This is Exactly What Padma Lakshmi Eats for Breakfast
On any given day, Top Chef host Padma Lakshmi tastes a wide selection of cuisine from contestants on the Bravo reality show. Those days, she avoids eating too much because, as the former model told Harper’s Bazaar, “I want to give the contestants the full audience of my appetite.”
On her off days from the show, a good breakfast is in order, and she doesn’t mess around.
Padma Lakshmi’s new Hulu show, ‘Taste the Nation’
As if getting to taste amazing dishes from aspiring culinary professionals on Top Chef weren’t enough, the mother of one also hosts Taste the Nation, the new Hulu program focused on food, but also on so much more. Lakshmi journeys through the United States to arrive at an understanding of how food shapes individuals and their communities and how they help to create the ongoing fabric that defines “American.”
“[Taste the Nation] is my rebuttal to the fear-mongering from Washington,” Ms. Lakshmi said in a June 2020 phone interview with The New York Times. “The whole point was to give the microphone to the people responsible for the most exciting food in the country.”
Filmed in the summer and fall of 2019, Lakshmi enthused in an Instagram post announcing the series, “It’s a project I’ve spent years developing. We traveled across the country visiting indigenous and immigrant communities to find out what American food is today. The process was incredibly emotional and rewarding, a journey I will never forget.”
This is what Padma Lakshmi calls breakfast
The television host sat down for Harper’s Bazaar and explained breakfast as she eats it.
“So somewhere around 6:00 or 6:30, I usually have my first cup of tea,” she said.” It’s a Masala Chai called Bakri tea. And then I have that with whole milk and honey. Ten to fifteen minutes later, I will have my second cup of tea, same tea.”
She has her second cup of tea with her breakfast which can be a variety of options.
“Usually with a big bowl of vanilla yogurt with cinnamon and sliced banana,” Lakshmi explained. “Or a big bowl of blackberries and cottage cheese. Or toast with avocado with slices of cheese.”
Lakshmi’s breakfast part 2
The former model went on to explain that she sometimes has a second part to her breakfast, which is savory and reminiscent of the breakfast Rose Castorini made her daughter, Loretta, in the film, Moonstruck.
“Sometimes I will start out with fruit and cottage cheese or yogurt and fruit combo and then an hour later,” she said, “I will have something that’s savory, like an egg in a hole, which is basically a big slice of sourdough bread, fried in a pan, with a circle cut out of it, and then an egg cracked into it.”
“You have to shake the pan so all the bread gets covered with the white. And, you have to gently take the spatula and flip it so you don’t break the yolk. I like for the egg white to get really lacy and crispy,” Lakshmi said, “so all the white has to be cooked. The yolk has to be at least jammy or runny and jammy in the center.”
The test for whether or not her egg in a hold came out perfectly is how it sounds as she cuts into it.
“If it doesn’t make a lot of noise when I try to make that first cut with the knife,” Lakshmi says, “I didn’t do it right. And that’s like my part two of my breakfast, with a third cup of tea.”
