Why You Should Keep MSG in Your Pantry, According to Chef Frankie Celenza

If you’re a fan of Tastemade’s cooking channel, then you’re probably a fan of chef and host Frankie Celenza. The current face of the network, Celenza won a Daytime Emmy Award for his popular series Struggle Meals, beating out previous winners Lidia Bastianich and Ina Garten. Now, he takes to the road in a new series, Worth the Hype, with Season 2 of the travel culinary experience airing now.

In this exclusive interview with EatingWell, we chatted with Celenza about Worth the Hype, including the meal from the show he has tried re-creating at home. Plus, learn more about the must-have ingredients in the chef’s kitchen, and why he thinks MSG should be in your own pantry.

EatingWell: What are your top pantry staples?

Celenza: Extra-virgin olive oil. You can have two olive oils: one that you finish with and one that you cook with, but they both have to be extra-virgin, period. I love having sherry vinegar to balance out salt with some kind of acidity. Olive oil, sherry vinegar, white wine in the fridge and red pepper flakes—I got to have them. For things that you [regularly] buy, you have to have garlic, you have to have onions and you definitely need some really great pasta. I recommend a bronze-cut type so that it's craggy on the outside and it can grab onto more sauce. It's worth the extra money, in my opinion.

EatingWell: An underrated ingredient every home cook should have on hand?

Celenza: Straight MSG … I'm not kidding. 

EatingWell: Why should people start using MSG?

Celenza: It got a bad rap for a really long time and people believe MSG in Chinese food causes headaches. It's not true. It's in every bouillon cube you've ever used, it's in so many things! Some chefs are trying to change the perception of MSG by literally putting MSG shakers on the tables of their restaurants. It's amazing what it can do to a tomato sauce—a teaspoon of MSG in there can be pretty damn good. And if you use MSG, you can actually reduce the amount of salt you use. 

EatingWell: A food or ingredient that’s worth making instead of buying?

Celenza: I don't understand why people buy premade tomato sauce. I never grew up with that. You don’t need canned sauce with tomatoes from Italy—we have great tomatoes here. Just taking some fresh garlic and sizzling it in that extra-virgin olive oil that we're keeping in the pantry and putting really good canned tomatoes in that. I like to blend it slowly just to make it smooth, and you have a better-tasting sauce that doesn't have to have the additives to make it shelf-stable. And it’s ready in, no joke, five minutes. I don't care that there's skins in there, it tastes great!

EatingWell: What’s something you learned while filming Worth the Hype?

Celenza: This is really odd, but I learned that parchment paper is way, way more resilient and stronger than people realize. There was this one dish that we made in Vegas: a salmon taco, and the tortilla is salmon skin. We skimmed off the salmon, cut it into a circle, stacked parchment, salmon skin, parchment into a metal mold and into a deep fryer for seven minutes. And I always thought parchment paper was a waxy material, but it's not; it's like a polymer. As long as you stay under [450 degrees], it can hold for a really long time. I was shocked when it came out. There was no discoloration on the parchment whatsoever, and we just had this perfect salmon-skin tortilla. I thought that was really interesting.

EatingWell: Any meals you tried on Worth the Hype that you have tried re-creating at home?

Celenza: There was a fish dish that was so simple. It reminded me of one that I had in Italy a long time ago. It was also at a Vegas restaurant, and it was basically thin slices of potatoes with olive oil, and you put fish fillets on it with an interesting heated spice rub, and it's baked. I changed a little bit but a one-pan potato and fish bake is pretty foolproof. It’s juicy and extremely flavorful. 

EatingWell: What city’s food scene surprised you the most?

Celenza: Going to Miami, going to Nashville, going to New Orleans, I expect a lot, and going to Hawaii, I expect great fish. But Santa Fe I had no expectations other than it sounds like a cool place to go, and it blew me out of the water. It was so awesome, the people were so nice. Killer moles, and they cook with corn and peppers indigenous to the region—really delicious stuff. Every bite was just like, wow. They're taking generations of generations of Mexican food and then using the local produce that Mexico doesn't have to evolve it, and there's something really special in that. Santa Fe was definitely high on the list.

EatingWell: What does “eating well” mean to you?

Celenza: Eating well does not have to be complicated and it does not have to be expensive. It really takes two things: people, chefs that really care about what they're doing, and ingredients that are fantastic.

Editor’s Note: This interview was edited for clarity and length.