The mom of three, who partnered with Honey Baked Ham, tells PEOPLE all about creating the perfect holiday feast for her family with Jason Kelce
Kylie Kelce was destined to cook for a football player’s appetite.
“I was raised in a family where you make a meal like you’re cooking for a hundred, and I truly believe that leftovers are part of the holidays,” says Kelce, who teamed up with HoneyBaked on a new partnership.
The wife of Philadelphia Eagles center Jason Kelce chatted with PEOPLE about what the festive season looks like at her house. She says no “Kelce holiday is complete” without the brand’s ham, making the partnership a natural fit.
“That goes across the board from my family, the McDevitt side of the family, to the Kelce side of the family,” the mom of three tells PEOPLE. “Through and through we’ve been fans for a very long time.”
Because they “often don’t end up having the luck of getting everyone together” during the year, the holidays are extra special. So Kylie likes to plan an extensive menu for the occasion.
“Our holiday meal usually starts off — I’m not a planner, but I will always plan for my HoneyBaked ham. So I will always schedule to make sure that I have one reserved. I will talk to my parents to see who will pick it up, but when we pick it up, we get our other table staples there as well,” she says.
Rolls are important to the Kelce menu, too, so Kylie makes sure there’s plenty.
“Even though my mother-in-law [Donna Kelce] is the queen of the holiday roll, we’ll get some other rolls for leftovers. That’s the key. We’ll also pick up some baked cinnamon apples in their frozen section because that was my grandmother’s favorite, so we have to have that,” she says.
Kylie also incorporates mac and cheese, and a turkey breast to complete the meal.
“So we have our ham as our centerpiece and then pretty much all the fixings,” she says.
Tripp McLaughlin, CMO of The Honey Baked Ham Company, tells PEOPLE that Kylie’s “passion for creating family moments and making every holiday meal special resonates with our values.”
Kylie has learned a few tricks over the years. She says it’s important to “get a big enough ham that you have leftovers” to make her “secret” dish to enjoy in the days after. “You get them ham, and then you get one of the soup mixes … we like the bean soup mix,” she says. “And you can cook down your leftover ham with the bone in and it makes the most outstanding soup.”
The Kelce holiday gathering is truly a family affair with the oldest of the couple’s three daughters, Wyatt, 4, starting to help out in the kitchen.
“My oldest just got to do the Mama Kelce dinner rolls at Thanksgiving. So now, she thinks that she is the queen of the rolls,” Kylie laughs. “So, I think for our Christmas meal, she will end up helping my mother-in-law again because they absolutely nailed it. They were outstanding, as usual.”