The Unofficial Ted Lasso Cookbook

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What’s your favorite scene from Ted Lasso?

Mine is the moment (season 1, episode 2) when coach Ted pulls footballer Sam out of the game after the star player makes a disheartening blunder and advises, “You know what the happiest animal on Earth is? It’s a goldfish. You know why? It’s got a 10-second memory. Be a goldfish, Sam!” Not only are these words to live by, they’re the inspiration for a clever recipe: When I cracked open an advance copy of The Unofficial Ted Lasso Cookbook by local food blogging duo and longtime friends Meg Chano and Aki Berry, which is due out Nov. 14, I saw that the very first recipe was a seasoned mix of Goldfish crackers, Chex cereal and bagel chips.

So I got curious about my other favorite scene, in which Rebecca is delivering the eulogy at her father’s funeral and sings an improbably moving rendition of Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” that I dare you to get through—even as a YouTube clip—without ugly crying. Yep, there between Ted’s Bull’s-Eye BBQ Pulled Pork Sandwich and the Chicken Tikka Masala with Rice is a savory, comforting recipe for Rebecca’s childhood favorite dish, Mum’s Shepherd’s Pie with Cheesy Top. So now I’ve got an appetizer and a main course—a viewing party meal is coming together. Dessert can only be Biscuits with the Boss—the recipe that started it all.

But wait: Maybe you’ve put yourself on a strict internet diet for three years or have been off on an extended trip overlanding across Patagonia in a Land Cruiser, in which case you are wondering, “Who is this Ted Lasso?” Ted is a Middle American college football coach, a character co-created and portrayed by SNL alum Jason Sudeikis, who gains 15 minutes of viral fame for performing a gonzo Running Man victory dance after leading his team, the Wichita State Shockers, to its first-ever national title. We meet him on a flight to London, where he’s been hired by Rebecca Welton to coach the other kind of football—specifically, her team AFC Richmond, which she won in a bitter divorce. Rebecca is using Ted as an act of revenge against her loathsome lothario of an ex-husband, who loved the Premier League franchise with all his heart, hoping that the soccer-ignorant Ted will drive the club into the ground. Except that Ted begins to melt Rebecca’s icy resolve beginning in episode two, when he presents her with a miniature pink pastry box filled with nostalgia-evoking shortbread cookies, inaugurating a daily “Biscuits with the Boss” ritual. It’s the beginning of an unlikely, beautiful friendship. Let the 11-time (and counting) Emmy-winning, heartwarming hilarity ensue.

Authors Berry and Chano talk to me in August from Berry’s home kitchen on the first day of school for their pack of boys. (Berry has three sons and Chano has two, ranging in ages from 4 to 11.) “I’ve got a kid who forgot his backpack, so after this I have to go take him his lunch,” Berry says, laughing.

Aki Berry (left) and Meg Chano, authors of The Unofficial Ted Lasso Cookbook, in Berry’s Fair Oaks kitchen on Sept. 19

They met in Arizona in 1996, when Chano, who grew up in Japan, arrived as a 15-year-old exchange student living next door to Berry, whose Japanese mom was a coordinator for the exchange program (she describes her dad as “a Colorado cowboy”). The pair fell out of touch after the two-month exchange program ended and Chano moved back to Japan, but reconnected in 2015 when they found out that, by sheer coincidence, both were now living in the Sacramento region, Chano in Roseville and Berry in Fair Oaks. Berry was a stay-at-home mom and accomplished home cook, while Chano was working as a photographer and graphic designer. Reunited, the two foodies started a business together ghostwriting recipes and selling them, along with Chano’s photos, to food bloggers looking to keep up with demand. Eventually, they launched their own blog, Salt Harvest Creatives, in September 2020—a visual feast brimming with inspiration in the form of fun party ideas and irresistible recipes: Persimmon vinaigrette? Strawberry pie pops? Yes, please!

