Welcome to "Dishing with Stephanie’s Dish." In this episode, Stephanie sits down with Emily Maxson—two time cookbook author, chef, and the creative mind behind @EmilysFreshKitchen. Emily shares her personal health journey, navigating Crohn’s disease through diet and lifestyle changes, and how that experience fueled her passion for approachable, healthy, and delicious recipes for everyone. Her New Book, “Real Food Every Day” (ships October 21) is a follow up to “Emilys Fresh Kitchen.”

With real talk about creating cookbooks, food photography, adapting to dietary needs, and the ups and downs of life as a food creator, this episode is for home cooks, entertainers, and anyone curious about the connections between food, health, and community.

Stephanie’s Dish Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Emily mentioned two influential books in the Podcast from her food journey:

"Breaking the Vicious Cycle" by Elaine Gottschall

"Against All Grain" by Danielle Walker

Emily shared her recipe for Roasted Carrot and Miso Butter Soup from the “Real Food Every Day” cookbook that is available now for pre-order.

Roasted Carrot and Miso Butter Soup

Gluten-Free, Grain-Free (Adaptable for Dairy-Free and Vegan)

PREP 10 minutes COOK 60 minutes TOTAL 70 minutes SERVES 6

Roasted Carrot and Miso Butter Soup is one of my favorite soups to make in the winter. It warms you up and is very satisfying. The recipe calls for simple ingredients that produce layers of flavor. The Miso butter adds another depth of flavor and is worth the extra step, but the soup is still delicious without it.

To adapt for dairy-free and vegan, use miso butter made with vegan butter.

INGREDIENTS:

* 2 pounds carrots

* 4 Tablespoons olive oil, divided

* 2 cups diced yellow onion

* 2 Tablespoons minced garlic

* 2 Tablespoons grated ginger

* 2 teaspoons sea salt

* 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

* 7-8 cups vegetable broth

* 2 Tablespoons fresh lime juice

* 2 Tablespoons Miso Butter

DIRECTIONS:

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

2. Scrub the carrots and cut them into large chunks, removing the tops.

3. Place the carrots on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.

4. Coat the carrot pieces in 1 Tablespoon of olive oil.

5. Roast the carrots for 45-60 minutes or until tender.

6. Meanwhile, heat 3 Tablespoons of olive oil in a large pot over medium-high heat.

7. Add the onions and cook until they are translucent, about 10 minutes.

8. Add the garlic, ginger, salt and cayenne pepper and sauté for an additional 3 minutes.

9. Add the roasted carrots and 7 cups of broth.

10. Cook for an additional 2 minutes.

11. Remove from heat and ladle into a blender.

12. Blend the soup until smooth.

13. Wipe out the pot and pour in the blended soup.

14. Return the soup to the stove over medium heat, adding additional stock to achieve desired consistency.

15. Whisk in the lime juice and miso butter.

16. Adjust seasoning if needed and serve.

17. Top with additional miso butter if desired.

Miso Butter

Gluten-Free, Grain-Free (Adaptable for Dairy-Free and Vegan)

PREP 5 minutes COOK 0 minutes TOTAL 5 minutes MAKES about 1/2 cup

Miso Butter is made with only two ingredients:butter and miso paste. This compound butter is so versatile. You can add it to fish, chicken, steak, vegetables and potatoes. I add it to my roasted carrot soup on page_ and it adds another depth of flavor. Miso Butter is one of my favorite condiments to keep on hand.

To adapt for dairy-free or vegan, use vegan butter.

INGREDIENTS:

* 8 Tablespoons butter, softened

* 3 Tablespoons white miso paste

Instructions:

Place the softened butter and miso paste in a small bowl.

Using a hand blender or fork, cream the butter and miso paste together until smooth.

Store covered in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks.

Transcript Episode Follows:

Stephanie [00:00:00 ]:

Hello, everybody, and welcome to Dishing with Stephanie's Dish, the podcast where we talk to people in the food space. And today I'm talking with another Minnesota favorite, Emily Maxson. She is the author of Emily's Fresh Kitchen. And you have a second book coming out that is Emily's real food every day, similar to Emily's Fresh Kitchen, but more goodness, more healthy for you recipes. Emily Maxson, welcome to the show.

