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Mansfield, LA native Chef Hunter Lee is taking his talents worldwide with a new line of cookbooks and spices celebrating Louisiana, its culture, and traditions.

For the past 15 years, Chef Hunter Lee has shared his kitchen prowess throughout Louisiana as a chef/kitchen personality, business owner, caterer, food expert with TalktoChef.com, and restaurant consultant and critic. His line of seasonings and specialty sauces is called Benwood’s Surely Southern, in honor of his father Benny aka Benwood, who created the original 'Benwood's Spice.' Since then, Chef Hunter has revamped his father's original recipe for mass production.

Chef Hunter has eight sauces in the Benwood's line ready to hit the market, including his Country Boy BBQ sauce, Country Boy Marinade, Country Boy Wild Game Sauce, and Louisiana Hot Sauce. But, staying true to the line's namesake, you can taste the original Benwood's in the majority of his recipes. They are all 'Certified Louisiana Products', so you can feel good about supporting a local business. After all, Benwood's was conceived right here in NWLA and is produced and packaged in Louisiana as well. You can learn more about Chef Hunter's line of seasonings, sauces, pickles, and merchandise by visiting Benwood's Surely Southern.

Being a true southern entrepreneur, Chef Hunter always dreamed about writing his own cookbooks. Those dreams came to fruition when he signed with Fulton Books late last year for a three cookbook series under the Benwood’s Surely Southern label. The first cookbook, Louisiana: Recipes of a People was released in May 2022. You can find it in bookstores as well as on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Books A Million, and Walmart. The second cookbook in the series called Livin Large in Louisiana is now in the editing phase and his publisher plans to have it out in time for Christmas 2022. There's no word on when the third installment will be published, but we'll make sure to share that information as it becomes available.

Chef Hunter would love to connect with you via social media or his website and he invites you to check out Tips and Tales with Chef Hunter Lee every Friday. Chef Lee says, 'Food is the special magic that brings people together in the south.' and reminds his fellow food aficionados to 'treat your kitchen, treat yourself.'

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