Chano started watching Ted Lasso when it first aired, after the birth of her second child. “After having kids, I really cannot watch anything with heavy drama,” she says. “My husband found Ted Lasso and said, ‘It’s a feel-good show.’ ” Chano quickly got hooked and in turn urged Berry to watch.

“She said, ‘It’s about sports, but it’s not a sports show,’ ” Berry recalls. “Then my husband and I binged it.” The two couples quickly became superfans of the Apple TV+ festival of feel-good, where nearly every character has a heart of gold, every cloud a silver lining. “We all fell in love with the characters,” Chano says.

It wasn’t long after seeing Ted give those homemade biscuits to his boss in episode two, that Berry and Chano began scouring the internet looking for a recipe for the shortbread biscuits (that’s cookies in American) so pivotal to the first season’s plot.

Coming up empty, they decided to create one. The recipe for Biscuits with the Boss is the first one I tried from their book—my mom’s classic Scottish shortbread is legendary in my family circle, and contains only butter, flour and sugar. She bakes the thin, sandy cookies months in advance of the holiday season so the buttery flavor can age, mellow and meld in waxed-paper-lined tins. Salt Harvest Creatives’ recipe adds three nontraditional twists: vanilla, a touch of almond flour, and a surprisingly generous amount of salt. The recipe is a true collaboration between the bloggers. “My mom used to bake cookies, and she always put in almond flour,” Chano says. “And Aki always says to add salt to the sweet.”

I was both intrigued and skeptical, but from my first batch, that little dash of almond flour, with its higher moisture content, gave the bar cookies a hint of chewy resilience, while the salt in the recipe makes the buttery flavor bloom in your mouth in what I can only describe as Technicolor buttercup-yellow flavor. It’s an exceptional cookie, the quintessence of comfort. Just don’t tell my mom I said so.

After Salt Harvest Creatives posted the biscuit recipe in October 2020, it went viral among food bloggers and on social media. “OH MY GOSH!! This is the best shortbread I have ever had,” read one Instagram comment. “Made these and they were so tasty, and perfect with a cup of that hot brown water,” wrote a Redditor, referencing Ted Lasso’s colorful description of tea.

“Some people even discovered our biscuit first and then the show,” Berry notes. The enterprising pair also posted a recipe for Higgins’ Mini Cupcakes (named for treats that Ted gifts AFC Richmond’s sweet director of communications in episode 9 of the first season), and published Ted Lasso viewing party plans complete with menu, décor and trivia questions. Then, thinking this smelled like potential, as Ted would say, HarperCollins—the publisher behind the iconic Betty Crocker Cookbook, as well as lifestyle titles by best-selling authors like Martha Stewart and Jessica Seinfeld—came calling in the fall of 2022, between seasons two and three. “They reached out to us and were like, ‘Do you guys want to write a cookbook?’ ” Chano says.

Faster than the speed at which Ted Lasso became a pop culture phenomenon, the duo said yes and began brainstorming and recipe-testing, scouring episodes for oblique food references to inspire menu items. Berry watched seasons one and two from beginning to end four times, over many late nights after her boys went to bed, while Chano estimates that she watched them 20 times, saying “I always had it playing in the background while I worked.”

The result is a thoughtful paean that proves the way to a fan’s heart is through the stomach. All the recipes are on point in celebrating the show’s endearing cast of characters. If Ted Lasso, that lovably cheesy and corny Midwesterner, were a dish (as Rebecca’s bestie, Sassy, seems to think he is in season 1, episode 7), he’d be a ham and corn casserole, and there is a recipe for one here called “Cheesy Corn,” redolent with cream cheese, butter and pepper jack.

The crusty-with-a-soft-center star player turned coach Roy Kent gets Pigs in Roy’s Blankie to celebrate his vulnerability (when the team bonds by throwing precious objects into a ceremonial fire, Roy stuns everyone by turning up with a childhood blankie); the goldfish-channeling Nigerian fan fave Sam Obisanya gets spicy Sam’s Jollof Rice with Chicken (season 2, episode 4); and the kindly local pub owner, Mae, who explains to naive Ted what a “wanker” is with a hand gesture (Ted: “I’m a visual learner so that’s very helpful, thank you.”) gets the Crown & Anchor Fish and Chips.

