Dolly Parton on ‘Good Lookin’ Cookin’,’ Beyoncé’s CMA Shutout and the ‘Inspiring’ Taylor Swift: ‘Lord Knows We Need Some Uplifting People’

September 19, 2024
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Meredith Woerner

Tue, September 17, 2024 at 11:51 AM EDT8

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Dolly Parton wants to bring her family’s home cooking into your kitchen. The collaboration queen and country icon just launched her brand new meal kit where fans can make her family’s fried chicken right in the comfort of their own homes.

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Parton and her sister Rachel Parton George spoke with Variety about what makes a good pie, Beyoncé getting shut out of the CMA’s and Taylor Swift’s inspiring and “uplifting” year. (We were cut off before getting into politics, but the country artist reassured me with a laugh from behind a concerned publicist that “I don’t talk politics anyway.”)

Inspired by her recent cookbook “Good Lookin’ Cookin’,” which she penned with her sister, the new collection of Home Chef meals is directly pulled from the pages of Parton and George’s work.

The Home Chef meals we tested were the “Fried Chicken & Gravy With Dolly and Rachel’s Mashed Potatoes” and the “Family Favorite Meatloaf with Southern-Style Green Beans.” Full transparency, I combined the green beans and the fried chicken and gravy recipes, and honestly both were as delightful and warm-tingle-inducing as a Parton song.

The recipes were easy to follow, clearly marked, and loaded with things my family used to make (like gravy for fried chicken and bits of bacon for the green beans). Addditional recipes available at the Home Chef collaboration include sirloin steak with blue cheese butter, country fried trout and barbecue chicken breast.

If you love home-style Southern cooking and cried in front of the coat of many colors on display at Dollywood, this meal kit is definitely for you.

First question, Dolly, why did you want to work on this Home Chef’s project with your sister?

Parton: I love my sister. She’s a great cook, and I knew she’d make me look good and I could ride along on her cooking coattails and make myself look like a real chef. We thought HomeChef was a wonderful idea when we were presented with the idea. We can have the recipes that we love, so many of them from our book, so people can have the ingredients and have them at home to actually prepare the things that we’re so proud of. We thought it was a good fit for what we were trying to accomplish with the book, whether you’ve got the whole book and cooked it all yourself or just ordered it so you could [try a singular recipe].

Rachel, your sister said she rides your “cooking coattails,” do you feel like you’re a better chef than Dolly?

George: Well, I am not a chef. I am a cook.

Parton: Yeah, she’s better!

George: I would never say I was better. Dolly is a great cook, and we love to cook together, so it’s a lot of fun to cook with my sister.

What’s your specialty dish?

Parton: Oh, I think just about anything we cook is like that. We can go from anything from a roast, which we both know how to do, to chicken and dumplings. Basically, we like the same things, and we’re pretty good at all the recipes that we have in the book. Sometimes, we’ll have a little personal twist here and there, but for the most part, this is what we grew up loving. And Rachel, she said she might not be a chef, but I think she is, she is a wonderful cook, and she knows how to make the food look pretty and how to present it as well as making it taste really good. I think they’re all great. The meatloaf and the chicken and dumplings, that’s two things we’ve grown up eating the most besides taters and beans.

George: I do love to make the fried chicken. People usually don’t have time to make fried chicken, where you marinate the chicken and buttermilk and put all the spices, and then you drudge it in your egg wash and then your flour, and then you fry it. It makes for a really special, exciting meal, especially when you do that at home. I think everyone’s going to be happy with it, I love to make fried chicken.

Parton: Yeah, Rachel, she’s very detailed. I just run that chicken down and throw it in the skillet.

Was there a recipe in the cookbook that you guys disagreed on and who won that argument?

Parton: I don’t remember that, but I know Rachel would’ve won it because she’s the better cook.

George: I would not have questioned it, if she’d have said, “No I don’t think we should do that.”

Parton: She said, “Leave that to your own cookbook. To your hillbilly cooking.” We just went into it knowing it was going to be fun. It was not something we had to do. It’s something we wanted, and so that makes a lot of difference if you’re just doing it for business, if you’re just doing it to make money. We hope that we might make money, so we could buy more food and so we can cook and eat more. But it was more just a labor of love, truly all the way through.

