Star Kitchen: The Beekman Boys

Josh Kilmer-Purcell and Brent Ridge, stars of Cooking Channel's The Fabulous Beekman Boys (and recent winners of The Amazing Race) are accidental cheesemakers: Just after they bought their 200-year-old upstate New York farmhouse — built by Revolutionary War veteran William Beekman — a neighboring farmer needed a home for his flock of 88 goats. Suddenly Josh (on the left) and Brent found themselves offering up their land — and making lots of goat cheese. These days, they spend almost all of their time in two rooms of the house: "We're either in the kitchen or in bed asleep," Brent says.

This fireplace serves double duty: It keeps the kitchen warm, and when you lift the bottom grate it becomes a wood-fired grill.

Brent and Josh tend a half-acre vegetable farm on the property and preserve the harvest to enjoy year-round. They store dehydrated beet rounds and garlic shoots here (to use as garnishes) and keep pickled peppers and tomato preserves in the house's original root cellar.

Josh and Brent pledged never to spend more than $1 on a dish. "There are huge bins of mismatched dishware at antiques stores up here," Brent says. They've mixed different patterns to create a one-of-a-kind set.