Trisha Yearwood Says Garth Brooks Is ‘a Real Honest Critic’ of Her Cooking

Trisha Yearwood is getting ready to release her third cookbook, Trisha’s Kitchen, in September, and she had plenty of help working on the project while in quarantine last year. In a new interview with PEOPLE, Yearwood shared that husband Garth Brooks was never afraid to offer his opinion on her food, which ultimately helped her write her book.

“It was really good because working on the cookbook, I could work on a recipe and Garth is wonderful because he’s a real honest critic,” she said. “He’s not going to just say, ‘Everything’s great.’ If he tells me something needs something and needs more this or that, I’m going to get mad first but he’s also usually right.” Yearwood joked, “So I’ll take his advice, but I just have to be mad first.”

In fact, one recipe in Trisha’s Kitchen — breakfast lasagna with sausage, peppers and eggs in a cheese sauce — was directly inspired by Brooks. “One day Garth said, ‘Hey, can you make lasagna but put all just breakfast stuff in it?’” Yearwood recalled. “So that’s in the book and that really came out of him just challenging me to do it.”

The superstar couple spent a lot of time together at home on their Tennessee farm in 2020, and Yearwood admitted that it felt “pretty weird” to be forced to spend so much time at her house, though she usually prefers to cook at home no matter what.

“What’s really been interesting is that we don’t go to restaurants very much. Not because we don’t want to be recognized or any of that — we just don’t [go out!],” she said. “We just eat at home more, but not being able to go to a restaurant has made me want to go to a restaurant. That’ll be probably one of the first things I do is go out to eat somewhere.”

She added that “cooking for me is therapy.” “I really do enjoy the kitchen, it’s just relaxing for me,” the Grammy winner explained. “I think it’s because my parents were both good cooks and they raised me to be like, ‘If everything is terrible, you order pizza and it’s fine. Don’t stress over it.’”

Yearwood was diagnosed with COVID-19 in February, and while she has since tested negative for the virus and received her vaccine, she was without her sense of taste and smell for some time. “I love to cook, so now when I cook I just ask Garth, ‘Tell me if it needs more salt and pepper,’” she said on The Kelly Clarkson Show last month. “It’s the weirdest thing.”