We’re crushing on Food Network’s Trisha Yearwood. Sorry Garth Brooks!

Trisha’s Southern Kitchen is a mainstay of Food Network’s Saturday morning schedule, proving that Trisha Yearwood is just as adept at attracting an audience on-stage as she is in her kitchen.

We’re huge fans of Food Network’s Saturday and Sunday morning schedules, with one glaring exception that we addressed in a recent FoodSided piece. While the network’s prime time fare enjoys a bigger spotlight and features many shows that we enjoy, we often tire of the competition show du jour and are happy to have the weekend morning staples to fall back on.

For the purpose of this story, we’re specifically referring to Trisha’s Southern Kitchen and its affable host, country music superstar Trisha Yearwood. While we’d be the first to admit that the mere sound of any country music song sends us scurrying for the nearest 1960s-era bomb shelter, we’ll happily cop to having been big fans of the show since our initial accidental viewing.

As much as we love many food competition shows, there’s definitely a time and a place for a good old-fashioned cooking show that’s all about the food. Trisha’s Southern Kitchen takes that basic format, adds more than a pinch of personality and becomes a half-hour of thoroughly engaging television. The host is eminently likable and the food she prepares is mostly relatable.

Now in its 16th season on Food Network, Trisha’s Southern Kitchen is set in the home Yearwood and husband Garth Brooks share in Nashville. With frequent appearances by her sister Beth and other family members, as well as cameos by everyone from NFL Hall of Famer Kurt Warner to former Olympic sweethearts Bart Conner and Nadia Comaneci, not to mention fellow Food Network weekend morning personality Ree Drummond, the show very rarely fails to entertain while also informing.

Shill as we may for Trisha’s Southern Kitchen, even we have our limitations. We’re fine when Yearwood prepares a dish that doesn’t float our boat, especially since those occasions occur infrequently, but when the guitar comes out and we sense that singing is about to commence, we get to the Mute button faster than you can say Usain Bolt.

So if you’re looking for food television that isn’t in the vein of ‘Tic Tac Cooking Championship’ or ‘Most Verbose Cooks in America’, pull up in front of your TV Saturday mornings at 9, with two additional episodes airing at 12 pm and 12:30 pm, and try Trisha’s Southern Kitchen.

But if you see a guitar or start to hear singing, by all means, keep the remote nearby and hit that Mute button as fast as you can!