Mila Kunis, Nicole Kidman, Salma Hayek, and Goldie Hawn have all shared stories from their kitchens that sound much less glamorous than you might expect.

There are stubborn family traditions, crispy fried pasta, a mischievous dinner-party trick, and even a childhood recipe that eventually made its way to another generation.

For Mila Kunis, cooking has always been closely connected to family.

She grew up watching her mother prepare meals without carefully measuring every ingredient.

Instead of exact instructions, her mother relied on instinct.

A little of this.

A little of that.

Taste it.

Adjust it.

Keep going.

That style of cooking rubbed off on Mila.

She became comfortable improvising with whatever was already available in the refrigerator rather than running to the store every time she was missing one ingredient.

Her husband, Ashton Kutcher, has even described her as a “leftovers ninja” because of her ability to turn random ingredients into something new.

One of her favorite approaches is an everything-goes salad, where almost anything available can find its way into the bowl.

She has even experimented with adding sauerkraut.

But there is one thing Mila admits she still cannot recreate properly.

Her mother’s chicken soup.

No matter how carefully she follows instructions over the phone, the result never tastes quite the same.

It is a frustration plenty of people understand.

Some family recipes seem almost impossible to reproduce because the person who originally made them never followed a written recipe in the first place.

Then there is Thanksgiving.

Kunis has explained that Thanksgiving was not traditionally a major celebration in her family while she was growing up.

Eventually, however, her mother suggested that Mila prepare the meal.

Suddenly, an entire Thanksgiving dinner became her responsibility.

Like many home cooks, she quickly learned how exhausting that can be.

You spend hours chopping vegetables, tasting sauces, watching timers, opening the oven, checking temperatures, and trying to get six dishes ready at approximately the same moment.

By the time everyone sits down, the cook can be too exhausted to enjoy any of it.

Over the years, Mila’s Thanksgiving table has included plenty of familiar favorites.

Mashed potatoes.

Roasted vegetables.

Corn dishes.

Sweet potato casserole.

And even deep-fried turkey, which she has spoken about enthusiastically.

But there was one dish she repeatedly tried to improve.

Green bean casserole.

Instead of making the familiar version with canned ingredients, Mila wanted something more homemade.

She bought beautiful fresh green beans.

Prepared a mushroom ragù from scratch.

Put serious effort into creating a more sophisticated version.

Her family rejected it.

Not just once.

Mila admitted that she tried for years.

Every Thanksgiving, she attempted to make the casserole better.

And every Thanksgiving, her family apparently wanted the same thing.

Canned green beans.

Condensed mushroom soup.

Packaged crispy onions.

The classic version.

Specifically, the familiar combination featuring Campbell’s mushroom soup and French’s fried onions.

Eventually, Mila surrendered.

That one dish became the exception.

She could cook the rest of the Thanksgiving meal however she wanted.

But the green bean casserole had to stay old-fashioned.

There is something strangely comforting about that.

Sometimes the recipe people love is not necessarily the most sophisticated one.

It is simply the one they remember.

And nostalgia can be a very difficult ingredient to replace.

Nicole Kidman, meanwhile, has a very different kitchen trick.

Her surprise involves something most people have probably cooked hundreds of times.

Pasta.

A recipe credited to Kidman appeared in a Paul Newman cookbook in the late 1990s.

It is called Crispy Orecchiette with Broccoli, Pine Nuts, and Garlic.

At first, nothing about the ingredients sounds particularly unusual.

Orecchiette pasta.

Broccoli.

Garlic.

Parmesan.

Pine nuts.

Lemon juice.

Butter.

All ingredients that would fit comfortably into a simple Italian-inspired dinner.

Then comes the unexpected part.

After the pasta is boiled, it gets fried.

The orecchiette is first cooked in salted water until tender but still firm.

Then it is drained, briefly rinsed with cold water, and allowed to dry.

That drying step matters because excess moisture makes it much harder to achieve the texture that comes next.

Instead of immediately tossing the pasta with sauce, the cooked noodles go into a hot skillet with oil.

They are left mostly undisturbed until the outside becomes golden and crisp.

The inside stays tender.

The result is pasta with two completely different textures at once.

The recipe suggests cooking one side for roughly three minutes and the other for another couple of minutes.

Constant stirring is avoided because the noodles need enough contact with the hot pan to develop a crust.

Meanwhile, broccoli and garlic are cooked with white wine and lemon juice.

The crispy pasta is then combined with the vegetables, butter, balsamic vinegar, toasted pine nuts, and Parmesan.

