The Happy in a Hurry Cookbook

100-Plus Fast and Easy New Recipes That Taste Like Home

Steve Doocy, Kathy Doocy

• Publisher: William Morrow Cookbooks
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9780062968395
• eBook ISBN:
  9780062968364
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Culinary Arts

#1 New York Times bestseller

In this follow up to their New York Times bestseller The Happy Cookbook, Fox & Friends cohost Steve Doocy and his wife, Kathy, share more hilarious stories and offer crowd-pleasing recipes that are quick, easy, and delicious.

Steve Doocy and his wife, Kathy, believe the kitchen and the family dinner table should be happy places where memories are made and shared. But most of us don’t have the time to spend hours in the kitchen. Steve and Kathy are no exception, and with The Happy in a Hurry Cookbook, they bring together more than a hundred recipes for favorite comfort foods that come together in a flash—from last-minute entrees to set-it-and-forget-it slow-cooker meals. 

The Happy in a Hurry Cookbook includes recipes covering a variety of occasions and favorite foods, from holidays, casseroles, and one-pot meals to chicken, pasta, and desserts, as well a whole chapter devoted to the ultimate comfort ingredient: potatoes. Steve and Kathy also share their clever Happy in a Hurry Hacks, which save prep and cooking time and can be used no matter what recipes you're using. Best of all, they include more hilarious and heartwarming stories from the Doocy family and (some well-known) friends.

With The Happy in a Hurry Cookbook you can enjoy time-saving, all-American home cooking at its best—nothing fancy, everything delicious—with recipes such as:

• Buffalo Chicken Tacos
• Carrot Cake Waffles
• Red, White, and Blueberry Summer Fruit Salad
• Crockpot Carnitas
• Pumpkin-Swirled Mashed Potatoes
• Sweet Tea Fried Chicken
• Bacon Braided Smoked Turkey Breast
• Ritz Cracker Crust Peanut Butter Pie
• Six-Minute Strawberry Pie 

Best of all, the easy, pleasing recipes in The Happy in a Hurry Cookbook leave you and your family with more time to do the things you love!

The Happy in a Hurry Cookbook is illustrated with 65 color food photos throughout and homey shots of the Doocys with friends and family, sure to please their many fans. 

1

Snacks

STARTERS AND SMALL PLATES

Sally’s Shaka Shrimp

Prosciutto and Pimiento Dip

Easy Street Tacos

General Tso’s 5-Star Cauliflower

Gerritys’ Great Grilled Artichokes

Sean’s Mac and Cheese Rolls

Peter’s Parm Crisps

Church Lady Ranch Dip

Todd’s Hummus, Two Ways

Buffalo Chicken Tacos

WHEN WE WRITE A COOKBOOK, BECAUSE our names are on the cover, we work hard to make sure you can trust that the recipes are tasty, and that if you follow our instructions you’ll wind up with something that looks just like the beautiful photographs in this book. We make everything ourselves in the Doocy test kitchen. Yes, it’s a very big job, but luckily we each have an assistant. I am Kathy’s helper and she is mine. Thankfully we also have a guy who goes to the grocery store to pick up everything we need, sometimes three times a day (pre-pandemic), and that guy is me.

Last week, ninety seconds into the store, I’d just turned down the aisle with the coffee pods when I saw a roadblock ahead. A woman’s cart was taking up the entire aisle as she appeared to be memorizing the text on a box of Honey Nut Cheerios. I started walking flat-footed so she’d hear me and move out of the way, but she did not, so I stopped about two feet from her and politely paused, hoping she’d see me so I could get out of the store quickly.

I waited thirty seconds, but she never saw me. Finally, with a big smile, I said, “Ma’am?”

Startled, she apologized and pulled her cart aside, I picked up two boxes of Dunkin’ Donuts hazelnut pods that she’d been blocking and I smiled broadly and said, “Thank you, ma’am, good morning.” Expecting a smile in return, all I got back was a puzzled look. Oh well, that’s Jersey.

Halfway down the next aisle it hit me. I’d said good morning—but it was 4:30 in the afternoon.

That, sadly, is an occupational hazard of doing a morning TV show and being sleep deprived all the time. When the red light goes on, my automatic response is to greet America with “Good morning!,” which I do to Kathy’s horror throughout the day and night.

