How the Reaction to Michelle Buteau's Unique "Savory" Sweet Potato Recipe Shocked Her
The latest TODAY with Jenna & Friends co-host didn't realize the dish would be so controversial.
People have strong opinions about food. Comedian Michelle Buteau, who was a guest co-hosts on TODAY with Jenna and Friends on January 16, learned that the hard way when she posted a unique sweet potato recipe that stirred up an unexpected controversy.
Michelle Buteau didn't mean to offend sweet potato-lovers
In her latest comedy special, the Babes star tells the story of being approached by a producer to make a sponsored cooking video for which the company provided a Savory Sweet Potato Bake recipe. The money was good, Buteau admits candidly, so she signed on.
But when she got to the set, she saw that the recipe involved a full, very thick can of cream of mushroom soup and two cups of shredded cheddar cheese, not ingredients one usually pairs with sweet potato. Ever the professional, she made the dish and ate it on camera, even though the result disgusted her. And then it went up and she thought, "Who's gonna see it?"
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Turns out, a lot of people. "The minute I saw myself trending, I said, 'that’s my bad'" she recalls in A Buteau-ful Mind. Still, she was a bit in denial about how personally people had taken her desecration of sweet potatoes. "I’ve never seen over 10,000 tweets with my name, so I was like, 'How bad could it be?'" she says, before providing an example: "There was an auntie who posted every hour on the hour in all caps. All in caps, she kept writing, ‘CALL THE COPS!’” Yikes!
She found bean stew redemption on Jenna and Friends
Co-hosting the January 16 episode, Buteau and Jenna Bush Hager learned how to make a simple bean and kale stew using chopped vegetables, barbecue sauce and gochujang.
Food Network star Sunny Anderson stopped by the studio to demonstrate the easy one-pot recipe, and it turned out that she and Buteau are longtime friends. Anderson even spilled about Buteau's annual "meatball party."
You can check out their segment here to learn how to make the dish at home, but remember, if you don't like it, you can't blame Buteau this time. The quick and delicious meal is all Sunny Anderson.
Buteau is the latest temporary partner for Jenna Bush Hager
“What I look for in a partner is exactly what Hoda [Kotb] has given me: trust, fun, support…somebody that’s willing to share and be open and vulnerable,” Hager explained of the search for a new co-host, which she compared to dating.
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"All of the women that have said yes are like dream guests," Hager revealed during a recent interview with E! News. "So the fact that they're willing to, like, host, which is work, means so much to me, especially when the world is hard. They're leaving their homes to come to be with us."
Can't wait to see what they all cook up next/
