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Rachel Tepper Paley

How a Former Boy Band Member Became the Newest Cooking Darling

Rachel Tepper Paley
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All photos courtesy of Donal Skehan.

Donal Skehan has a lot going on. When Yahoo Food first spoke with the Irish cookbook author, blogger, and YouTuber back in July, he was in New York City to appear on the TODAY show, his second appearance since March. After that, he planned to head to Los Angeles for VidCon, a massive event Skehan described as “the Comic Con for YouTube creators.” All the while, he was putting the final touches on his fifth and most recent cookbook, Fresh, which hit shelves in October.

“I think I’m going to be a small fish in a big pond,” Skehan predicted of his stateside adventures.

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He was being modest, though. Skehan had his first taste of fame in the mid-aughts as a member of the Irish boyband Streetwize, and again in 2008 when he competed to represent Ireland in the widely popular Eurovision Song Contest, which, at 60 years old, is the world’s longest running annual television song competition. Skehan didn’t win, but he later earned a spot in the Irish boy band Industry, which snagged two No. 1 singles on the Irish charts in 2009 and opened for the Pussycat Dolls during their tour in Ireland.

Related: 7 Myths About Irish Food, Busted

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Sriracha baked chicken wings.

But even at the height of his modest pop stardom, Skehan wasn’t sure he belonged in the music industry. He’d always been enchanted by food, an obsession that began at age 12 when his grandmother gifted him an encyclopedia of Asian cookery. “I went into town on the weekends and [would] go around finding ingredients,” Skehan recalled. “I was fascinated by Asian cookery, because I grew up on a diet of Irish food. I remember making homemade sweet and sour chicken and fortune cookies.”

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Skehan never stopped cooking. In 2007, he started writing down recipes in a blog he called Good Mood Food while touring with Streetwize, and soon realized a career in food had more staying power. Not long after Industry’s brief stint at the top of the charts in 2009, Skehan released his first cookbook, inspired by the blog. It marked the end of the band.

Related: 11 Cooking Shows on YouTube You Should Be Watching

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Beetroot hummus with homemade flatbread.

“It was so short-lived,” Skehan said. “We launched [Industry] in early February and by the end of October, it was all over. In true pop music fashion, we had this big thing and then it just landed flat.” But Skehan doesn’t lose much sleep over it. “It’s the first thing that comes up in interviews, but for me, that’s what I did when I was 21. In the years that have passed, the majority of that time was spent building a career in the food world.”

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Now 29, Skehan’s boy-bander past is a faint memory. In 2011, he began hosting the weekly food show Kitchen Hero on RTé One, Ireland’s most popular television channel, and has since appeared as a judge on the U.K. version of Junior MasterChef and starred in another series, Grandma’s Boy, which airs on FOX International. He also mans a popular YouTube cooking channel, which features new recipe videos every week.

On top of it all, Skehan meticulously maintains an eponymous recipe blog. As with his cookbooks, all the photography and recipe development is done by him. Recipes run the gamut from traditional Irish home cooking to Asian-inspired dinners, including dishes like pork bangers (that’s Irish for sausages), coconut milk-splashed Thai chicken curry, and sriracha baked chicken wings.

Related: How Kelis Went From ‘Milkshake’ Pop Star to Bona Fide Chef

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Vietnamese caramel salmon.

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Skehan attributes much of his success to his devoted social following, which includes nearly 50,000 followers on Twitter, 114,000 on Instagram, and 130,000 on Facebook. “The fan side of things is always a bit interesting,” Skehan said. “They love the pictures of the dog, of when I got married. The more personal it is, the more they seem to like it. We certainly don’t go out of way [to do that] — it’s just naturally how I’ve always been online.”

As for the future, Skehan hopes to break into the U.S. market, hence his appearances on American morning shows. He also wants to write more cookbooks, and fully immerse himself in the YouTube scene.

“It’s an exciting time,” Skehan said. And he’s soaking it all in. ”It’s at a point where we don’t know what [the next thing] is going to be. But I think it’s going to be great.”

Related: Think Irish Food Is Drab? This Chef Wants to Change That

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