Emeril Lagasse Once Cooked For Aretha Franklin On-Air, And Her Reaction Says It All

Emeril Lagasse has had an illustrious career. Among the many notable individuals for whom he's cooked, one episode of his show, "Emeril Live," via YouTube, featured Lagasse preparing a meal for the Queen of Soul herself, Aretha Franklin. Referring to Franklin as "music royalty," Lagasse welcomed the singer to his show for a birthday dinner of fried oysters with horseradish cream, tomato and sweet corn relish, grilled veal chops with herbed cheese, wild mushrooms in Bordelaise ​​sauce, and prosciutto-wrapped asparagus. Needless to say, Franklin was quite impressed with the beautiful meal, even asking Lagasse between bites, "Did I hear you were single?"

While veal chops are an ideal cut for beginners, this meal was expertly crafted with Lagasse's signature flair. He cooked the veal chops to a perfect medium rare doneness, spread a portion of herbed cheese on each, and then popped the chops in the oven, in his words, "just to get the cheese on the same page as the veal chops." Surrounding the chop with three bundles of prosciutto-wrapped asparagus, Lagasse was about to spoon the Bordelaise sauce over everything when Franklin stopped him.

The chef remarked, "You like it straight up," as he brought her dish over. Her love of the dish was palpable as Lagasse approached her to request help with dessert. Taking another quick bite before getting up from her table, it's obvious that Franklin was just as happy to cook with Lagasse as she was to enjoy his cooking.

While chitlins were Aretha Franklin's favorite classic soul food, one of her most well-known recipes was for peach cobbler. Lagasse remarked, "Now I am absolutely your sous-chef so you just tell me what you want to do." She instructed Lagasse to add canned peaches and a stick of butter to a pan over medium-high heat. In one unscripted moment, Franklin asked for more peaches, and Lagasse found himself scrambling to find another can.

Franklin also pointed out, "We drain the juice off of the peaches because we don't want it to be too juicy," but to "leave a little juice so it's not too dry," to which Lagasse agreed. She noted that the addition of breadcrumbs was used as a binder, just enough to "hold it together" to achieve the right consistency for a cobbler.

Lagasse added more peaches and tinkered with the mixture at Franklin's instruction, adding warming cinnamon and nutmeg into the fruit filling. Franklin stepped in to sprinkle some sugar over the crust, exclaiming, "Well, I'm getting ready to get down!" Referencing both Betty Crocker and Julia Child, Franklin and Lagasse finished the cobbler with a lattice of dough strips. Though Franklin's appearance on the live cooking show was for a birthday indulgence, it seems she had even more fun getting into the kitchen to prepare a classic peach cobbler recipe alongside the celebrity chef.