Lauren Graham Makes These Easy Dinners on Repeat

Adriana ChavezSat, September 26, 2026 at 3:55 PM UTC

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Credit: Graham: Brianna Bryson/WireImage/Getty Images. EatingWell design.Key Points -

Lauren Graham go-to weeknight meals include rotisserie chicken tacos and vegetable stir-fries.

Graham loves making rice, especially in her clay donabe pot.

The actress shares that if she had to eat at one Gilmore Girls restaurant, it would be Luke’s.

Fall is here, which means it’s time to reimmerse ourselves in the fictitious world of Stars Hollow, full of crisp autumn weather, delicious food and charming, oddball neighbors.

Apropos of the season, Gilmore Girls star and bestselling author Lauren Graham is partnering with Bob’s Red Mill for the brand’s Moretogetherness campaign. The initiative invites people to connect with their neighbors through homemade food, timed with National Neighbor Day on September 28.

We recently spoke with Graham about the campaign and some of her favorite dishes. Read on to learn about the ingredient Lauren always keeps in stock for easy weeknight dinners, her love of Japanese food and why she would never want to eat at Emily Gilmore’s house.

Do you have any go-to weeknight meals?

I love Asian food and I love Mexican food, so those are my two cuisines. I usually have rotisserie chicken in the house. I make a bunch of different things with that—sometimes tacos, or I’ll just do like a stir-fry with vegetables and rice. I’m a big rice cooker person, but I also have something called a donabe, which is a Japanese clay pot that makes fantastic rice. I’m sort of a rice nerd.

You spent some of your early childhood in Japan, and your dad had previously lived in Vietnam. Is that behind the Asian influence in your cooking?

Well, I was in Japan because my grandparents were missionaries, so my mom went to an American high school there and spoke fluent Japanese. I think it was less about those first two years of my life, which I don’t really remember, and more about Japan as a country and as a place that my mom loved and would talk about. And it was just sort of a cool, strange truth about our family that they had spent so much time there. So that definitely influenced me.

How do you make your rotisserie chicken tacos?

I’m gluten-free, so I’m on a search for the best corn tortilla—because I’d really rather be eating a flour tortilla. But just throw in whatever you have: tomatillo, garlic, lime, whatever pepper level you like—that’s about it. And sometimes I make salsa with tomatillos.

You’ve previously spoken about dieting for the majority of your life, but your character on Gilmore Girls was pretty much the opposite of that—a very indulgent eater. Was that difficult to navigate?

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At times. I mean, it’s hard to do anything on a set 10, 12 times, eating repeatedly on camera. And I wondered at times, like, this is not how I actually eat. But the show is sort of about comfort and about indulgence and about enjoying moments, and I definitely have that as well related to food, just not as frequently as that character.

What’s your current approach to health?

I guess it’s less of a daily thought. I just kind of have my things that I eat. I have a pretty good balance. I think it’s harder when you’re working at those jobs that are 12 to 14 hours. It’s not easy to keep up a healthy habit all day. The other aspect of those jobs is that you’re breaking for food at different times, so you can’t get used to anything. Like, sometimes lunch is at 11 a.m and sometimes it’s at 6 p.m. But I haven’t had a job like that in a long time. So I’m in an okay balance now.

Would you rather eat at Luke’s Diner, The Dragonfly Inn or Emily and Richard’s?

Emily and Richard are always serving squab or something—it’s just too fancy, and it comes with too much harassment from my mother. Dragonfly is for special occasions, and Luke’s is for every day. If I could skip Emily and Richard’s, I would have, but I couldn’t because they were paying for everything. I also think of what the prop food was, and the Emily and Richard prop food was always tough to live with for hours and hours.

Why did you decide to partner with Bob’s Red Mill?

Well, it’s a brand I already use. It’s such a fun thing to be able to speak about something that you already know and love, and the message of Moretogetherness is really beautiful. It’s just all the things I believe in of being a good neighbor. And I love to cook and bake for people, so it just kind of was a good fit.

This campaign is all about connecting with neighbors, which can be difficult here in New York, but also just in the culture we have generally. What would your advice be to people who are nervous about making that connection?

I know. I mean, I think it’s why I thought the campaign was really valuable. The message is sort of—try. Just try a little gesture. I mean, walking through New York, it’s so different than when I first moved here. I’ve walked by somebody on the street wearing a Gilmore Girls t-shirt, and in a different time of our world, perhaps we would have met. But now people are just walking, looking down [at their phones]. So it’s little things.

Obviously, it’s a big conversation in the culture of how tough it is to monitor your own phone and social media use. But I think it’s just about reaching out in a small way. And that’s what Good Neighbor Day is about. I feel like Good Neighbor Day should be every day, but at least we’ll start with one.

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