Eagles Q&A: DeVonta Smith shares his hidden talent

Each week during the 2022 season we’re going through the Eagles’ media guide to find an interesting nugget.

The Eagles’ PR interns do a great job filling out these little oddities in the media guides and they serve as a good way to meet the player behind the helmet.

This week, we chatted with star receiver DeVonta Smith, who lists his hidden talent as cooking.

Me: Is that still the case?

Smith: Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Me: If you had to pick one speciality, what are you best at?

Smith: Alright, so I just found out to make étouffée, crawfish étouffée, from scratch.

Me: How long does that take?

Smith: It doesn’t take too long. It probably takes about 30 minutes at the most.

Me: Is that one of your favorite foods?

Smith: Yeah, that’s my favorite food. So now that I learned how to do that, that’s my go-to every time.

Me: What’s the key to making a good crawfish étouffée?

Smith: It’s like a little roux so you gotta make sure your roux is straight, you gotta keep stirring it. You can’t let it just sit still or then you gotta start all over.

Me: I gotcha. I’ve read that about you, that your favorite foods are all Louisiana-based foods. How do you get your fix up here in the Northeast?

Smith: The étouffée, it’s kind of like you start that from scratch so that’s easy to do. The jambalaya, it’s kind of easy. You just have to season it right. You just want to have, there’s a certain sausage you want to have. You want to andouille sausage. Around here you can find it. It’s kind of hard to find it, but you can find it.

Me: Have you cooked for your teammates?

Smith: Quez (Watkins), have you had something that I cooked?!

Watkins: No!

Me: So he can’t vouch for you yet.

Smith: I’m gonna tell you what happened. The time I did cook, he ain’t come get his plate. That’s what happened. He ain’t come get his plate.

Me: But some of your other teammates …

Smith: Jalen (Hurts) done came and had something before. I cooked for him and Quez but Quez ain’t come get his plate.

Me: Who taught you how to cook?

Smith: I used to watch my mama all the time. Whenever she was in the kitchen I was right there.

Me: So she’s a pretty good cook?

Smith: Oh yeah.

Me: The rest of the family too?

Smith: Yeah, everybody kind of does their own thing. Some people can cook pretty much everything. Some people can barbecue real good. Some people can boil real good.

Me: What’s the speciality in your house?

Smith: From my mom, probably her gumbo.

Me: Everything in the gumbo?

Smith: Nahhh, I don’t like gizzards. Some people put gizzards in their gumbo so she ain’t put gizzards. I ain’t want no gizzards.

Me: I can appreciate that. Yeah, no gizzards. Could you ever see yourself after football getting into that as a business?

Smith: Nah, cooking take too much time. It just takes too much time. I don’t got patience for cooking, for real. If I do cook something, it’s something that I really, really want. And, like, I just gotta have a bunch of time. Like now, I don’t cook much because I don’t have the time, I already be tired.

Me: So cooking for you is more like you want to eat that food, not … you don’t necessarily enjoy the process?

Smith: Yeah, I enjoy the food, not the process.

Me: I gotcha. Thank you, man. I appreciate it.

Smith: For sure.

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