By Charles Romans
Carter County Times
Celebrity chef Jason Smith has a personality as big as the great outdoors and the talent to match. Smith, a Food Network Star and the first home taught chef to win the Food Network Holiday Baking Championship stays busy with the career he loves. Fans follow him through his Southern Country Bling website, television, and personal appearances and Smith treats them all like family. The former Grayson cafeteria manager and caterer keeps cooking and sharing his creations through all his media channels, and that is why he is so excited about what he has coming up next month, he said.
“Lord Honey, I’ve got a lot of things going on right now,” Smith said. “But the biggest thing we have right now is a new thing called Studio Live.”
This newest outlet for Smith to reach his family of fans is made possible through a company called Virtual Xperience.
“It all started back during Covid,” Smith explained. “This company used to bring chefs onsite for corporate partners, to do a food function and eat. When Covid hit, all that went to the wayside.”
Smith said that the founders of Virtual Xperience started a company for everyone to continue to share that experience and still maintain social distance. Now, Smith said, he’s bringing that out of corporate retreats and into everyone’s home kitchen.
Smith said he’s worked with this company for about four years, and throughout that time people kept asking him how the public could get involved. After working together with Virtual Xperience, Studio Live was born to answer those requests.
“The very first one will be May 10, 2024,” he said. “It’s on a Friday at 5:30 pm Eastern Time and it’s a Mother’s Day exclusive experience. We thought it would be a great time to launch this and that people might want to purchase this and cook with their mothers, someone they love like a mother, or just get together with their families and friends.”
“We’re going to be making my blueberry lemon hand pies,” Smith continued. “That recipe is in my first cookbook. It’s a super easy recipe, and I’ll show you how to make my biscuits and turn that into a fried hand pie.”
Registering is as easy as going to Smith’s website, southerncountrybling.com, he said. There you can choose from three different tiers, each with amazing ‘bling’ to go along with the cooking experience. The first tier gets the zoom link, the all-inclusive kit (everything needed is shipped to you), and the printed recipe card. The second tier gets that plus Chef Jason’s custom apron, and the third tier includes what is in the first two tiers along with a signed cookbook from Chef Jason Smith himself.
“It’s going to be a wonderful time,” Smith said. “We’ll laugh and joke and cut up. And on my end, I can see everyone that is on the experience. It’s like having me in your kitchen and you in my kitchen, but across the computer world,” he said.
Don’t worry if you don’t have a computer you can move to the kitchen either, because Smith said you can also do this over the phone.
“Just go to my website and you’ll see me smilin’ like a possum with sharp teeth,” Smith said. “Just hit the register now button and we’ll get started.”
Contact the writer at charles@cartercountytimes.com
