In this live Thanksgiving cooking demo, North Carolina real‑estate agent and cookbook author Leigh Thomas Brown greets viewers, wishes them a happy Thanksgiving, and re‑introduces herself and her Southern Recipes cookbook. She announces she will demonstrate her most‑requested, four‑ingredient whiskey cranberry sauce, emphasizing that fresh cranberries are superior to canned ones. Leigh walks through the ingredient list—fresh cranberries, apple cider (or hard cider/juice), honey‑flavored whiskey, and Dixie Crystals sugar—explaining where she sourced each item and offering substitutions. She then demonstrates the cooking process: washing cranberries, combining them with cider, whiskey, and sugar in a saucepan, stirring, allowing the mixture to boil, and letting the alcohol burn off so the sauce is safe for children. Throughout, she intersperses humor, personal anecdotes (her control‑freak tendencies, past brand ambassadorship with Dixie Crystals, volunteer work with the West Yancey Volunteer Fire Department), and calls to action: purchase her cookbook (with proceeds supporting Patriot Relief), donate or volunteer in western North Carolina, and share photos of the finished dish. The live chat is acknowledged with shout‑outs to viewers, and she wraps up by wishing everyone a joyful Thanksgiving, encouraging kindness, and reminding them to enjoy the sauce and the holiday with family.
Chapters
Look, y'all, it's Thanksgiving! Happy Thanksgiving! And to— let's see, I have to wear reading glasses now so I can see your comments. So yes, Puddin Tang, I know you have missed me, and I appreciate that very much because, you know, I really haven't done my Kitchen My Rules in quite some time. Well, hey, I ran out of recipes. Let's just be honest, I only have but so many things I know how to fix, and I'm not a person who gets on the cooking programs trying to make things up. But y'all know everything I did make is— well, not everything, most of my recipes are in my cookbook, which is available for Christmas purchases. So look, if you're looking for the perfect Christmas present that your family does not have, it is probably Leigh Thomas Brown's Southern Recipes, because they're not in real estate or somewhere on the internet, they may not know who I am. But if you're new to my channel, hey, I'm Leigh Thomas Brown. I'm a real estate agent in North Carolina with a lot of things to share. And so today, as is my tradition, I'm going to share with y'all my number one most requested, most famous Thanksgiving recipe, and this is cranberries. And so for those of y'all that think cranberries should come out of a can and have little rings on it, you live a very sad life, and I feel for you because it does not have to be that way, friends. It does not have to be that way. And you can see that I'm getting ready to fix my Thanksgiving for my family because yes, I'm a control freak, and yes, I like it at my house, and so whatever. But it starts with the good sauces. And so you make that before you get your dress and put your face on. So let's see. Oh, hey Pat. All right, so here's the ingredients that you need. This is so easy that even if you're not a cook, you can do this. Like, I believe in you even if you don't believe in you. So you need a bag of cranberries. Now, full stop, you need to wash them. So because I love the people on my internet channels who like to tell me things, I already washed mine. All right, thank you. And so I did buy them because they were 2 for over at the Harris Teeter. And thank you Harris Teeter for having 2 for on the cranberries. And by the way, these are from Massachusetts. So I only take back some of the things I've said about Massachusetts people because I do like your cranberries. So let's just go ahead and put those in a medium saucepan, right? See, step number 1, all y'all can handle that. Now there's only 4 ingredients here, and if you forgot to get your stuff together, you can easily go run to the grocery store and come home and fix it because this is going to sit and thicken up and simmer while I get the rest of the food together. I'll be watching Macy's parade, which is about to start. Oh, hey, Cousin Kimberly, what's up, girl? All right, so here's what you need. For those of y'all that are terrible with math, I'm gonna show you the easy way to math this. You need some apple cider. I got the cinnamon flavored one just because it adds a little cinnamon, and you could also add a little bit, but that makes it a 5-ingredient recipe, and frankly, we're not going above 4 because it's Thanksgiving and we have to keep it in moderation. You need 1 cup of apple cider. Now, I have made it in the past with the Angry Orchard hard cider You can do that even if you don't really like the alcohol, because the alcohol will burn off. So anything apple flavored, you could use apple juice if you want. You could steal a kid's juice box. No judgment. They won't know. They didn't buy it anyway. Frankly, why wouldn't you just take it from them? They didn't pay for it. And then you need the best ingredient. Now, today we're using Jim Beam honey. I have used Jack Daniel's honey. I have used Fireball. I have used basically whatever honey whiskey is in the house. This happens to be the one that was in the cupboard today, and because we are not fancy over here at the Brown House, we are going to open up our whiskey. And because my pastor will probably watch this later, I will not swig straight out of the jar because he does not approve of such behavior, because he's a good wholesome man who expects me to live up to the Lord's expectations, and I probably let him down every day. But here we are. So you need a cup of whiskey, a cup of honey whiskey, which is also good for a cough. So if you are experiencing a cough here in the fall season, get