Family Recipe Showdown season 1 will premiere on Food Network on July 17, 2025. Academy-winning actress Octavia Spencer will act as the host for the show while chef Edgar “Dook” Chase takes up the role of the resident expert. Together, they will examine the family recipe-based competition as the contestants advance to the final.

In a July 15, 2025, interview with TV Insider, Edgar reflected on working alongside Octavia, describing the experience as “amazing.” He praised her as a wonderful person with a vibrant personality, adding that she was down-to-earth, full of fun, and radiated positive energy.

“It was an amazing time for me. Octavia is a great person with an amazing personality. You see these stars on TV and wonder what type of person they are. She is just down-to-earth full of fun, full of energy. She kept us going on the show,” he said about Olivia.

Edgar added that he had gotten to know Olivia backstage, met up with some of her celebrity friends, and enjoyed discussing food and memories with them. He noted that the whole set was filled with a lot of fun vibes and that he and his fellow co-stars and crew members had a great time.

He shared that he hoped that the fun they had while working on the show could be featured in the episodes.

Family Recipe Showdown star Edgar Chase shares how he came to join the show

The new Food Network reality show, Family Recipe Showdown, will feature contestant duos comprising family members, each taking the stage to showcase their most cherished family recipe.

In his interview, Edgar was asked to share how the opportunity to join the show came about. In response, he shared that, at first, someone reached out to him through email and set up a Zoom call for him to get in touch with Octavia and the production team.

When they joined the Zoom call, everyone immediately began sharing food stories, bonding over the cherished memories of dishes they grew up with in their own families.

This discussion helped them connect with each other, and he later learned that it was an interview test to see if he could bond with his co-workers.

“With that, in terms of them reaching out, telling me about what this show was about and what they were aiming to do. Bringing families together, celebrating cultures, tradition and those recipes and what food does. That was fascinating to me because that was my family’s story. That’s all we celebrate,” he said in the interview.

“We celebrate our culture, but more importantly, we love people to come in and reset the table. We want to have celebrations, dialogue and connections and food and culture and traditions. It was a perfect fit for me. That is why I was hoping so much I would make the cut, and I did. Here we are,” the Family Recipe Showdown star continued.

Later in the interview, when asked if he prepared any dish for his Family Recipe Showdown co-star Octavia Spencer, Edgar said yes. He shared that the first dish he learned to make in his grandmother’s kitchen was a stewed chicken, and he even showed Octavia how to prepare it. However, he noted that he wasn’t sure if it would make it into the episodes.

“I don’t know if it’s on the show or not, but I will show Octavia how to make stewed chicken. We had some fun cooking back there. It was pretty cool,” he concluded.

Family Recipe Showdown season 1 episodes will air every Thursday on Food Network after its premiere on July 17, 2025.