Odell Beckham Jr. doesn’t like water. Nor does he like mushrooms, onions, carrots or tuna.
In fact, the Giants’ wide receiver, famed for his on- and off-the-field flamboyance, has a pretty particular palate.
Luckily, the self-proclaimed picky eater has help on his side: his at-home chef, Renee Blackman, who’s been stealthily introducing him to a more adventurous and healthy relationship with food in the three months since she started cooking in his Bergen County, NJ, kitchen. Blackman has so far swayed the $95-million man to eat less like a kid — even if part of her job is stocking two drawers in his kitchen with snacks and candy, including Snickers, Sour Patch Kids and Cheez-Its.
“She’s like a chameleon — she can adapt to what I like and what I don’t like,” Beckham tells The Post after devouring a creamy fettuccine Alfredo pasta dish topped with sausage, chicken, shrimp and lobster, plus a kale salad with salmon — something he’s come around to eating more of since Blackman started cooking it.
Whether it’s by cutting his vegetables really small or hiding them beneath his favorite hot sauce she whips up for him, Blackman has managed to see through her 26-year-old client’s mercurial reputation, making food that speaks to his soul.
“His personality supersedes him — everyone knows him as outspoken, cocky, maybe his lingo gets misconstrued,” says Blackman, 34. “But in the context of food, he’s in a more relaxed state of mind, it’s more simple. He just enjoys comfort.”
Blackman says she’ll never force Beckham to eat anything he thinks he hates. That said, she has a delicate way of suggesting foods the Louisiana native might not otherwise try.
“Can you eat the skin?” he asks, poking at the salmon on his salad as his 180-pound mastiff, Mowgli, checks out the new smells in the kitchen. Not only is the skin tasty, Blackman assures him, but it’s “actually pretty healthy for you.” Nevertheless, he looks skeptical. Still, Blackman says, it’s a step up. He’s even taken to calling her “chef.”
“Initially, when I came in, he said, ‘I don’t like salmon, I don’t like fish,’ ” she says. “Now, I have him eating salmon and swordfish.
“And one time I did make him tuna tartare to see if I could convince him to eat raw tuna. Needless to say, I did,” she says, adding that he finished about half of it. “That was an accomplishment.”
Blackman’s sisterly wisdom probably comes from her earliest days. A native of Barbados who grew up in Flatbush, Brooklyn, she cooked for herself and her younger brother while her single mom worked two jobs. Blackman never went to culinary school, beyond a program she took in high school. Much of her education came from her days at home taking care of her family and tuning into the Food Network.
Straight after high school, she took a 9-to-5 administrative job at a hospital, but didn’t last long before she quit to pursue cooking. She quickly rose through the ranks as a line chef at Midtown’s Tommy Bahama, a sous chef at JFK’s Delta Sky Club, then culinary supervisor at Danny Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group. In 2016, she competed on Food Network’s “Chopped,” replicating what she had learned from watching celeb chefs such as Emeril Lagasse, her favorite talent on the network.
“I learned to show your personality through your food,” Blackman says while whipping up a roux, thick as mashed potatoes, for Beckham’s pasta dish.
She started cooking for Beckham just after Labor Day, after a long stint on what she calls the “Hamptons private-chef circuit,” bouncing from mansion to mansion, cooking for celebrities and the well-heeled. Blackman must have cooked the right meal for the right person: A woman named Heather called her one day and said her son played football and needed a full-time chef. She didn’t know it was the mother of the NFL’s highest-paid wide receiver.
“I talked to her for an hour but I didn’t know who it was I’d be cooking for,” Blackman says, noting that Heather was concerned about her son having balanced meals that were also flavorful, so that he’d actually eat and enjoy his food. “All she said was that he got hurt last year and was recovering. I was like, ‘I get it, protect him.’ I don’t watch football though, so I had no idea who it could be.”
When Blackman showed up for work and learned she’d be cooking for Beckham, she had a hard time hiding her disbelief.
“I was like, ‘You?!’ ” she remembers thinking. “You’d think someone like him already has a chef locked in, like they would with a doctor or something.”
In their early days together, Blackman had to figure out what foods Beckham would and wouldn’t eat. There were a few non-negotiables: “When we met, he said, ‘Don’t put mushrooms or onions on my plate. Or carrots,’ ” she recalls.
But, subtly and carefully, she’s managed to expand his tastes. When she makes a Bolognese sauce, for example, she’ll “sneak in the carrot” by cutting it small and cooking it till soft.
Blackman’s also come up with some crafty workarounds for the football star’s pet peeves. She’s found that in some dishes that absolutely need onions, such as her crabcakes, freezing the cakes before reheating them makes the onions softer and less detectable.
She’s even found a way around what could be Beckham’s most famous particularity — his aversion to water. In October, Beckham told reporters he doesn’t like the stuff and often has to get his liquids intravenously.
“I heard about that on Instagram,” Blackman says, diplomatically. Although the football star’s fridge is stocked with small bottles of water for his guests, he himself drinks coconut water — his chef’s answer to his need to hydrate at home.
“I buy it by the caseload,” Blackman says. It’s also a key ingredient in Beckham’s daily smoothies, which she prepares for him the night before, with frozen fruit and protein powder.
Most of the time, she says, catering to her client is pretty easy. She uses simple spices, such as powdered garlic and paprika, to enliven store-bought salad dressing and marinates chicken in olive oil, salt and her own special hot sauce.
“I do go the extra mile,” she says, pointing to the fresh lobster in the pasta. “But it’s the simple things that really make people happy.”
Blend it like Beckham
The secret to getting Odell Beckham to eat anything? Douse it with chef Renee Blackman’s homemade hot sauce, which incorporates three kinds of peppers and all the fiery seeds.
“He loves the spicy and acidic,” Blackman says. “That’s the best way to get him to eat almost anything.”
Combine 1 diced yellow onion, 5 garlic cloves, 2 Fresno peppers, 1/2 cup chopped habanero peppers, 1 cup chopped scotch bonnet peppers, 1 tablespoon of kosher salt, 1/4 cup vinegar, 2 1/2 ounces of olive oil and 1/2 cup of water in a blender or food processor. Whir until the mix is fully pulverized. Pour into a pot and cook for 20 minutes on low heat. Let cool and serve.