'Y'all Eat Yet? Welcome to the Pretty B*tchin' Kitchen' is out now.
Miranda Lambert is far from the first country singer to release her own cookbook -- but she has a special reason why the two are so closely connected.
"Country gal singers love them a cookbook," the singer laughed with ET's Rachel Smith as the pair discussed Lambert's upcoming offering, Y'all Eat Yet? Welcome to the Pretty B*tchin' Kitchen. "Almost all of us have a moment that we talked about in the kitchen. And I think that's because the songs are the truth with a melody and the food is the truth on a plate. And that's just how it goes hand in hand to me."
"If you think about it, your happiest moments on Earth are revolving around food -- and your saddest," she added. "I feel like there's a reason for that, because it's comfort."
Lambert said her cookbook is a testament to the generations of women she grew up around in Texas, adding that the recipes are all about hospitality and togetherness, with food that's fit to be served on both plastic plates and fine china. "A little classy, a little trashy," the singer mused.
'[I was] just so lucky to grow up with such strong women around me and really teaching me a lot about life and how to navigate what's coming at me," Lambert shared. "I learned so much from them. And a lot of my first songs started with me sitting around the dinner table with these ladies or cooking together in the kitchen and sort of listening to their life stories and what was going on in their world."
"I wanted this book to be sort of timeless and something that can be generational, that you give your mom for Mother's Day and pass down," she added. "It is all about spending time and not about being perfect and not about some Instagram moment. It's about really living in the moment with people you love."
However, while the singer pointed out that she feels cooking and writing music are similarly cathartic -- calling it "a whole different way to tell stories" -- she admitted that, in real life, most of the food preparation in her household is left to her husband, Brendan McLoughlin.
"He's like, 'Wait a minute, I do all the cooking and cleaning. How do you have a cookbook?'" Lambert recalled with a laugh. "It's been funny to mix worlds because this kind of cooking is definitely not what he's used to and what he's grown up around."
"He's very much Italian influenced, being from New York, and he's amazing at that pasta and sauce," she noted. "I don't think he ever had cornbread [before me]. And now he has had so much more cornbread since he met me."
McLoughlin actually has a few recipes in the cookbook, Lambert shared, inspired by the couple's time together in lockdown, when they would get friends together for cocktail hours and cooking challenges over Zoom.
She also found some inspiration from another country star, Trisha Yearwood, whose roast turkey recipe is a staple in Lambert's family.
"I found that in a magazine, and we've used it for years," she shared. "So Trisha was so sweet to let us borrow it for this book. She's getting one of the first copies!"
So, along with Yearwood, which celebs would Lambert want to host at her all-time dream dinner party?
"That's a hard one," Lambert mused. "Have to say my husband, because he's fun and he likes to have a good time... probably Elvis and Tammy Wynette and Merle Haggard and George Strait. I mean, you said anybody! And Dolly, why not?"
While that might be a tough group to get together, there's plenty else to look forward to in Lambert's life these days. The singer is already planning her 40th birthday festivities for later this year, and she knows just how she wants to celebrate.
"A bunch of my friends, we're all hitting 40 at the same time this year, and CMAs always falls right on my birthday," she shared. "It'll be a big one. It'll be a fun night. I get to celebrate my birthday doing what I love every year, so that's a good thing."
Y'all Eat Yet? Welcome to the Pretty B*tchin' Kitchen is in stores now.
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