Pigs in Roy’s Blankie, a dish named after roy Kent, the lovably irascible player-turned-coach on Ted Lasso

I’ve been wanting to introduce my dad to Ted Lasso, so I decide to whip up a meal for his TV tray, starting with the Goldfish Mix. As I measured out three tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce, I thought to myself, “This is gonna be too salty!” and as I dropped in a tablespoon of hot sauce, “This is gonna be too spicy!” and as I added two tablespoons of brown sugar, “This is gonna be too sweet!” But like everything about the TV series, this Goldfish recipe was Goldilocks—as in, just right.

Same for the shepherd’s pie recipe, where the proportion of succulent ground lamb to crunchy vegetables is savory and satisfying, the thyme-infused “filling” rounded out and mellowed by velvety, cheesy potato “crust,” which is given richness and body by the inclusion of egg yolk. “I think you are the very first person to cook a recipe!” Berry exclaims when I describe my pie-making adventures. That shepherd’s pie is her favorite, along with the Gentleman’s Relish Bruschetta with Burrata, a compound butter rich with herbs and anchovies. “The salty, funky flavors are just so satisfying on toast,” she says.

“And it goes really well with champagne,” adds Chano. (Speaking of bubbly, when it came time to illustrate the Boss Bitch Champagne cocktail recipe, the pair searched high and low to source the exact same unusually sculpted champagne flute from which Rebecca chugged her liquid courage in the season two finale.) For her part, Chano is partial to the fish and chips. “I really like deep-fried foods,” she says with a hey-don’t-judge shrug of her shoulders.

And then there are those biscuits. They turn out just as great the second time. Pro tip: Splurge on fancy butter (I used Kerrygold), because these cookies are butter-forward. And if you happen to own a high-wattage blender like a Vitamix, you can make your own almond flour from a handful of blanched nuts.

Courtesy of Harvest, an Imprint of HarperCollins

The genius of both Ted Lasso the show and the cookbook is that they are each targeted to appeal to just about anyone with a human soul. My 80-year-old dad, whose palate is as firmly planted in the 1950s as his memories now are, was just as pleased to dig into the shepherd’s pie as I was.

By now I’m as eager to see who turns up at Berry and Chano’s book signings as a Marvel fan anticipating Comic-Con. Locally, the two will be at East Village Bookshop near McKinley Park on Nov. 14; at Wild Sisters Book Company in Tahoe Park South on Nov. 24, and at Face in a Book in El Dorado Hills on Dec. 2. I urge them to bake up a batch of Pigs in Roy’s Blankie for each occasion, and they promise to think about it. 

Further proof that Berry and Chano’s fan service knows no bounds: The book includes a QR code for a downloadable template to make the same diminutive pink pastry box Ted hands to Rebecca. This exacting attention to detail is everywhere, including the fact that in the photograph of two highball glasses brimming with Roy’s Bloody Mary, the pimientos have been removed from the olives in one of them, because Richmond publicist Keeley dislikes them and is shown picking them out of her drink garnish (season 2, episode 4)—and you know Roy will always be 100% Team Keeley, even if this salty-sweet couple are maddeningly on and off again. 

With the holidays approaching, I’m thinking a Ted Lasso-themed dinner party would be a perfect way to entertain family members with differing views and temperaments. The dramedy’s warm-heartedness transcends politics or any kind of cultural factionalism, and has the potential to be a great unifier for those of us who frequently find ourselves caught in the middle. “It’s not a polarizing show,” Berry points out.

Am I dreading that blended family moment when my Rachel Maddow-loving ex-hippie stepdad pulls up a TV tray right next to my Tucker Carlson-fanboying father? You bet—as much as Ted dreaded the match-up between Crystal Palace and AFC Richmond. So maybe instead of cursing Christmas this year, I’ll bring along a Roku stick and an extra big batch of Goldfish Mix.