Posted: Monday, January 28, 2013, 4:18 PM

By Chris Granger, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune

Chef Gason Nelson, who is private chef to Reggie Bush of the Miami Dolphins and also the house chef doing private parties at Rare Cuts, shares his jambalaya with duck and andouille recipe.

Link to the featured article and Video: 

http://videos.nola.com/times-picayune/2013/01/chef_gason_nelson_serves_up_ja.html

From soldier to private chef: Gason Nelson feeds football stars

Posted: Fri January 25, 2013 2:40PM; Updated: Fri January 25, 2013 2:43PM

By Anne Berry

Eight months a year, chef Gason Nelson travels between his home in New Orleans to Miami, where he cooks for the Dolphins' Reggie Bush.

Photo courtesy of Anne Berry

It's NFL game day at 7 a.m., and a peachy sun is rising over Miami. Inside Reggie Bush's oceanfront condo, a man does sprints and ab work, and tears up the elliptical. As sweat comes, so does the swagger.

"Working out keeps me crisp, and I bring that intensity to the kitchen," says Gason Nelson, who is private chef to the Dolphins' star running back.

Football players may have their own Sunday rituals, but Nelson treats his pregame zone with the same ferocity. "Sometimes I tell myself, 'Calm the hell down; it's just cooking,'" he says.

Hardly, when you've got a hungry pro athlete at the table. Bush is known for stray explosive plays that call for nimble speed, so on game day he eats light: scrambled cheesy eggs, turkey sausage and pulp-free orange juice.

"The consistency helps," Bush said in a written interview. "He knows my diet, and what I can and can't have."

For Nelson, the setup has its stresses. Eight months a year, he's a geographical bachelor shuttling between Miami and his family's home in New Orleans.

Two more local chefs will be on 'Chopped,' and recipes for Mexican fruit salad

By Judy Walker, The Times-Picayune 
on October 01, 2012 at 9:17 AM, updated October 01, 2012 at 9:22 AM

Good things have been going on for chef Gason Nelson, he said from Miami last week.

Chef Gason Nelson, pictured with his daughter, Tyler, 10, at Jazz Fest, will be on the Food Network for the first time, appearing on 'Chopped' on Tuesday, Oct. 9.

Judy Walker/The Times-Picayune

When last I saw him, Nelson was on the culinary stage at the 2012 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, demonstrating a dish there for the first time. When I wrote about him for the first time, it was during the New Orleans Saints run to the Super Bowl in 2009. He is the personal chef to Reggie Bush.

And on Tuesday, Oct. 9, he will be on the Food Network for the first time, appearing on"Chopped." Along with chef Chris DeBarr of the newly opened Serendipity at the American Can Apartments, he is one of the local chefs this season who have given the world a closer look at creative New Orleans cooking under pressure.

Nelson cooks several scheduled dinners at Rare Cuts, the meat emporium on Magazine St., and the dinners are booked out four to six weeks in advance.

"Reggie, that's my bread and butter," Nelson said. "I travel with him and work with him. I'm in and out. I come home (to New Orleans) on weekends. Or my family comes to visit me here. I'm gone no more than 10 days a month."