Cooking as a Team: A Couple Cooks with Sonja and Alex Overhiser
In episode 105 of the Kitchen Confidante podcast, Sonja and Alex Overhiser chat with Liren about how they eat at home, how their cookbook guides couples to cook together, and so much more.
On the podcast, I recently chatted with Sonja and Alex Overhiser, the power couple behind the award-winning blog, A Couple Cooks.
Cooking is much for fun when you have a partner in the kitchen, and Sonja and Alex are proof. Their first cookbook, Pretty Simple Cooking, was named a best vegetarian cookbook by Epicurious and Food and Wine. They also authored Voraciously: Plant Powered, a series with the Washington Post.
Their latest book, A Couple Cooks: 100 Recipes to Cook Together, celebrates their partnership and is a beautiful guide to living and entertaining as a team.
In this episode, we chat about how they eat at home, how their cookbook guides couples to cook together, how to plan the perfect Valentine’s Day date-night menu, and so much more.Listen to the full episode or keep reading for some of the highlights from our conversation.
How did you get started food blogging?
We met on the first day of Freshman year in college in Indiana. We started dating and eventually bought a house together in Indianapolis. We wanted to host a dinner party for friends, but we had almost no experience cooking.
To prepare, we started reading cookbooks, watched cooking shows together, and surrounded ourselves with friends who liked to cook. This was around the time that food blogs were starting to take off, so we read a lot of food blogs, too.
There were plenty of mistakes and fails along the way, but we also made a lot of great meals that got us excited and helped us discover the joy of cooking together. After some time, we decided to start our own food blog, and now it’s evolved into our full-time career.
We used to view cooking as a chore, but after about one or two years, we really discovered the joy of it. As a musician and an artist, we both had creative backgrounds and realized that food could be a creative outlet as well, so we were well-suited to it.
“We discovered we had a good complementary combination of creativity,” says Sonja. “A big key of any partnership in the kitchen is just embracing and honoring your different ways of thinking. Don’t assume your way of doing things is correct.”
“We’ve learned to respect each other in the kitchen and that helps a lot,” says Alex.
Tell us more about your book, A Couple Cooks: 100 Recipes to Cook Together
The new book is thoughtfully designed to make cooking as a couple approachable and fun. Recipes are organized with roles for “Cook 1” and “Cook 2,” offering a flexible starting point for dividing tasks. “If we were cooking through the book, we’d probably divide it differently each time,” Sonja explains, “but the designated roles are a great place to start.”
The book also embraces all types of diets, offering something for everyone, whether you’re vegetarian, flexitarian, or omnivorous.
“We really wanted to make a book for everyone,” says Alex.
Date night chapter with two-serving size, fun, special recipes that we love to make together. Rest of the book is 4-5 servings. That chapter was a fun challenge to make and some of our favorites.
A favorite section is the date-night chapter, which features 2-serving recipes that feel special to cook and enjoy together. The rest of the book includes recipes with 4-5 servings, perfect for hosting, young families, or leftovers.
There is also a guide to essential kitchen tools, noting that a good chef’s knife and sauté pan are some of the most important basics for new cooks. We encourage people to start learning by doing. You don’t need a fully outfitted kitchen to get started—just get started and add the tools that you need as you go.
A Couple Cooks: 100 Recipes to Cook Together, by Sonja and Alex Overhiser
(Chronicle Books, 2024)
Learn more
Listen to the full podcast episode here, learn more on their website, acouplecooks.com, and follow along on Instagram @acouplecooks.
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