Doobie Doo
Veteran
Nikka you been free like 5 years, why you wanna reflect on that shyt like it's cool.
4 of the Best Recipes From Prodigy's New Prison Cookbook, “Commissary Kitchen"
From prison surprise to sweet potato pie, Chef Boyar-P puts his own spin on classic jail dishes.
Jackson Connor Oct 11, 2016
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Photo: Teddy Wolff - photographer; Caitlin Levin - food stylist; Tischen Franklin - creative director
There’s any number of reasons why a man might learn how to cook in prison. On the inside, the food served during chow is notoriously low-quality, hopelessly bland, and served in meager, rationed portions. Cooking with commissary items like ramen noodles, canned tuna, and butter packets—as unappetizing as that may sound to some—allows inmates a small glimpse of the food they enjoyed on the outside, a hint of the flavor and seasoning their families enjoyed around the dinner table back home. The physical act of cooking—dicing, chopping, and baking ingredients in a toaster oven or microwave—also rings of the everyday normalcy lost on the outside, focusing the mind.
As true as all of that might be, for Albert “Prodigy” Johnson—one half of the legendary Queensbridge hip-hop duo, Mobb Deep—cooking in prison was not a luxury, or a form of escapism, but an act of survival.
Having suffered from sickle cell anemia since he was a child, Prodigy’s mind was immediately fixated on food after he was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison on gun charges in 2007. During his first day on Rikers Island, the rapper was sent to the infirmary with food poisoning, and it became clear that keeping a close eye on what went in his body would be a matter of life and death.
Now, some six years after his release from jail, Prodigy has released Commissary Kitchen: My Infamous Prison Cookbook, detailing exactly how he managed to eat healthy in a system designed to wear men and women down from the inside out.
“This book won’t make you a better cook, but it might make you a better person,” Prodigy writes in the introduction. “Because in a world where prisoners are treated like animals, we made our experiences there feel more human by how we prepared our food.
From ingenious recipes for how to make dumplings out of gooey elbow macaroni, to ketchup-soaked sangria, here are four of our favorite recipes from Prodigy’s Commissary Kitchen.
- P's Clean Hands Sweet Potato Pie
Photo: Teddy Wolff - photographer; Caitlin Levin - food stylist; Tischen Franklin - creative director
Ingredients:
- Graham crackers
- Canned yams
- Sugar
- Honey
- Butter (five or six individual packets)
Prodigy's tip: “Eyeball it to see if you need more time.”
- P's Prison Potstickers
Photo: Teddy Wolff - photographer; Caitlin Levin - food stylist; Tischen Franklin - creative director
Ingredients:
- Elbow macaroni
- Can of mixed vegetables
- Butter
- Hot sauce
- Salt
Prodigy's tip: “Some inmates liked to make the dumpling batter with wet bread, but that looked gross to me. You could also add some canned chicken to the mix, but it takes twice as long to cook. These are fast.”
- P's Prison Sangria
Photo: Teddy Wolff - photographer; Caitlin Levin - food stylist; Tischen Franklin - creative director
Ingredients:
- Apples
- Oranges
- Mixed fruit cups
- Bread
- Ketchup
- Sugar
Prodigy’s tip: “After a few days, the bag should start blowing up, which means gas in there and it’s becoming liquor. Open the bag a little and add some ketchup and a ton of sugar.”
- P's Don't Try This At Home Prison Surprise
Photo: Teddy Wolff - photographer; Caitlin Levin - food stylist; Tischen Franklin - creative director
Ingredients:
- Ramen noodles
- Doritos (you could also substitute with Cheez-Its or sliced cheese)
- Jack Mack (tuna works fine too)
- Hot sauce
Prodigy’s tip: “Good luck, yo.”
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