredients from your cupboard or pantry. This dish comes together quickly in a big cast-iron skillet and can be garnished with chopped green onions for more flavor.

Is chicken a popular Southern food? As Kardea likes to say, "Yes, cousin." She makes it with an easy Carolina BBQ sauce, serves it as a potpie in a cast-iron skillet, grills it, blackens it, stews it and adds it to soups, salads and gumbo. Some people choose chicken, she says, because it's thought to be healthier than red meat, while others find it's easier on the budget.

She turns up the heat on her poultry with Hot Honey Drumsticks, dredging them in seasoned flour, dipping them in an egg and milk mixture, and frying them until they're golden brown. Her fresh take on the sauce saves money when you make it at home with readily available spices like smoked paprika, cayenne pepper, chili powder and other fiery flavorings.

Southerners traditionally eat black-eyed peas for New Year's to represent good luck and in hopes of earning coins for wealth; collards are a popular dish that symbolize making paper money. Kardea's recipe for Quick Black-Eyed Peas saves time by starting with a can of drained and rinsed black-eyed peas, instead of dried peas that have to soak overnight. Diced tomatoes (fresh or canned), a green bell pepper and a small red onion add flavor and color to this easy dish. Kardea garnishes her peas with fresh basil or parsley and adds 2 teaspoons of her Miss Brown's House Seasoning, a mix she makes from pantry basics most of us have on hand, like garlic powder, onion powder, sweet paprika, kosher salt and black pepper.

Kardea calls her Pork 'n' Beans recipe a "Poor Man's Meal," and it's as good for stretching your budget as it is for simply whipping up a quick and easy lunch or dinner. It's based on hot dogs, cans of baked beans, a little molasses or packed, light brown sugar and a few other basic ingredients. Add a pinch of her signature Miss Brown's House Seasoning and serve it with rice.

Rice is central to Gullah Geechee life, Kardea writes, and it "shows out" by exploding with flavor. When her West African ancestors where taken to the Lowcountry, they carried with them their knowledge about growing rice, a crop that demands large amounts of sun and water and even flooding, at certain times, to control weeds. Fortunately, home cooks can pick up packages of medium-grain white rice almost anywhere, and with a few scrambled eggs, some cubed ham, a diced onion and a few pinches of Miss Brown's House Seasoning, this supper or side in a skillet is ready in minutes.

Fish and shrimp are easy to find where Kardea grew up, in the Gullah region, but she knows it's harder to find good, fresh seafood if you live inland, so she's created most of her recipes to work well with frozen or canned options. Her Tuna Melt combines a can of drained, solid white tuna (packed in water), a hard-boiled egg, some chopped celery and onions, various seasonings found on most kitchen shelves, slices of any kind of bread you like and slices of American or sharp white cheddar cheese. Layer your ingredients into a sandwich, toast it until the bread is golden brown and enjoy.

Nutritious, easy to make and yummy. What more could you ask of a side dish like Maple-Glazed Roasted Carrots? Use different varieties in eye-candy colors and coat them with maple syrup, brown sugar, oil and vinegar. Kardea bakes her carrots with spices you'll probably have around and garnishes them with fresh herbs. They're ready for the table when they're tender, or in about 30 to 40 minutes.

Got a carton of sour cream on hand? A tub of whipped topping? Don't fret about buying and chopping up fresh fruit. Kardea uses a can of fruit cocktail with a can of mandarin oranges and some mini marshmallows in her Ambrosia Salad. No need to buy pricey pecans if you have some on hand that you can toast and chop, or save money and leave out the nuts.

The price of grocery store ice cream keeps going up, it seems, while the amount of ice cream you get has been going down. Kardea shakes a jar filled with handy ingredients like whipping cream, sugar, vanilla and coarse salt to make homemade ice cream; she pops the mixture into the freezer and lets it chill until it has a soft-serve consistency. No need to shop for fancy toppings. She suggests using toppings or mix-ins that you already have in the kitchen, like fruit, sprinkles or cookies you've crumbled. And, yes, shaking the jar does take a little muscle power for about four or five minutes.

Kardea believes frozen foods can be as good as fresh ones, so she makes this dish with a package of frozen Brussels sprouts, thawed, cut in halves and patted dry. Bacon, diced onion, olive oil and pinches of salt and fresh ground pepper enhance the flavor. You'll need just seven to 9nine minutes to brown the sprouts. Then, add cooked bacon slices and heat everything thoroughly, or for about one more minute, before serving.

You've got a lot of options for making Kitchen Sink Blondies, brownie-like bars that start with all-purpose flour, salt and baking powder. Light brown sugar, semisweet chocolate chips and chocolate candies sweeten this easy-to-make dessert, and you can add any kinds of nuts you have on hand or some broken pretzels. You'll also need vanilla extract and some large eggs. Be careful not to overbake, Kardea warns, so the blondies will have irresistible, gooey centers and light, golden-brown tops.