Padma Lakshmi has come a long way since her early days hosting "Top Chef," a venture ultimately lasting 17 years. The world now celebrates her cooking principles as well as her role as a longtime food influencer. By any definition of the term, her word carries weight, which she uses on many levels -- including participation in an "Ask me Anything" (AMA) session on her official Reddit account in August 2013. That's where the acclaimed food personality directly supported meal times inside the home rather than in restaurants.
It's really no surprise to find Lakshmi prioritizing eating at home, given her prominent role as a cookbook author and writer. In fact, she stated quite clearly to Food & Wine in 2023 that she's "strictly a home cook." Granted, she's a very public one, explaining herself as someone with a knack for deciphering the taste of things. That's consistent with the AMA session 10 years earlier, when asked what advice she'd give to Redditor participants. Rather than discuss detailed dishes, ingredients, or complex cooking methods, Lakshmi directly swung the pendulum toward the family kitchen and table.
"The best cooking advice I can give is to start simple and then build on your success from there," said Lakshmi. "The family that cooks together eats better, is healthier, and is closer emotionally to each other." But that doesn't necessarily mean devoting huge amounts of time to developing intricate, pro-level meals.
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Obviously, a chef with the stature of Padma Lakshmi could strut her stuff, advocating homemade-meal concepts that intimidate to the average home chef. Instead, when faced with the "Ask Me Anything" online audience, she brought things back to basics. Building on her advice to keep things real, she explains that "cooking with your family can be something as simple as making scrambled eggs, steaming some rice, and sautéing some green beans in butter and garlic."
She notes how that's fresh, easy, and enjoyed by everyone, but also high on the nutrition scale: "The healthiest thing you can do for everyone's diet is to eat at home." And then there's the intimacy of it all, an extended familiarity that creates lasting bonds. "And just the act of breaking the ends off of green beans with your four year old, or watching your husband's biceps as he scrambles the eggs, or being patient enough to watch the rice steam for twenty-four and one-half minutes is really important to experience," she wrote to her audience.
This mindset is a permanent part of Lakshmi's food and cooking mentality, confirming these principles in a 2016 "TIME" essay titled, "We've Forgotten the Beauty of a Home‑Cooked Meal." Rather than Instagramming a trendy restaurant dish, she emphasizes the actual act of cooking -- a way of passing down values, stories, and recipes. Padma Lakshmi later earned a spot on TIME's 100's 2023 Titans list. For more insight from Lakshmi, be sure to check out our exclusive interview with the multi-faceted food expert, author, and model.