Lance Bass knows there’s nothing like southern comfort.
That’s why the former *NSYNC singer is partnering with online meal kit service Chef’d to bring a taste of his Mississippi roots to your home.
“I think there’s a big void in southern food right now — especially with a lot of these meal kits,” Bass, 38, tells PEOPLE. “Since that is my specialty, I thought it’d be great to bring out some of my favorite meals that I learned from my grandmother and my mom and change the recipes slightly to be healthier.”
He adds: “People are going to find out for the first time that I like cooking and that I can come up with recipes.”
The service delivers ready-to-cook ingredients in packages ranging from $9 to $79, and Bass’ five recipes, along with a cook-off video with the company’s CEO Kyle Ransford, will be unveiled on May 25. Customers have an option to choose between subscription services or order the kits a la carte.
“I love that you can really choose the things that you want to cook instead of being told what to cook,” Bass says, adding that beginners “could easily” make his recipes. “I’m not trying to teach you how to be a chef because a chef I am not. But I wanted something a little tricky for people to learn something.”
While growing up in Mississippi, Bass says that his family “was always in the kitchen.”
“My grandmother is just one of the best cooks ever,” Bass continues. “I didn’t realize how special I had it until I moved away and started tasting everyone else’s Southern cooking and it just did not taste as good as my family’s.”
At first, Bass was hesitant to try his hand behind the stove due to gender norms. “I was so scared to get involved because as a boy I didn’t think that was okay for me to be in the kitchen — that was a ‘girl thing,’” he says. “But the older I got, the more my family realized that I wanted to help out.”
Now, he’s isn’t afraid to say that he’s “definitely the cook in the relationship” with his husband of two years, Michael Turchin — and the two have been doing a lot of wok cooking lately “to be healthy for the summer.”
“I love cooking with Michael because he’s my sous chef,” he says. “He doesn’t know how to cook that much but it’s fun to do it together because it’s an experience. It’s the best date night because of the conversations you have and you actually get to yell at [your significant other] — which is really fun.”
Bass’ would ultimately love to transfer his skills to television one day. “My dream is to have my own cooking show. I would love to get to invite you into my kitchen and show you fun things that I love from the South,” he says. “I also want to learn how to cook different types of food so having people learn with me would be a lot of fun.”
When asked what the show would be called, he laughs: “I think Cooking with Lance is a little boring, right? We’ll have to think of something really good.”
And Bass certainly has the background to weigh in on delectable dishes. He appeared on Fox’s culinary cooking show My Kitchen Rules with his mom Diane earlier this year, and even showed off his adventurous palate on Bravo’s web series Going Off the Menu when he bravely tried grasshoppers.
“I have not been an adventurous eater my whole life,” Bass says. “I was that picky kid growing up. The older I got, the more I started branching out with my taste buds. Now, I really will try anything.”
He continues: “I thank my husband for that because when I met him, I ate everything fried because I didn’t care about the health part of it. Thanks to him, I started really experimenting with a lot of vegetables.”
When he’s not in the kitchen trying out new recipes, Bass is keeping busy shooting his two VH1 shows premiering later this year — ’90s House and Finding Prince Charming.
Plus, he’s gearing up for a big *NSYNC reunion next year when the group gets their star on the walk of fame.
“We all talk pretty much daily but that’ll be the next time that we’re all together,” he says. “We’re going to have a full day of fun.”