I’m Steve Doocy, and I suffer from MSHTDCS (Morning Show Host Time of Day Confusion Syndrome). Ask George Stephanopoulos—I bet he’s got it, too.

Dinner’s ready. Come and get it!

Thirty seconds later I was in the soup aisle. I could feel somebody moving up on me and made sure I wasn’t blocking the aisle. I turned as nonchalantly as I could, and it was the Honey Nut Cheerios lady. She still had that puzzled look, but now she was kind of staring at me like I’d sold her a hot Rolex. I smiled again.

“Steve?” she asked.

Oh no, I thought, she’s somebody from one of the kids’ schools or church or the gym or somewhere. Why wasn’t Kathy with me? She is amazing at remembering everybody’s name. In a jam, I said the only thing a person could in my situation: “It’s nice to see you!”

“I thought that was you . . .” she said. Now she was smiling.

And so was I, because I was off the hook. We’d never met, and it was nice to see her, as I’d said.

“Listen, Steve, I see you in this store all the time and I just wanted to tell you, I love Kathy’s cookbook with all of your stories.”

Wasn’t that nice! I thought.

“And, take a look at this!” she said as she handed me her electric bill envelope that had a penciled list on the back. Her handwriting was exactly like my mother’s, so it was perfectly legible. It read:

Two pkgs Puff Pastry Shells, carrots, celery, onion, peas, chkn flav’d Better ‘n Bouillon, rotisserie chicken.

“It looks like we’re coming to your house for dinner,” I announced.

“No,” she said, a little surprised I didn’t realize what I was holding. “These are the ingredients for your chicken pot pie!”

I looked at the list again. Yes, those were the exact ingredients for our friend Susan’s chicken pot pie in our cookbook, the giveaway was the Better Than Bouillon, I should have caught that . . . doggone it!

“I’ve made it twice before, and we love it,” she said. “Your grandma’s goulash is amazing . . . but you know what our favorite is?” I shook my head. “Your mother’s pot roast.”

As that woman was telling me how much she loved mom’s food, I stopped listening and started thinking . . . about my mom, who died on Christmas Day, 1997. And, for the first time, it occurred to me that there were tens of thousands of total strangers all over America who had never met my mom but had now made her pot roast and loved it.

My mom’s legacy.

This cookbook is amazing!

People coast to coast now love Steve’s mom’s pot roast.

A viewer named Stephen Brake wrote to me to say, “The story of your wife making your mom’s pot roast reminded me of my mom’s, who I just lost in April. I wish I had more of my mom’s recipes.”

The favorite family recipes we grew up on aren’t just delicious—they’re time machines to a happy place that’s very personal to us.

When I asked my TV couch-mate Brian Kilmeade what recipe made him happy, he said immediately, “My mom’s meatballs.”

Marie Kilmeade’s recipe was challenging, but not because she’d forgotten how to make it; she made it exactly the same way for fifty years. The challenging part was that she’d never written it down. So I was her scribe. She sent me a general outline and I asked her dozens of questions. We went back and forth on every detail for weeks and I still remember the last thing we worked out. It was New Year’s Day, 2018.

I’d written in the recipe to roll the mixture into 24 meatballs, each the size of a Ping-Pong ball. It’s important in a cookbook to be as descriptive as possible.

“A Ping-Pong ball?” Marie said. “That’s way too small.”

Then how much bigger?

“Like an egg,” she replied. But I told her cookbooks were very specific and there are many different sizes of eggs, medium, large, extra-large. What size?

“Let’s try medium-egg size.” So I prepped the recipe and wound up with eighteen beautiful meatballs. They were delicious.

“Nope, that’s too many. It’s perfect when the recipe makes fourteen meatballs . . .”

That meant a medium-size egg was the wrong size. So it was back to the Doocy test kitchen, and after balling up four and a half pounds of groun...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• Happy in a Hurry Hacks
• 1. Snacks: Starters and Small Plates
• 2. Morning Meals
• 3. Soups and Salads
• 4. Crusty Things: Sandwiches and Breads
• 5. Hot Potatoes!
• 6. One-Dish Dinners
• 7. Main Events: Entrees
• 8. Holidays: Recipes for Once or Twice a Year
• 9. Tasty Treats and Desserts
• Acknowledgments
• Universal Conversion Chart
• Index
• About the Authors
• Also by Steve and Kathy Doocy
• Copyright
• About the Publisher