13 Ways to Cook Like Carla Hall at Home

Cracked Shrimp
Photo: Greg DuPree

We love Carla Hall for her effervescent personality, sense of humor, serious cooking chops, and recipes we want to cook over and over again. These recipes show off Hall's range, with Southern favorites like Pimiento Cheese, Buttermilk Biscuits, and Chicken and Dumplings, a chowder with a special ingredient from the pantry, and a platter of crispy Shrimp with Pineapple-Habanero Relish. Read on for more ways to bring Carla Hall's food to your kitchen.

01 of 13

Lemony Chicken and Dumplings

Lemony Chicken and Dumplings

Jennifer Causey / Food Styling by Emily Nabors Hall / Prop Styling by Julia Bayless

This bright soup of chicken, lemon, vegetables, and herbs is made cozy with light fluffy dumplings.

02 of 13

Cracked Shrimp with Pineapple-Habanero Relish

Cracked Shrimp
Greg DuPree

Carla Hall’s take on Bahamian cracked conch yields tender, extra-crispy shrimp with the help of a rolling pin to flatten and tenderize the flesh. Hold the shrimp by the tail when “cracking” them to make sure the tail doesn’t separate from the rest of the meat.

03 of 13

Rhubarb Pudding Cake

Rhubarb Pudding Cake
© Fredrika Stjärne

When Carla Hall wants to lighten a dessert, she adds fruit. In this supermoist, cinnamony pudding cake, she uses rhubarb (technically a vegetable but treated like fruit here). However, Hall says you can also add strawberries, or swap in peaches or berries. 

04 of 13

Pimiento Cheese with Salt-and-Pepper Butter Crackers

Pimento Cheese with Salt-and-Pepper Butter Crackers
© CON POULOS

Carla Hall makes her own crunchy crackers to serve with this cheese spread, a riff on the beloved Southern classic.

05 of 13

Carla Hall's Buttermilk Biscuits

Flaky Buttermilk Biscuits
Photo by Jennifer Causey / Food Styling by Torie Cox

Made with a combination of grated cold butter for flavor and vegetable shortening for tenderness, Carla Hall's biscuits owe their towering, flaky layers to her classic laminating technique.

06 of 13

Clove-and-Cider-Glazed Ham

Clove-and-Cider-Glazed Ham
© Con Poulos

For entertaining, TV chef Carla Hall glazes a spiral-cut ham with apple cider, brown sugar, mustard, bourbon and sweet spices.  

07 of 13

Creamy Shrimp, Corn and Tomato Chowder

Creamy Shrimp Corn and Tomato Chowder
Fredrika Stjärne

Carla Hall has a surprise ingredient in this recipe: a can of creamed corn. She uses it to add sweet corn flavor to her take on chowder and to thicken the broth in place of too much cream or flour. 

08 of 13

Sautéed Collards and Cabbage with Gremolata

Sautéed Collards and Cabbage with Gremolata
© Con Poulos

These crunchy sautéed greens from chef Carla Hall get big flavor from garlic, lemon and crushed red pepper. 

09 of 13

Crispy Biscuit Crackers

biscuit crackers
Photo by Jennifer Causey / Food Styling by Torie Cox

Chef Carla Hall shared this recipe for turning leftover biscuits to make ridiculously crunchy crackers. Cut into thin slices and sprinkled with a dash of cayenne, they're a next-level addition to a cheeseboard.

10 of 13

Quinoa Salad with Spring Vegetables

Quinoa Salad with Spring Vegetables

When she’s cooking at home, Carla Hall likes to prepare whole-grain salads. “They’re nutritionally awesome and really filling, plus they have a great neutral flavor that’s a blank canvas for anything,” she says. Here, she simmers red quinoa with white wine, tarragon and thyme, then tosses it with radishes, peas and lima beans. “It’s important to drain the cooked quinoa or the finished dish will be watered-down and clumpy,” Hall says.

11 of 13

Skillet Cornbread

Skillet Cornbread
© Abby Hocking

This quick, simple cornbread gets a little tang from sour cream, and its sweet corn flavor from the creamed corn mixed into the batter.

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Asparagus Soup with Parmesan Shortbread Coins

Asparagus Soup with Parmesan Shortbread Coins. Photo © David Malosh
© David Malosh

“I adore savory cheese cookies with creamy asparagus soup," says Carla Hall. "Both are dead simple to make."

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Spiced Lamb and Potato Pie

Spiced-Lamb and Potato Pie
©Â Fredrika Stjärne

Carla Hall is a savory-pie specialist. As a contestant on Top Chef, she won a challenge by making the ultimate chicken potpie. For this Mediterranean revamp of a shepherd’s pie, Hall adds feta and fresh mint and swaps in fried potato slices for the usual mashed potatoes.

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