20 Of Dolly Parton's Favorite Foods

Oftentimes, someone who is as big in the music industry as Dolly Parton is will also have a significant influence on other areas of popular culture. Parton's influence on food culture can be seen in her many cookbooks, including "Dolly's Dixie Fixin's" and, most recently, "Good Lookin' Cookin," a cookbook Parton wrote with her sister. Not to mention that she has inspired much of the menu of several eateries in Dollywood, her own personal theme park.

Given her musical style, a blend of down-home charm, heartfelt lyrics, and larger-than-life personality, it's no surprise that the food she loves has a similar profile. That is to say that you'd be unlikely to find Parton at a fancy-schmancy Michelin-star restaurant or at the latest trendy spot in town. Rather, on any given night, she is more likely to be at home cooking with her husband, Carl Dean. But what are some of these mysterious meals they prepare behind closed doors? Turns out, they're not much of a mystery. Let's get a closer look at Parton's favorite meals.

We often think of celebrities as having rarefied, expensive tastes in food — and pretty much everything else. And with all that money to spend, why wouldn't they? Turns out, though, that this assumption is quite false, at least in the case of Dolly Parton, who may like expensive foods for all we know, but who definitely also likes soft shell tacos from none other than Taco Bell.

As she told Business Insider in 2022, "I always get a Taco Supreme, with the sour cream and all that, in the soft shell. I love that." She explained that the other types of tacos fall apart and that she'll complete the meal with rice, beans, and a few dabs of mild hot sauce. She's also a fan of Taco Bell's Mexican pizza, which is beef and beans between two large flat taco shells and topped with sauce, cheese, and tomatoes.

Every meat eater likes a good hot dog, and Dolly Parton is one of them. In particular, she seems to enjoy the menu at the Frank Allen Grill, in Sevierville, Tennessee, an unassuming spot built into a gas station.

While this place is known for its burgers, including an award-winning cheeseburger, Parton reportedly told Southern Living in 2010 that she is a fan of the Slaw Dog, a hot dog served with coleslaw, mustard, and onions. In an apparent move to prove that Dolly is a fan of this spot, you'll find two pictures of her on the wall at this joint, but nothing too ostentatious.

In a 1992 interview with The New York Times, Dolly Parton met with a reporter at a New York restaurant. But predictably, given Parton's penchant for home-cooked meals, there was more talk about what she ate at home than what she thought of that or any other restaurant in town. Indeed, as she specified in the article, she sees her kitchen as her focal point when she's at home.

What emerged was that her favorite thing to serve at dinner parties is roast pork with green beans, turnip greens, and fried okra. As she told the reporter, "I love roast pork, especially the fatty part. I can't help it, the greasier the food, the better." Don't we all feel like that, at least secretly? There is just yet another example that shows how relatable Parton is.

When Dolly Parton met with that New York Times reporter in April 1992 to talk about her career highlights, they had lunch together at Wally and Joseph's on West 49th Street, which has since gone the way of the flesh. Her food choices were also a topic of conversation.

As she told the reporter, "I like clams, but I don't like them when they're all big and chewy, so they chop them up for me." She was talking about a dish called clams casino, which she called her favorite appetizer and which she paired with a salad with ranch dressing and baked potato, though actually, the potato never came. A shame, because so little a thing would have made a big impact on her lunch. As she told the reporter, "Just give me my potato, any kind of potato, and I'm happy." Luckily, she declared the clams a success.

Dolly Parton reportedly loves potatoes so much that it may just be the one food she can't live without, no matter what diet she's on at any given time. As she told Allrecipes, "I've always been a potato person, even if it's a mashed potato, or a french fry, or if I just baked a potato."

That last one, the baked potato, seems to be her all-time favorite, with or without toppings. If you want to see what all the fuss is about, try one yourself. This ultimate twice-baked potato recipe may be worthy of Ms. Parton, and it only takes 15 minutes to prepare (and two hours to cook). Suggested toppings include sour cream, cheddar, bacon, and green onions, but feel free to play around with your favorite combination.

Dolly Parton grew up in Tennessee, where hunting seems to be a state sport. Indeed, as Parton told The New York Times in 1992, "My father and my uncles were big bear hunters, and they had bear dogs. We ate a lot of bear, rabbit, squirrel, and groundhog. See, we were country people, and when you grow up in the mountains, you grow up eating whatever's running around."

Growing up eating something doesn't mean you have to like it, but that doesn't seem to have been a problem for Parton. In the interview, she names these wild game meats as conforming to her tastes, adding that she also ate a lot of animals from local streams, like frogs and catfish.

