Emeril Lagasse's Best Cooking Tips For Home Chefs

Chef Emeril Lagasse is one of the more recognized chefs in America. He grew up in Fall River, Massachusetts, and earned his degree from Johnson and Wales. Later, he traveled to learn French cuisine and opened his first restaurant in 1990 in New Orleans. Now, he has restaurants across the country and even sails the high seas on cruise ships.

Over the years, his accolades have mounted to be quite substantial. The James Beard Foundation has called him the Humanitarian of the Year because he has such a steadfast focus on promoting the culinary arts. Through his Food Network and Bravo shows, Americans have come to know Emeril and his flare for flavorful cooking.

While Lagasse has a great deal of history in the culinary industry and is well respected for his skill and humanitarian efforts, home cooks also appreciate and admire his work to teach budding chefs how to up their cooking game. Taking a page from Emeril's book gives you the tools to become a more confident, eclectic, and flavorful cook in your own kitchen.

Lagasse's famous catchphrase, "BAM," is meant to express great flavor. While many ingredients would elicit such a response, Lagasse's favorite seasoning is none other than Creole seasoning. He explains that this is the seasoning that would inspire a response worthy of "BAM."

If you'd like to add such flavor to your food like Emeril, be aware that Creole seasoning and Cajun seasonings are related but quite different from one another in a significant way. Creole seasoning utilizes the flavors of herbs to bring its taste alive, but Cajun seasoning is free of herbs. Creole seasoning is a mixture of many different herbs you love, including thyme, oregano, basil, rosemary, and bay leaf. It also includes powders like garlic and onion powder, alongside such seasonings as paprika and cayenne pepper, to give it an extra zip. On the other hand, Cajun seasoning is a combination of peppers and powders like white, cayenne, and black pepper, as well as onion and garlic powder, with plenty of paprika. Of course, both would taste fabulous on seafood and meat, but Lagasse frequently reaches for the herb-heavy Creole option.

Though turkey can often be the point of confusion or frustration, so can stuffing. So many questions abound and you may wonder whether you should use the box stuff, cook it with your bird, or even opt to ignore it altogether. After all, it often ends up rather bland. Thankfully, Lagasse has a recommendation for you here, too: Add chorizo to your stuffing to give it an incredible flavor.

This simple change will add a whole lot of spice and intrigue to this basic, and perhaps boring side dish. Plus if you choose to add chorizo to the stuffing used for your turkey roulade, it will only enhance those flavors and create a cohesive meal.

So, what kind of stuffing do you start with? We recommend using a fairly simple recipe like the boxed options from Stove Top's line of stuffing. After all, the chorizo will add such a great flavor you don't want to overpower the dish with other competing tastes.

Home cooks tend to cook what they are comfortable with repeatedly, and while many enjoy seafood from a restaurant, it can be a little finicky to cook at home. But while grilling seafood may seem intimidating, Lagasse's simple guidance on how to grill seafood should help squelch some of those concerns. Lagasse recommends choosing some large shrimp for a great fish to start with. Prepared simply with olive oil, salt, and lemon, shrimp is the perfect way to begin.

Before you set your seafood on the grill, allow it to come to room temperature and hang out there for 30 minutes or more. This will help ease that stickiness that often comes when you take seafood directly from the refrigerator and place it on the grill. Then, once it is on the grill, cook it slowly and let it do its thing.

Once you're ready to take that fish off the grill, don't ignore it. The final touch is one of the most critical parts, so be sure to dress it in some sea salt and lemon at the very least. If you're hoping for a finisher with a little more color and vibrant flavor, chimichurri would also work well and brighten that fish right up.

During the holidays, it's easy to fall into lockstep with what you've always done. Classic family dishes bring us comfort and are something we look forward to all year, but that doesn't mean you can't realize new traditions for your family. Lagasse, for example, has lots of fish during the holidays.

On Christmas Eve, the Lagasses enjoy The Feast of the Seven Fishes though they often enjoy far more than seven fishes. Since Lagasse's cooking style also has a heavy New Orleans influence, and there is a great deal of seafood in New Orleans, Lagasse also offers fish from this style of cuisine.

If you don't currently serve seafood, consider it. Adding seafood dishes would also be a nice break from the other meat-heavy dishes typical in the winter holidays. This adds a little balance to your offerings. Though Lagasse relies primarily on seafood flavors from his own upbringing, that doesn't mean they have just as much a place at your table as they do at Lagasse's.

When beginning to cook, we often learn a few small skills first. One of the simplest dishes you can make is scrambled eggs, and if done properly, this dish can be fluffy and a perfect conduit for other toppings like salsa, cheese, and sour cream.

On YouTube, Lagasse explains that there are three things you need to do to create the perfect scrambled eggs. First, he recommends adding a little cream and whisking it in with your eggs before cooking them. Add butter to a nonstick pan over medium-high heat. After the butter is melted, put in your eggs mixed with cream and let them cook until the edges are set. Use your rubber spatula to move the eggs around your pan until you are pleased with how they have cooked. For the final touch, serve these eggs on a warm plate with desired toppings and accompaniments to amp up your scrambled eggs.

For serving purposes, you can also enjoy your scrambled eggs on top of buttered toast, with avocado toast, or even as an egg sandwich between two pieces of bread. This way, your humble scrambled eggs become even more substantial and can serve as a satisfying, fairly quick, and simple lunch.

Pumpkins are a beautiful symbol of the fall season. We enjoy them as jack-o-lanterns and as the base for that most delicious seasonal pie: pumpkin pie. If you need help with roasting a pumpkin, Emeril recommends roasting it with olive oil, salt, and pepper and putting the flesh down to roast in a 350-degree Fahrenheit oven. However, there's more you can do with the insides of a pumpkin than roast it and prepare it for a pie. The seeds, when toasted well, are a most excellent snack.

On his YouTube channel, Lagasse shares his suggestions for cooking pumpkin seeds. Simply start by carving your pumpkin, removing the innards, and separating the seeds. Wash them very well to remove any gooey bits that may remain. Then, in a bowl, drizzle olive oil over the top with seasoning. Emeril uses his own unique blend, but many different seasonings would be delicious when used here. You could even go simple and add salt and pepper to the seeds. After all, sometimes, the most simple seasonings add the most flavor. Turn out these seeds on a baking sheet and cook at 300 degrees Fahrenheit until they are perfectly crispy.

This snack is delicious throughout the entire fall season, but be sure to keep them in an enclosed Tupperware container to ensure that they stay fresh between snacks.

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