What’s cooking in your kitchen this season? We’re collecting holiday recipes with Adirondack roots—the kind that have been penciled into old notebooks, scrawled on stained index cards or just committed to memory after watching someone make them year after year.
Maybe it’s the tourtière your family’s been making since your great-grandparents settled here. Or venison prepared the way your uncle always does it. The wild turkey and stuffing recipe that’s been in your family since someone bagged their first bird in these woods. The apple pie recipe that uses canned fruit from that old tree by the barn. Your camp’s signature chili that everyone requests. The latkes your bubbe taught you to make for Hanukkah. The pastelón your mom makes every Christmas—that sweet plantain and picadillo casserole she learned from her mother back in the Dominican Republic. Or the big pot of rice and beans seasoned just right that feeds the whole extended family when money’s been tight.
Here’s what we really want though: the story. Why does this dish show up every year? Who made it first? What does it smell like when it’s cooking? Why does it taste like home?
Use the form below or email your recipe, photos, and story to: emilie@adirondackexplorer.org. Photos of the dish (or the cook!) are strongly encouraged.
Let’s put together a real collection of what people are actually making in Adirondack kitchens this holiday season.
Adirondack holiday recipes
Dining and Cooking