The rise of Instagram-famous food bloggers didn’t skip Wichita.
Erin Clarke graduated from Kapaun Mount Carmel in 2004. She has gone on to amass millions of readers on her Well Plated blog and more than 400,000 followers on Instagram, where she shares easy, healthy recipes for home cooks.
Clarke now lives in Milwaukee but returned to Wichita this fall on a book tour for her second cookbook: “Well Plated Every Day.”
KMUW’s Celia Hack spoke with Clarke about her latest cookbook, her journey to social media fame and Wichita’s lasting influence on her career.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
I understand you grew up in Wichita. So tell me a little bit about how Wichita kind of influenced your interest in recipe development and your career.
I grew up on my grandmothers’ wonderful, classic, stick-to-your-ribs Midwestern cooking: you know, pot roast, macaroni and cheese, things like that. And so that just kind of love of comfort food combined with – I feel like in the Midwest, we have a great sense of practicality – and those two things have become really big influences on my cooking.
When I first got into cooking for myself, I found myself really missing my grandmothers’ recipes living away from home, so I started calling them to get the recipes. And they're very indulgent, like classic food that your grandma makes that you love, and I wanted to see if I could find ways to make tweaks to make them more nutritious so that we could enjoy them more regularly.
Like what?
One of my most popular recipes on my blog, and one of my husband's favorites, is a homemade Hamburger Helper. And I hear from people all over the country that love this. Their kids love it. But it has a couple of little touches in it, like there's a little bit of Dijon mustard, there's a little bit of hot sauce, even though it's not spicy. It makes it – and I know that this sounds like a hilarious word to apply to Hamburger Helper – but it makes it a little bit gourmet. It gives you that feeling of nostalgia that you grew up with, but it's made with all simple, wholesome ingredients.
When you started your cooking journey and this blogging journey … where were you in the world?
I was actually in Madison, Wisconsin. … When I got married, my husband started law school. He's from Wisconsin, and I found myself just in a job where I was really lacking creativity.
I was just so bored, and I really wanted a challenge. And one of my friends said, ‘Well, why don't you start a blog?’ And I said, ‘What is a blog?’ This was 13 years ago. … I was learning, like, teaching myself how to cook, so I thought the blog would be a fun place to just kind of journal my experience and then blow off some creative steam.
So your business is really cool because it's really ranging over media platforms. You have a blog, you have social media accounts. Now you have two cookbooks. So can you tell me … what are you excited for about this latest cookbook?
For me, this new cookbook is really reflective of where I am on my journey with Well Plated. So I started in this place where I was cooking in a teeny tiny kitchen on a budget, and I didn't have a ton of time. I didn't have a ton of money to spend on ingredients, but I still wanted to eat really well. And I started sharing those recipes, and they started gaining popularity.
Over the years, I have gotten better and better to the point that I am now proud to call myself, like, a professional recipe developer. My recipes are meticulously tested. They're easy to follow, and I just feel like this – I've been writing recipes now for 13 plus years, and these are the best recipes I've ever written.
Another really fun thing about this book is that I have a team now. So Well Plated, it was a one woman show for years and years and years. … I'm definitely not a one-woman show anymore at all. … There are six of us, including me and my first employee, my husband, Ben.
On social media, I've noticed that this kind of like up-and-coming food blogger/vlogger/TikToker-type person is becoming so much more like – combined with influencer. You know what I mean? … So, I'm curious, do you see yourself as an influencer at all, or do you not adopt that title?
I did not get into this to be an influencer. What's been so interesting to watch happen on social media is there's kind of like two paths that people have taken. There are people like me that have really large, successful recipe websites. And there are people that maybe started a little too late to get a website going, but they got in off the ground on social media. And it's pretty rare to find someone that does both because they require slightly different approaches, and they're both incredibly, incredibly time consuming.
So for the longest time, I did not want to do this social media aspect because it is really time consuming, and I have this whole other part of my business to run. But I've seen over the years just the ability to connect that it builds, and that is really, really important to me. … And so I've come to appreciate it more for that personal aspect. But I also think that whether you're excited about social media or not, it's just the reality that we're in: every small business owner is now forced to also be a social media quote, unquote influencer, whether you want to be or not.
Tell me a little bit about recipe development. What's your process like? How do you develop these recipes?
So, I'll have an idea, either from something that I've tried, or I'll just think of a nostalgic comfort food dish that I know that everyone loves. But I'll think, ‘How could I make that better? How could I make that a little bit easier?’ And so I start to kind of toy around with it. … So, that's like, left-brain creativity mode.
Then the right brain comes in, and I just read absolutely everything I can about whatever it is that I'm trying to tackle. In my new book, I have a pumpkin gingerbread cake. And so I went, like, way deep dive on gingerbread. Let's make something gingerbread. Like, what are some different spice combinations that people do?
And then from there, I actually sit down, and I write out the recipe completely first. There's a really big difference between recipe developing and cooking. … As I get into cooking it, I take notes along the way, and that's kind of where some of the art comes back in again. I'll taste it and be like, ‘Something isn't quite right.’ Say there's a soup, and I recognize that it's missing a little pop of acid. I'll ladle the soup into four different bowls. I'll try one with lemon juice. I'll try one with red wine vinegar. I'll try one with white wine vinegar, one with balsamic. And I'll kind of taste and decide, ‘OK, this is the one that I like the best.’
Your grandmas, who you said were so passionate about cooking, what do you think they would think if they knew that your business was cooking and recipe development, but it was all done through the internet?
Well, I'm lucky. My Grammy lived to see my business, and there was no one that was more proud of me. It was difficult for me to explain to her why I could not print off my entire blog to give her. But she subscribed to the emails; like they were very, very proud and also very excited when I would give them credit as it was rightfully due for their recipes, too. … You know, my Grammy’s lemon cream pie has hundreds of comments, and the fact that the internet made a way for so many people to enjoy her recipes is really, really cool.
