Chef and founder
About Chef Mia Hantout
Mia Hantout is the Central Texas cook behind Texan Recipes, testing every recipe from her home kitchen in Lockhart.
There is a moment every Texan knows: the smell of brisket smoke before you even open the door. For me, that smell is childhood. My grandmother's backyard in Lockhart, a propane tank glowing orange at dusk, the kind of patience that cannot be rushed. I grew up watching women who never measured anything produce food so good it made grown men quiet. That kitchen education never left me.
I am Mia Hantout, and I created Texan Recipes because I got tired of searching for authentic Texas food and landing on articles written by people who had never driven on a farm road. Texas cuisine is a living conversation between Mexican grandmothers, German butchers, Czech bakers, Black pit masters, and ranchers who figured out how to feed a family on whatever the land gave them that week.
Born and raised in Central Texas, I have been cooking and testing recipes my entire life. I studied culinary arts and spent years working in restaurants across Austin and San Antonio before deciding that the food I was most passionate about deserved its own home online. Every recipe on this site has been tested in my home kitchen in Lockhart, Texas at least twice before it goes live.
I focus on authentic Texas BBQ, including brisket, ribs, sausage, and all the sides; Tex-Mex from scratch, including enchiladas, tamales, and chiles rellenos; Southern comfort food, including casseroles, cobblers, and church potluck staples; and weeknight Texas cooking that fits a real schedule.
In 2022, I kept searching for chicken-fried steak and getting results from food blogs in Connecticut. Good people, but they had never had their gravy corrected by a 70-year-old Texan in a church kitchen. I decided to build the resource I always wished existed.
Three years and 152 recipes later, I have heard from readers in Austin making my tamales for Christmas Eve, from expats in Germany recreating Texas BBQ in an apartment oven, and from second-generation Tejano families who said a recipe reminded them of their grandmother. That is everything.
Every recipe goes through at least two rounds: a baseline run to document the process, and a second run with adjustments based on what was confusing or could be improved. I do not publish a recipe I would not serve to company. All ingredients are tested with what is available at HEB or a standard grocery store, because not everyone lives near a specialty market.
Follow Texan Recipes on Instagram at @ohtexanrecipes, Pinterest at @texanrecipes, and Facebook at facebook.com/ohtexanrecipes.
Behind Texan Recipes
Texan Recipes is an editorial project by Mohamed Reda Hantout, a Belgium-based entrepreneur with over 15 years of experience in international hospitality, food media, and digital content creation. Mia Hantout, our editorial voice and lead recipe developer, represents the brand's identity and the test kitchen team behind every published recipe.
Every recipe on Texan Recipes goes through a thorough development process. We research traditional Texas cooking methods, test recipes multiple times in our home kitchen, refine ingredients and techniques based on real-world results, and document the final method for our readers. Our commitment is to deliver authentic, tested recipes that work in any home kitchen.
To bring our recipes to life visually, we combine real food photography with AI-generated imagery for illustrations when location photography is impractical from our European base. We believe in transparency about our content creation process. All recipes published on Texan Recipes are real, tested, and developed by our team, not generated by AI.
For questions about our editorial process, content collaborations, or media inquiries, contact us via our contact page.