That leads me to my next question: Dolly, you have a storied career, lots of investments and collaborations. What was the motivation for sharing this with the world?

Parton: First of all, I love my family. I love Rachel. I know what a serious cook she is. She collects cookbooks, watches all the shows, and she’s always telling me about something she’s cooking or bringing something over that she’s tried to see if I like it or bringing me over something that she knows I already love. And it just dawned on me one day, anytime you get your brand, so to speak, when you’ve gained enough popularity, people want to either endorse this or that. So I had had some offers for some books and I thought, “You know what, Rachel and I need to do a cookbook. This would be a great thing for us to do together. People would love it. Since we both love to eat and love to cook, this is the perfect time.” I think it was a really good decision, and I will treasure getting to do this with her for my whole life.

Meatloaf is a part of the Home Chef package. That recipe is such a cornerstone meal for families. We make it in our household. My parents made it when I was little. My grandmother made it for my parents. Why is meatloaf such a sturdy dish?

Parton: I think it is because every family has their own ingredients and when you get older, it’s the memories and the taste that lasts. And it’s a great leftover meal. You can make sandwiches. It’s just a meatloaf. I love meatloaf and I always try to make extra so I can have a meatloaf sandwich.

George: Nothing better than a meatloaf sandwich after you’ve had a good meatloaf the night before.

One of my favorite Dolly songs is “Berry Pie,” what’s the secret to making a good pie?

George: You have to have a good crust, and of course, your filling has to be good, but you have to have the foundation of a good crust. You can buy the crust, and they’re wonderful too. But if you have time to make the dough and then put it in the refrigerator from scratch.

Where do you guys stand on the cake versus pie debate?

George: I kind of favor cake. I like all that breading.

Parton: I like pie because I like all that goo. I like the goo. I do. I do like pie.

Dolly, what’s your favorite pie?

Parton: Chocolate pie.

Dolly, there are so many new artists breaking into the country music scene. What do you think about Post Malone and Beyoncé making country records? Is country becoming more accepting of new artists from other genres joining?

Parton: I’ve been fortunate enough to be on both those albums. Well, “Jolene” was in Beyoncé’s, and I thought that was a great album. She’s a country girl in Texas and Louisiana, so she grew up with that base. It wasn’t like she just appeared out of nowhere. Post Malone has loved country music his whole life, and then I got to do the duet with him on his album, and I think it’s a fantastic album. I thought both those albums were great.

What do you think about Beyoncé getting shut out of the CMA nominations?

Parton: Well, you never know. There’s so many wonderful country artists that, I guess probably the country music field, they probably thought, well, we can’t really leave out some of the ones that spend their whole life doing that. But I didn’t even realize that until somebody asked me that question. But it was a wonderful album. She can be very, very proud of, and I think everybody in country music welcomed her and thought that, that was good. So I don’t think it was a matter of shutting out, like doing that on purpose. I think it was just more of what the country charts and the country artists were doing, that do that all the time, not just a specialty album.

Would you ever duet “Jolene” live with Beyoncé?

Parton: Oh yeah. I’m open to anything.

There’s this awesome surge of women singers happening right now. What do you think of the rise of Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan this summer?

Parton: Oh, I just think some of these young people are absolutely amazing, and I’m just so proud that I got to start in the music business when I did. Or I couldn’t hold a candle to some of these young, great artists. But I’m very proud for all of them and proud of them.

As a songwriter, is there any new music that you’ve heard recently from Chapell, Sabrina or Taylor that really struck a chord with you?

Parton: I like them all. I’m proud of all the gals, and of course, Taylor Swift is amazing what she has done with her career. I just admire her very much and how she’s handled her business, her personal life, and what all she has meant to so many young people. [She’s] been a great inspiration. And Lord knows we need some uplifting people and things this day and time. So I’m proud of all of them. I’m old enough to feel like they’re Aunt or somebody that’s kind of looking down and saying, ‘Yay, you go!’ I think they’re all great in their own way.

What do you think about her endorsing Kamala Harris? [At this point, Parton’s publicist mentions that our time is up]

Parton: I don’t talk politics anyway, but thank you.