you a little bit of honey whiskey. We're going to pour that right in. So you catch that, y'all? Cup of whiskey, cup of cider slash apple juice slash Angry Orchard slash whatever. And then you know what the most important ingredient is? It is Dixie Crystals sugar. And so if all you have is Domino's, that's so sad. And maybe you have some store brand, house brand, and I just, I just can't even with that. Although I will say I used to be the, the influencer spokeswoman for Dixie Crystals But then they changed marketing companies and the new marketing company did not renew my contract and I was hurt just a little bit, but that was fine because this is still my sugar. All right, let's just call it what it is and I will not change it whether they are paying me or not because Dixie Crystals has been around since 1917. It is literally the best thing and quit, quit, quit with the Splenda. Tony, if you watch this, I'm watching you, buddy, because that Splenda is killing you slowly. You're going to need a cup of sugar. Now, if you are trying to not be diabetic, Thanksgiving's probably not your holiday. So let's do 3 and then 4. I'm using a quarter cup measure for some of y'all that are panicking a little bit. Says 1/4 on the bottom, and that's why I like it. It's all marked up. That is your ingredients. All right, some of y'all are just dancing a happy dance right now because you're thinking, Leigh Thomas Brown, I could do this. I know, pumpkins, you can. See, look, now we're going to stir it up. We got whiskey, cider, cranberries, and sugar. That is it. Now we're gonna put our saucepan on a medium heat. Here's what you need to do. You stand here and stir your cranberries. You can drink an extra cup of coffee too while you look at the parade in the living room. I don't know what she's wearing, some woman in a purple dress. I reckon that's some Broadway play I will never watch because they do make a bunch of junk these days. And so I'm gonna stir my saucepan. When the cranberries start to pop, they're gonna burst, they're gonna go pshh, and it won't tear up your stove though, so don't be panicked. When they start to burst, that's when you're going to let them burst for a little bit, and then you cut the heat down. You're going to let it sit. So for those of y'all that are worried about the alcohol, let me tell you a little secret here. The alcohol is going to burn off to a large extent, and so your children can actually eat this and not get drunk, because drunk children is a bad idea on Thanksgiving or any, any day, let's be honest. So what we want to do is cook it long enough, keep the heat high enough to burn the alcohol off. Let me check my comments over here. So let's see, Linda made hers yesterday. She's advanced. Let's see. Hey friend, look, there come Arkansas, and there's my Aunt Peggy and Lacy. Oh hey Tamara! Look, Arkansas leans in. Oh, Misty from around the corner. Hey Rock Hill. All right, look, Pat likes the canned stuff. Pat, honey, we gonna have to talk. Look, if you fix this one time, you just eat it straight out of the jar. And no judgment, because that's the other reason. Look, I got to tell y'all, this is one of the reasons I like to cook, because I get to taste the whole time., and then I just basically get full before anybody else comes into my kitchen. And by the way, for those of y'all that are wanting to know where I have been and you have not seen too much of me, well, it is because for the last 8 weeks I have been doing as much as I can as one of many hundreds of people helping out in western North Carolina. And the West Yancey Volunteer Fire Department gave me this very fancy shirt, and see what it says on the back? Says, "Preciate yuns." And so I appreciate them for what they have done to feed their community at this time. So if you want to be a part of what we can do in Western North Carolina. A, pray. B, donate. C, figure out how you can fit in, where you can fit in to volunteer. And by the way, if you do buy my little cookbook, Leigh Thomas Brown Southern Recipes, y'all might know this already, but I donate the proceeds from that. And now that I have Patriot Relief as my 501, that's where the donations go. And no, it's not for me. That's the money that I'm spending on my neighbors because we keep providing. Let's Um, let's see. Oh, y'all are just saying Happy Thanksgiving, so hey, Happy Thanksgiving right back to you. None of y'all have questions about the recipe? Was that easy? And so for those of y'all that are recipe nerds that are watching this and you're thinking this is not the usual cooking channel because I have talked too much and I have not shown you things, well, that is exactly what My Kitchen, My Rules was about, because it's my kitchen, my rules, my internet. I'm just gonna put it like that. So no, I'm not fancy like the millennials and the Gen Zs. I'm just a medium-aged mom over here taking care of my family. So I want y'all to fix this, enjoy your Thanksgiving, go love on somebody. And you know what, show me a picture of what you fix. I spilled some sugar, but that's not like salt. I don't have to throw it over my shoulder, but I will have to clean it up here in a minute when I cut off the camera. And listen, go do something good for somebody. Don't get mad today and don't get even today either. It's not get mad, get even, it's Cut it all off. All right, so after you hang out with me, cut this off, hang out with your family, play some cards, read a book, take a nap, take lots of naps, and Happy Thanksgiving from my team to yours. We'll see you around, and share this with a friend who needs to become a cooking expert, because maybe they did not know that they had a talent that lies deep within amongst 4 ingredients that will make you happier and make your family fatter on Thanksgiving.