Shellfish was not something Dolly Parton ate growing up, and as she told The New York Times, she never even had shrimp cocktail until she was in her 20s. Things have changed drastically since then. Aside from the chopped clams she had at the restaurant during the interview, which she praised for being mixed up with the breadcrumbs, she also enjoys a good plate of oysters, as long as they're fried.

While we don't know for sure what kind of fried oysters Parton enjoys, we can suggest a few ingredients to upgrade your fried oysters if you make them at home. Typically dipped in buttermilk followed by cornmeal, you can try replacing the cornmeal with bread crumbs for a crispier effect. You could even use crushed-up crackers as a coating or add your favorite spices to the mix.

Dolly Parton may be relatable in many ways — she enjoys a good burger on the side of the road and can't live without baked potatoes — but her preference for pie instead of cake, including on her birthday, is not one of them. The pie she likes the most on this occasion is called chess pie.

As she told USA Today in a 2019 email, "My favorite pie is chess pie. That is 'chess' not CHEST pie." Jokes aside, the distinction is helpful since many people have not heard of this pie. For the uninitiated, chess pie is a Southern staple made with sugar, eggs, butter, a thickening agent like flour, and an acidic addition like lemon juice, all gathered blissfully inside a pie shell. While the origins of the name are disputed, one theory suggests it really was originally called chest pie, though in the sense of a storage chest, where the pie could be kept fresh without refrigeration. Another of Parton's favorite pies is the humble walnut pie, which is very much like the familiar pecan pie, but with walnuts.

Dolly Parton may like pie over cake, but it seems like Parton's favorite dessert of all might be banana pudding, a Southern classic. Parton's recipe is made with custard, bananas, of course, and vanilla wafers, all topped with a layer of meringue.

It's likely that Parton's love for this dessert isn't just about the taste. She probably also harbors a sense of nostalgia when it comes to banana pudding. As the story goes, back when Parton's parents were struggling to make ends meet, they did their best to save on their shopping bill, and one way to do this was to buy discounted bananas from a neighbor who owned a shop and who alerted Parton's mother when the bananas were about to go bad. And what do you do with overripe bananas? You make banana pudding, obviously.

Cinnamon bread seems to be a famous food item on the menu at Dollywood, but that doesn't mean it's Dolly Parton's favorite food there. In fact, that honor seems to go to the funnel cake. As Dollywood vice president of guest experience and creative director of The Dolly Parton Experience, Cyndi McCormack, told Allrecipes, Parton "loves funnel cake. She likes the cinnamon bread, but she is crazy for funnel cake."

These particular funnel cakes are available at Crossroads Funnel Cakes and Splinter's Funnel Cakes, both within Dollywood. And although Parton likes the classic version, there is no need for you to hold back if you want to go wild with the toppings, which include chocolate sauce, pie filling, or s'mores.

When Dolly Parton was growing up in the South, she got her fair share of chicken dinners, prepared in various forms. Fried chicken was, of course, a mainstay in her house, but her mother also had a great recipe for chicken and dumplings.

As Parton told Today, "I make chicken and dumplings. My mom was good at that, so I kind of follow her." She even cooks for her colleagues when she's working on a movie set, and her chicken and dumplings are reportedly so sought after that everyone always asks her to prepare this dish for them. But if you were hoping for the recipe, don't hold your breath. She told Today that she doesn't give out the recipe and that all people need to know is that the main ingredient is love. 

Another item Dolly Parton famously makes for her colleagues on movie sets, or wherever she may happen to be working at the time, is peanut butter fudge. But as with the chicken and dumplings, it looks like Parton is not too keen about releasing this recipe either.

The best we can do is recommend another great fudge recipe that is worth trying if you feel like walking in Dolly Parton's shoes for a day. This old-fashioned peanut butter fudge recipe is an ideal choice. Aside from the fact that it tastes fantastic, it only requires five ingredients to make, 20 minutes to prepare, and literally no time to bake. For some extra pizzazz, you can always add some melted peanut butter to drizzle on top or some chopped white chocolate, though we suspect, based on Parton's other food preferences, that she likes to keep hers simple.

Dolly Parton has spoken extensively about her love of her mother's cooking, but it turns out that he father wasn't too shabby in the kitchen either. Apparently, she very much enjoyed his Hickory-grilled ham, which he made each year during the holiday period by glazing the ham with brown sugar and Dijon mustard and smoking it on a charcoal grill. Parton serves this dish with caramelized grilled pineapple.

As reported in Taste of Home, Parton explained, "Daddy always reserved the best pork shoulder from the slaughterhouse for our holidays, which always made us feel special." It would appear, not unsurprisingly, that many of Parton's favorite recipes qualify as such because of some emotional connection to the food, which is, quite frankly, what enjoying food is all about.