Emily Maxson [00:00:31 ]:

Thank you, Stephanie. Thanks so much for having me.

Stephanie [00:00:34 ]:

So when we first started talking, you had your first book, and you and I were on a similar publishing schedule. And that book, your book did super well, I think, of self published cookbooks because you worked with publisher, my friend Chris Olsen. I think that you sold, like, way more than a lot of cookbook authors do.

Emily Maxson [00:00:57 ]:

I did sell quite a few, and I'm very grateful for that. I had built a pretty good online community, and I think a lot of people resonated with my health story of healing through diet from Crohn's. So I think that helped with sales.

Stephanie [00:01:13 ]:

I think too, the thing about your book that I loved so much was you get a lot of diet books or health books that come across the way in the business that I'm in. But yours felt very much like a real cookbook, like real food, real approachable, a way that you could heal your gut and the way that you could eat healthier, but also with, like, regular foods, not with, like weird supplements. And also the recipes were just delicious. Like you could feed them to your whole family, not just be making separate things for yourself. Does that make sense?

Emily Maxson [00:01:53 ]:

Yeah. Well, yes. Thank you. That is a huge compliment because that is my goal with both books. Just to make healthier food that's very approachable, very easy, and just to taste good and that you don't know you're eating something that is gluten free or dairy free, and it tastes the same as a traditional version of that recipe.

Stephanie [00:02:13 ]:

So can you talk a little bit about your health, about your health journey, how book one started, and then obviously you had more to say with book two.

Emily Maxson [00:02:23 ]:

Yeah. So my health journey, I was in my late 20s and I was diagnosed with Crohn's disease through severe abdominal pain. Had thought they thought I had appendicitis. Was rushed into the hospital for surgery. They found out I had diseased intestines and removed part of my small and large intestine. Diagnosed with Crohn's disease. So I spent about 10 years in and out of the hospital on lots of different medications. And then I approached it differently through diet and lifestyle changes.

Emily Maxson [00:02:57 ]:

And learned about a diet called the specific carbohydrate diet. And that is a diet where you eliminate you, you eliminate disaccharides and polysaccharides. It gets to the chemical structure of food. So basically you can only have monosaccharid because they're the easiest to absorb in your intestines. So meat, fish, nuts, seeds, vegetables, fruit. No starches, no grains, no lactose. The only sugar I could have was honey or fruit. So I followed that.

Emily Maxson [00:03:32 ]:

The theory is if you follow that for one to two years, you can reset your gut. And that's what I did. And fortunately for me, I was able to totally reset it after 18 months of following really strict program. And then now I can eat things that weren't allowed then. Like I can go out and have pizza. And it's not, it doesn't upset me and, but I mostly try to cook the similarly to the way I was on that diet at home so that I can enjoy things in restaurants and have treats and things like that.

Stephanie [00:04:07 ]:

And so that someone could use your book to follow to try and heal their own guts, as it were.

Emily Maxson [00:04:13 ]:

Absolutely. I have a lot of recipes that follow that diet and they're all labeled if it's specific carbohydrate, if it's vegan, if it's grain free or paleo. And I also recommend the book if somebody wants to try to do that. The Specific Carbohydrate Diet by Elaine Gottschel. That is the book that got me started and she outlines everything.

Stephanie [00:04:36 ]:

Okay, I'll make sure to include that link in the show notes. One other way I think that your book has been helpful for me is when I'm entertaining and I have someone that's coming with a certain dietary restriction. It just, I don't know when more dietary restrictions became on my radar or in the zeitgeist. But you know, I've been entertaining a long time and now it's customary to ask people like do you have any dietary restrictions? And when you ask, people always do. And if I'm stumped or I don't know, like, oh, what can I do here? Like one time I had a cocktail party that I was having and we had a gluten free, a dairy free, a vegan, someone that was allergic to nuts. Like it was really a lon