This cookbook author and social media star healed herself by cooking

ST. LOUIS -- Cooking wasn’t a joy in Justine Doiron’s household when she was growing up. To an impressionable girl, it felt more like a punishment.

But whenever her parents went out for date night, she would sneak into the kitchen and bake a batch of cookies, which she would hide. Then she would scrupulously clean the kitchen until it was gleaming.

But that was the giveaway: The family had three children. The kitchen was never clean. When her parents came home and saw a clean kitchen, they knew she had been cooking again.

Doiron mainly grew up in Missouri, in Creve Coeur and Town and Country — with a seven-year stint in Hong Kong — and graduated from Westminster Christian Academy.

A food blogger and social media star with 3 million followers, Doiron has just written a cookbook, “Justine Cooks: Recipes (Mostly Plants) for Finding Your Way in the Kitchen.” In it are recipes for everything from Basic Beans to Lime-Roasted Cabbage with Turmeric White Bean Mash.

She suffered from an eating disorder in high school and college, and thought that “cooking was something I should not be doing,” she says. But she went to Cornell University to study hospitality and, although she intended to go into the business side of the field, she took some culinary classes as well.

That changed her life. The act of cooking helped her get better, and that fact eventually led to the cookbook.

“I think a lot of people think the same, like they see cooking as intimidating or difficult or not an act of self-care. And I think it’s the opposite; that’s how it healed me,” she says.

Specifically, she says, she wants readers to use cooking to find a sense of home, and belonging, and acceptance.

“I wanted people who didn’t have that community around food to know that they can build it,” she says.

Cooking was a hobby, but she dived into the corporate waters before making her living behind a stove. She went into public relations after college, eventually working for ABC News and the Discovery Network.

“I was in a career trajectory that was going to take me down the road of conference calls and pantsuits and serious meetings, and that’s very much what I thought I wanted,” she says.

But then came the COVID pandemic, and she became intrigued by TikTok, which was still relatively new. She thought the pandemic would be over in a matter of weeks and she could teach her boss about TikTok and develop ways to use it to their strategic advantage.

She wanted to learn about TikTok without much risk, so she decided to create food content because she did not have to show her face or use her name (her social media name is Justine_Snacks). Then she started an Instagram account because some people on TikTok wanted to see her recipes.

“I remember in July of 2020, after I’d started my Instagram, turning to my fiance and being like, ‘Babe, I have 17 followers!’”

The numbers have grown exponentially since then. Less than a year later, she had 100,000 followers on Instagram (or as she puts it, “I only had about 100,000 followers). Her company made an ultimatum: She could either keep her job or keep her social media accounts.

“I chose my social media accounts, and it just kept growing and growing and growing from there,” she says.

At the time, publishers were feverishly reaching out to successful food bloggers and content creators to ask them to write cookbooks. Several approached Doiron, but she was still insecure in the job.

And there was something else: The publishers and book agents said she didn’t have to write it. They would hire a writer and hire a recipe developer, and would just slap her name on it to sell it.

“That felt really inauthentic and gross, so I just had to quiet all the noise telling me to write a book,” she says.

Nine months later, she had an epiphany. She knew what she wanted to write about: To make people feel comfortable and find acceptance through cooking, like she had. She wrote a proposal in 10 days, found an agent the next month and sold the book three months later.

The result, “Justine Cooks,” is unlike other cookbooks, and not just because it has an entire chapter devoted to sandwiches (“hearty dishes with a piece of bread just make a full, complete meal,” she says) or another chapter devoted to beans (“I think beans are beautiful, because not only are they your carb, they are your protein and they are your fiber and they are so easy to make delicious”).

It is different because it delves into her personal relationship to food, as perhaps only someone who has overcome an eating disorder through cooking can experience it.

She talks, for instance, about how she was transformed by a simple recipe for salsa verde.

“It opened my eyes to simple, fresh ingredients really being something that you can taste, manipulate and maneuver to make something really delicious,” she says.

The salsa verde also introduced her to a vital formula of creating recipes, she says: Taste, season, adjust, repeat.

Another part of creating recipes is to use ingredients that aren’t usually paired together to create something wonderful and new.

She knew she wanted to make a salmon dish that was similar to a version with a spicy red sauce that she already featured on her blog, but also different. And that’s how she came up with a dish she calls Boyfriend Salmon.

“All I could think of was the nostalgia hit that I have from St. Louis-style barbecue sauce, but also very easy (to make), with a sticky red sauce.

“That’s where the hometown influence came in.”

Recipe for Israeli salad sandwich

Yield: 1 serving

½ cup chopped tomatoes

½ cup chopped cucumbers

¼ cup chopped red bell pepper

1 scallion, sliced thin

1 hard-cooked egg, chopped

Salt and pepper

½ tablespoon olive oil

1 wedge lemon

2 tablespoons hummus

1 pita

In a bowl, mix together tomatoes, cucumber, red pepper, scallion and egg. Season with plenty of salt and pepper. Add olive oil and juice from lemon wedge, and mix well. Spread 1 tablespoon of hummus on the inside of each half of the pita, and fill the pita halves with the mixture.

Per serving: 397 calories; 16g fat; 3g saturated fat; 187mg cholesterol; 16g protein; 51g carbohydrate; 8g sugar; 8g fiber; 635mg sodium; 74mg calcium

Recipe by Daniel Neman