Northerners often think of the South as this hot and humid place, but it does get its fair share of snow and cold weather in the winter. Indeed, this is about the time of year when Dolly Parton probably likes to partake in her five-layer casserole dish, which contains beef, potatoes, pepper, and other warm and cozy ingredients like these.

Best of all, the recipe is easy to make. Just cook the ground beef with warm and fuzzy seasonings, pour it on top of a prepared layer of sliced potatoes, followed by sliced onions, diced tomatoes, and green peppers, and bake. Not only does this dish taste good, but it also fills you up, is easy to make, and only requires a handful of easily attainable ingredients.

As Dolly Parton told the New York Times in an interview long ago, she grew up eating fish that she could pluck out of the rivers near where she grew up, in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. One of these was catfish, which she almost always ate fried.

And as it so happens, her present-day recipe for catfish is also fried, specifically in cornmeal and shortening. The result of her super simple recipe, which is just dipped in the aforementioned ingredients (plus a slew of tasty seasonings like paprika and Cajun seasoning) and baked in the oven, creates an ideal level of crispiness in the fish. For best results, serve it with some hot sauce and a squeeze of lemon juice. Many people might shy away from foods they had to eat as children out of necessity. But true to Parton's style, when life gave her lemons, she made catfish with lemon juice.

One of Dolly Parton's favorite Southern classic recipes, as she shared with Hallmark's Home & Family, is stone soup. You might think this refers to stone fruit or some unknown edible type of stone. You would be wrong. It refers to an actual stone. As the legend goes, the soup is named after a European folk tale where a lonely traveler started to make soup with nothing more than a single stone and, in so doing, convinced the entire village to add actual food to the pot, which resulted in an edible dish.

In Parton's recipe, which does call for one very clean stone (although it is optional), the actual food consists of chicken stock, potatoes, smoked ham, and assorted vegetables. But the stone is no less important: When she was a child, her mother would send her and her siblings out to search for the perfect stone for the soup, then select the stone brought by the child in most need of attention or affection. When Parton says her food is made with love, she really means it.

Fried green tomatoes hold a special place in the popular imagination, no doubt thanks to the iconic film of the same name, which tells the tragic story of a Southern family. As it happens, Dolly Parton also enjoys this food. She has included recipes for this dish in a number of her cookbooks, while Dollywood's director of culinary operations, Matthew Poorman, once told Southern Living that fried green tomatoes are, in fact, one of Parton's favorite things to eat.

If you want to partake in a version that Parton herself would likely approve of, head to the Front Porch Cafe at Dollywood, where the tomatoes come with fried mozzarella and balsamic vinegar. Or you can try making them at home by following this easy fried green tomatoes recipe.

If you're a meat eater, you probably like ribs. That's just plain logic. Though you might have a preference as to how those ribs are cooked. Perhaps you like them with barbecue sauce, or grilled over a specific kind of wood or charcoal. Dolly Parton, for one, likes her ribs smoked, just as they make them at Miss Lillian's Mill House in Dollywood. She likes them so much that she'll even order them to go so she can savor them in the comfort of her own home.

The ribs in question are served with fresh cornbread, bread and butter pickles, chow chow, and a side of baked beans, coleslaw, or mac and cheese. For those of us who can't just stop by Dollywood at the drop of a hat, there are these smoked country-style ribs, which come with the signature smoky taste that results from grilling and are balanced out by a tangy barbecue sauce.

It makes sense that one of Dolly Parton's favorite meals at Dollywood, the smoked ribs, should come with a side of mac and cheese since this is also one of her favorite foods. We know this because mac and cheese is one of the recipes that features in Parton's latest cookbook, "Good Lookin' Cookin'," which she co-wrote with her sister Rachel Parton George.

As Parton told Good Morning America, "There's nothing quite like a good old bowl of mac and cheese. Neither one of us can think of anyone we know who doesn't like mac and cheese, and we certainly love it." The ingredients in their recipe are all the usual suspects, but what might be surprising is that they also add a bit of mustard powder and some Velveeta, which reportedly helps make the dish extra creamy.

It's a widely known fact that Southern cuisine tends to fry a lot of foods. One of those foods is apples, and Dolly Parton happens to be a fan of cooking this fruit in this way. The dish is typically made by frying apples in butter, sugar, and cinnamon, with Parton going for brown sugar instead of white.

While this may sound like an obvious dessert, it can actually be used in many ways. While dessert is certainly an option, when topped with some whipped cream or vanilla ice cream, it also makes a fine accompaniment to some savory dishes that do well with sweet sides, like smoked ham.