The important part is serving it relatively quickly.

If the pasta sits too long in the sauce, the crispy exterior begins to soften.

It is a small technique, but one that completely changes an otherwise familiar pasta dinner.

And unlike some celebrity recipes, it does not require expensive equipment or obscure ingredients.

Just a frying pan and a willingness to cook your pasta twice.

Salma Hayek’s kitchen confession, however, might be the most mischievous.

When she was younger, Hayek admitted that she was not always confident in her cooking.

Hosting dinner made her nervous.

She worried about whether the food would turn out properly.

Whether it needed more seasoning.

Whether her guests would notice mistakes.

So instead of becoming a more obsessive cook, she developed a rather unusual strategy.

She served what she jokingly called tequila soup.

The basic idea involved chicken broth, lime, and tequila.

The joke was simple.

Serve the guests something with alcohol at the beginning of the meal, and perhaps they would be relaxed enough not to care if the rest of dinner was imperfect.

Hayek even joked that they might not remember the mistakes later.

It was more of a funny confession about her younger years than a serious recommendation for entertaining guests.

But it reveals something very familiar beneath the celebrity story.

The pressure to impress people with food can make hosting much less enjoyable than it needs to be.

Hayek eventually became known for having adventurous tastes of her own.

She has talked about enjoying popcorn with spicy Mexican hot sauce and has praised memorable restaurants she encountered while traveling.

But that old tequila-soup confession remains a reminder that even famous actresses can worry about whether people will like their cooking.

Then there is Goldie Hawn.

Her story is less about a surprising technique and more about the way food travels through generations.

Goldie has long been known as an enthusiastic home cook.

Her family has enjoyed everything from shepherd’s pie to beef stew, and her husband, Kurt Russell, has spoken very warmly about her abilities in the kitchen.

Today, Goldie is also a grandmother.

And despite the glamorous surroundings of her life, the requests she gets from her grandchildren sound wonderfully ordinary.

They can be picky.

Different children want different things.

Sometimes breakfast becomes an exercise in preparing multiple versions of the same meal.

Goldie has joked that she can feel more like a short-order cook than a grandmother.

But one family recipe in particular left a lasting impression on her son Wyatt Russell.

When Wyatt talked about the meals he remembered from childhood, he mentioned one simple dish that stayed with him for years.

American chop.

Also known as American chop suey.

It is not glamorous.

It is not complicated.

It is the sort of comforting dinner many families have prepared in one form or another for generations.

Ground beef.

Macaroni.

Tomatoes.

Vegetables.

Straightforward seasoning.

Wyatt remembered ingredients such as garlic powder, paprika, and possibly a little nutmeg.

The point was not to build some elaborate restaurant-style sauce.

It was simple family food.

Years later, Wyatt became a father himself.

And eventually he made the dish for his own son, Buddy.

A neighbor’s daughter joined them.

Both children loved it.

Just like that, something Goldie had once made for her son became something her son made for the next generation.

If you wanted to create a similar version at home, the basic method would be simple.

Brown ground beef in a large skillet or pot.

Add chopped onion, carrot, and celery.

Cook until the vegetables soften.

Then add tomatoes, a little broth, and macaroni.

Allow everything to simmer together until the pasta becomes tender.

Peas can be added near the end.

Then season with garlic powder, paprika, salt, pepper, and perhaps a tiny pinch of nutmeg.

It is not meant to be an exact recreation of Goldie Hawn’s personal recipe.

It is simply an adaptation inspired by the family dish Wyatt remembered.

And maybe that is the common thread running through all four stories.

Mila Kunis learned that sometimes your family does not want the improved version.

They want the version that tastes like memory.

Nicole Kidman’s pasta proves that one unexpected cooking step can transform an ordinary ingredient.

Salma Hayek’s tequila-soup story shows that dinner parties do not always have to be taken so seriously.

And Goldie Hawn’s family recipe shows how something incredibly simple can survive for decades because of who made it.

The most memorable food is not always expensive.

It is not always sophisticated.

It does not always photograph beautifully.

Sometimes it comes from a can.

Sometimes it is cooked in one pan.

Sometimes it is something your mother made without measuring anything.

And sometimes you do not realize how important a dish was until you find yourself making it for your own children years later.

Almost every family has one of those recipes.

A soup.

A casserole.

A Sunday dinner.

Something a grandmother made.

Something a parent could cook without ever opening a cookbook.

And years later, we may forget the meals from expensive restaurants.

But somehow, we still remember exactly how home tasted.