Does Miley Cyrus (33) Know How to Cook?

She has reinvented herself more times than most artists have albums, conquered award ceremonies, sold out stadiums, and built a career that keeps surprising people.

The kitchen, however, has a different story to tell.

The One Time She Really Tried

The most famous chapter of Miley Cyrus’s cooking history happened during the holidays, when she decided she was going to make cauliflower mashed potatoes from scratch.

She came home with a brand new handheld mixer, put the cauliflower in a saucepan, switched it on, and somehow got her finger caught in the blades. The blood, according to her mother Tish, went absolutely everywhere. The family ended up spending the evening in the emergency room, where the doctor stitched her finger back on.

Tish shared the story in December 2025 on the family podcast Sorry We’re Cyrus, after a fan asked which family member should be banned from the kitchen. Her answer came without hesitation.

She Has Confirmed the Whole Thing

When her sister Brandi brought it up in a joint interview with The Cut, Miley did not try to spin it.

She confirmed: “True. That was forever ago. It was a handheld blender — I blended my hand.” She added that she cooks “every now and then,” but that her mother is not exactly thrilled when it happens. “It just makes a bigger mess than she would prefer,” she said. “But dinners aren’t really our thing.”

Fans who read about the incident were thoroughly unsurprised. The comment sections filled quickly with people saying they somehow already knew it was going to be Miley.

Dolly Parton Has Thoughts

Miley’s godmother Dolly Parton has been asked about her goddaughter’s cooking, and her answer was both loving and completely unsparing.

“I doubt I’d eat much of anything that Miley cooks ’cause it would have no taste,” Parton told Insider. “Even if she cooked me something, I’m sure I’d have to doctor it up a little for myself. I would have to have some bacon grease.”

To be fair to Miley, Parton was less critiquing her skills and more pointing to the obvious problem: they eat completely differently. Parton cooks fried chicken, dumplings, and meatloaf. Miley, for much of her adult life, has avoided meat, dairy, gluten, and most things that make Southern cooking taste the way it does.

Parton recalled the old days fondly when Miley would come to her house and they would eat mashed potatoes, coleslaw, and cornbread together. “But in the earlier days, or when her defenses are down, we still eat that good ol’ food like meatloaf,” she said. Those days, for now, appear to be behind them.

Her Complicated Relationship With Food Makes It Harder

Part of what makes cooking difficult for Miley is that her diet has been a moving target for years.

She was vegan from 2013 to 2019 — completely committed, tattooing “Be Kind” and the Vegan Society symbol on her wrists, convincing then-partner Liam Hemsworth to join her, and very publicly championing the lifestyle. Then, in a 2020 interview on the Joe Rogan Experience, she announced she had walked away from it. “My brain wasn’t functioning properly,” she said. “I was running on empty.”

She added fish and omega-rich foods back into her diet and said she felt sharper almost immediately. She also has a gluten intolerance and is lactose intolerant, which narrows the ingredient list further.

Dolly confirmed that Miley has “gone through a lot of phases of being vegetarian or vegan or whatever,” which means the recipes keep changing and the pantry never quite settles.

What She Actually Makes

When she does cook, Miley gravitates toward clean, plant-forward food she posts on Instagram: green smoothies, sautéed vegetable fry-ups, spinach salads with edible flowers, and vegetable lentil wraps.

She has described her lifestyle as “extremely clean”, which tracks with everything her family and godmother have said. The food she prepares at home is disciplined, health-focused, and built around the ingredients her body actually agrees with.

Whether it is delicious is a separate question. Whether it ends up requiring a hospital visit is another one entirely.

The honest summary, in her own words, is probably the right one. She cooks every now and then. The kitchen is not really her thing. And the cauliflower incident has become the kind of family story that gets told at every holiday, year after year, for the rest of time.