Janine Washle is the owner of Flavor Queen’s Kitchen in Kentucky. Moving to Virginia from southern Germany when she was almost 6 years old, and gaining her U.S. citizenship by 16, she embraced her new southern roots by creating menus with her sister and helping her mother cook the weeknight meals. Her love of food began at an early age when her mom would let her plant her own garden with whatever she liked as long as she learned how to cook and eat what she planted. Okra was one of her first selections. Neither she nor her mother had ever heard of it much less knew what to do with it. It was one of her first culinary adventures and a subsequent disaster after letting the pods grow to nearly 12” in length! This fueled her desire to learn about ingredients, cooking techniques, and traditions especially those of the south. In fact she will be the first to tell you that there are quite a few similarities between the cuisine of southern Germany and the southern United States – whether it is jowl meat or spaetzle!
Washles’ competitive side is reflected in her very notable awards in national recipe competitions. She has taken grand prizes in Hidden Valley and Lawry’s Seasoned Salt competitions, along with several other recipe awards. She has appeared on Food Network’s, Bakers vs Fakers winning her episode!
She proudly contributes weekly on WAVE Country with Dawne Gee, and on other local channels through the year. She creates menus for the recipe column in Kentucky Monthly magazine several times a year, the foremost magazine on Kentucky. In addition to this, she has a lively social media following on Facebook, Instagram, and maintains a website, theflavorqueen.com.
She enjoys teaching classes every month at Kentucky’s premier cooking school, Cooking At The Cottage which provides an outlet for her vast knowledge of Kentucky and southern culinary history and how it intersects with today’s food trends. Flavor Queen LLC is her wholesale and catering business, as well as, 109 N Mulberry German-American Café cafe in Elizabethtown, Kentucky providing a public outlet of expression for her creative ideas and flavors.
Even with all of this, her greatest joy is simply sharing her well-seasoned way of cooking and entertaining with others so they too can live a flavorful life.