You might think you know renowned celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse—BAM—but what you might not know is that Lagasse is at home in the garden as much as he is in a kitchen.
Ten years ago, the chef best known for his big personality on television quietly initiated a project that had nothing to do with ratings. He began Emeril’s Culinary Garden & Teaching Kitchen in 2016, and it quickly became the signature program of his foundation. To date, The Emeril Lagasse Foundation has invested more than $22 million in youth programs, but building gardens and kitchens became a personal passion. Lagasse wants kids to experience the genesis of food and believes the school day is a great time to capture their palates.
“I used to visit schools. They had concrete yards, and I’d go in the cafeteria and kids had no clue where food came from,” he says. “It didn’t seem like an important part of life, and that didn’t seem right to me.”
The program plants gardens and builds teaching kitchens on school property, offering weekly curricula for kindergarten through eighth grade. The gardens are well-designed urban microfarms, and the kitchens are classrooms fully independent of cafeterias. This was not a “hang a sign and hope for the best” initiative. Full-time staff was hired. Lesson plans were written by culinary faculty and educators. Schools were vetted for buy-in, dedicated teachers, and financial par- ticipation. The goal was fully integrative learning—in short order seven schools in six states went live, an impact felt today by 10,000 students annually.
I spent a day at one campus, the Dr. John Ochsner Discovery Health Sciences Academy. It’s a charter school in a New Orleans suburb and it was easy to recognize Lagasse’s ethos all over it. The garden was thoughtfully planned and aesthetically pleasing; the kitchen was sparkling clean and stocked to build a quality meal. The message was clear: Everything really does start from the ground up.
Each program operates by the same rules Lagasse enforces in his kitchens. Rule number one: Source great ingre- dients. Lagasse remembers making vegetable soup with his mom as a child, and every ingredient came from their backyard garden. His uncle raised animals on a small farm nearby, and Lagasse would help, especially during the summer. “What we ate and where it came from was always around me,” he says. “I forgot that for a while. It wasn’t until I was at Commander’s Palace that it dawned on me again.”
He began buying produce direct from Louisiana farmers and contracted others to raise rabbits and quail and then hogs to serve on his menu. “The soil sort of followed me,” says Lagasse. “I just want the kids to know what can come from dirt.”
Rule number two: Make it second nature. One tenet of the program is hands-on learning, and Lagasse believes that food and the food system are, by nature, educational. “One teacher uses gumbo to teach her students about French, African, and Spanish cultures, but another uses dry ingredients as fractions to teach measurements,” he says. “It’s a powerful tool, but it’s also not hard.”
In the garden, there are lessons about irrigation and compost and pollinators. Administrators say the garden and kitchen classes rank as consistent favorites among students.
Rule number three: Take it with you. Lagasse and his team didn’t foresee the rush of interest from parents and grand- parents, who began asking about the garden and reporting that their kids were cooking for them, showing off newfound acumen. “We decided to open our gardens on Saturdays. Our families can come and pick anything to take home,” he says. “When you grow it, you know where the ingredients came from. Once you have that knowledge, it’s yours forever.”
Rule number four: Try harder. With 10 more projects in five new states on the horizon, the program has lofty goals. There’s also a satellite initiative that will effectively triple the program’s reach. Lagasse says he’d like to be in 25 states by 2030 and impact 50,000 kids annually. He thinks the plan is aggressive but attainable.
“Personally, I think everyone should get up and try a little bit harder than they did the day before,” he says. “What we’re doing, it could change a kid’s life. If you have a better idea of food and where it comes from, you can influence the family table and that can go a long way.”
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Recipes
Emeril Lagasse’s Boudin
In a large saucepan, combine pork butt and liver, 2 quarts water, onions, garlic, bell pepper, celery, 1 teaspoon salt, ¼ teaspoon cayenne, and ¼ teaspoon black pepper. Bring liquid to a boil then reduce to a simmer. Simmer […]
In the Field
In the Kitchen with Chef EJ Lagasse of Emeril’s | Listen
TLP sat down with EJ Lagasse, Emeril’s son, to discuss his own journey to culinary stardom in his home of New Orleans.
