Celebrity Chefs Tell Tasting Table Their Must-Know Holiday Cooking Tips - Exclusive

Everyone has a vision of a perfectly-roasted whole turkey coming out of the oven for their holiday dinners. However, a whole turkey has a big problem: It's two totally different types of meat that cook at different rates. As Emeril Lagasse tells Tasting Table, "Everybody complains that the turkey's always dry, right? Because they're trying to cook the legs at the same time as they're doing the breast and the breast dries out but the legs, are they really cooked?"

His solution to the problem is to cook the breast and the legs separately, using two completely different methods. He makes a boneless turkey roulade with the breast meat to carve at the table. To do this, he pounds the turkey breast thin, rolls it up with homemade stuffing inside, and then roasts it in the oven. Don't worry, dark meat lovers: He doesn't waste the legs. "I take the legs off and you can either simmer them and then you have turkey stock for your gravy," he says. "Then the legs are really nice and tender, or you can slow roast them in the oven."

The holidays are the perfect time for hot booze. While cold cocktails may be the default option, there's nothing quite as warm and comforting on a chilly day as some mulled wine or a nice hot toddy. With its long, icy, winters, Sweden is a place that knows how to do cold-weather comfort. Chef Marcus Samuelsson, who grew up in Gothenburg, likes to make glögg (Swedish mulled wine) for his holiday dinners. "We always serve Swedish glögg, this warm red wine," he tells Tasting Table. "The whole room smells like cloves, cinnamon, and allspice, which is great. You get this warm cup in front of you."

If you'd like to recreate that experience at home, Marcus Samuelsson's glögg recipe is almost like a hybrid between mulled wine, sangria, and hot buttered rum. It starts out by infusing wine with spices and spiking it with extra alcohol, and then each mug is mixed with fruit, nuts, and a little melted butter. Glögg is a winter cocktail and a snack rolled into one.

Fruitcake is perhaps one of Christmas's least-loved traditions. While there are still plenty of fruitcake fans out there, not everyone is crazy about the classic dense, dark loaf packed to the gills with multicolored mystery fruit. Prue Leith of "Great British Baking Show" fame is not a fruitcake hater, however. "I like all kinds of fruitcake," she admits to Tasting Table. "I like the really solid kind, which would probably be the stodgiest." She's also a big fan of an Italian confection called panforte, which is sort of like fruitcake without the cake.

Although she loves the traditional Christmas cake that so many people detest, she also makes a lightened-up version that she's hopeful might convert some fruitcake skeptics. According to Leith, "It's an ordinary cake recipe with lots of fruit in it, dried fruit, but I make it with all white or light dried fruits — sultanas rather than raisins, and pineapple, and apricot." She says that "The light-colored fruit tends to be a bit more acidic and less sweet, and that makes it delicious for fruitcake haters." However, this recipe can't accomplish miracles — if you're baking for people who just don't like dried fruit, no fruitcake will make them see the light.

Just like Emeril Lagasse, Jet Tila thinks turkey comes out better if you don't simply roast it whole. If you're feeling ambitious, you can try his idea for a Turkey Ballotine, which is a whole, deboned turkey rolled up with stuffing and roasted. If, however, your butchery skills aren't up to that task, he offers Tasting Table a great tip for turkey novices too: "I believe that your first few turkeys should be spatchcock turkeys. [You] should be cutting the backbone out and flattening them."

Spatchcocking improves the turkey-cooking experience in several ways. For one, it evens out the cooking times between the breast and the legs. "When you spatchcock a turkey, as it sits flat in the roasting pan, the thighs are on the outside and the breast is in the middle," he says. "You're also kind of guaranteeing you're going to have a moist thigh and a moist breast."

In addition to ensuring nicely-cooked white and dark meat, spatchcocking will also save you time in the kitchen. According to Tila, you won't have to wake up at the crack of dawn to get the turkey ready for your holiday dinner. "Spatchcocking a turkey makes a 12- to 20-pound turkey cook in three to four hours."

Chocolate bark is a fun thing to make for holiday gatherings because guests break off as much or as little as they want. Among the chocolate tips and tricks Jacques Torres discloses to Tasting Table is his recommendation for serving the holiday treat. "I love the fact that we break it because it's a little bit like sharing bread ... Spanish family, Italian family, French. We love to share bread."

In addition to the joy of sharing chocolate bark with loved ones, it is also a great platform for experimentation. The classic topping is nuts, which is a crowd-pleaser. Torres says "I like the one with the nuts. I like classic flavors." But he also makes one with mint and pretzels and endorses putting dried fruit of all kinds into chocolate bark. "If you use raisins — if you use dry apricots, dry mango, dry peaches — that brings some sweetness to it, but also extra flavor, which is always good." Just remember to be mindful of how sweet and/or sour the fruit is and to cut it into small pieces if it's something large like an apricot.

"Top Chef" judge Gail Simmons really enjoys the flavors of fall and winter. "I love things like ginger and cardamom, and smoky flavors that really mean fall to me, like smoked paprika or a smokey urfa pepper, like a smoky chili," she tells Tasting Table. "I love fall squash and winter squashes. I love things like honey nut or butternut squash." And though she's an incredibly accomplished chef, she likes to share cooking duties during the holidays. "I love a potluck because it relieves a lot of stress, and I like the idea of everyone contributing and that means that there's a diversity of food."

If you're really into cooking, there can be a temptation to be a control freak around the holidays and put pressure on yourself to cook everything. Ultimately, though, the holidays are about spending quality time with your loved ones, which is hard to do if you're cloistered in the kitchen. As Simmons says, "The key is the gathering and the enjoyment of being able to be together again more so than anything else. It's whatever makes your life easiest in the kitchen."

Celebrity baker extraordinaire and Milk Bar founder Christina Tosi is, unsurprisingly, full of good ideas for the holidays. She has a couple of dishes to can toss together last minute with minimal effort if you need something quick to bring to a party. While Tosi is known for her mouth-watering desserts, one of the dishes is a savory side she calls "cornbake." This Tosi family recipe is "somewhere between a cornbread and a corn pudding." According to the chef, "If you're assigned to bring something to a potluck or otherwise, it always slays."

On the sweeter side of things, Tosi recommends milk flake crisp, which is a sweet-salty mishmash of Ritz crackers held together with marshmallows and butter and flavored with milk powder plus whatever mix-ins you want. Per Tosi, "You could use any cracker, you could use any sort of seed or seasoning."

Author, historian, James Beard Award-winner, and food scholar Michael W. Twitty is one of America's preeminent experts on the cuisine of the African diaspora. He's also a convert to Judaism, and his unique Hanukkah spread draws on the knowledge he's gained in his years of research.

Hanukkah is, in part, a celebration of oil, so fried foods are a big part of the holiday. Twitty makes a special Hanukkah fried chicken breaded in matzo meal. This year, he's also trying a new twist on latkes. He starts with grated potatoes, then adds in some Louisiana flavors. "For Louisiana latkes, I throw in a little chopped celery, a little bit of grated yellow onion, chopped scallions, and red pepper," he tells Tasting Table. "So, I put the trinity in it, a little creole spice, a Cajun spice in it." He'll use these latkes as the "buns" of a collard green sandwich inspired by a traditional dish from the Lumbee, who live in Robeson County, North Carolina.

Twitty also makes a brisket for Hanukkah, and he puts a West African twist on the American-Jewish classic. "One secret ingredient that I tend to use in my West African brisket that is not in the recipes is country onion," he says. "Country onion is really not onion. It's a byproduct of a tree from West Africa that has more of an onion taste than an onion."