Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Forward 50 2012

Deb Perelman

If you ask many a passionate home cook where the recipe for a particularly wonderful dish came from, you’ll often hear “Deb” uttered as though the name referred to a good friend. But the “Deb” these cooks cite is actually Deb Perelman, the author of the überpopular cooking blog Smitten Kitchen. Perelman has become one of the most recognizable and influential personalities of the home cooking world.

The blog, which started as a personal project when Perelman was working as a technology reporter in 2006, has grown into a website with around 800 recipes and countless stunning food photos that is read by 5 million cooks each month. Perelman’s approachable tone draws timid cooks to the kitchen and encourages those who are already avid cooks to push their boundaries.

While Perelman’s blog and her new book, “The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook:Recipes and Wisdom from an Obsessive Home Cook,” are not explicitly kosher, they feature a large number of traditional Jewish recipes. “My cooking is equally influenced by that seasonal American idea, one third French/Italian and one third Eastern European Jewish cookery,” Perelman told the Forward. Her versions of traditional Jewish recipes often come with a modern twist — hamantaschen are stuffed with rhubarb compote, blintzes are wrapped around sweet potato and farmers’ cheese and challah is made with olive oil, sea salt and figs.

Through such delicious innovations, Perelman is taking Jewish food to new places and new people.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.