1 week Ago By [email protected] (Kasra Moradi)
A private chef to Premier League footballers has pinpointed two dietary tips that “could change everybody in England’s life”. Jonny Marsh has what he describes as the greatest job in the world - cooking for elite level footballers. His unusual career trajectory first saw him begin work at Michelin starred restaurant Le Manoir by Raymond Blanc in Oxford.
Later, after sending out hundreds of emails looking for private dining opportunities, he was invited to cook for Manchester City’s chairman on matchdays. That led to City midfield maestro Kevin De Bruyne later requesting his services during one Christmas - and his career snowballed from there. Marsh acted as a private chef for England stars Kyle Walker and Jordan Pickford in the past, but due to the high workload, today only cooks for Manchester United’s Rasmus Hojlund and Burnley’s Aaron Ramsey.
Nicknamed ‘The Footballer Feeder’, Marsh has built up a vast fanbase of almost 400,000 Instagram followers, helping normal people with his expert dietary tips and meal prep ideas. And in an interview with Men’s Health , he went into detail about what footballers like to eat, how he fuels their performances and tips that allow you too to eat like a top level athlete. Marsh said: “I’ll give you two tips that I think could change everybody’s life in England right.
The first is to buy a vacuum sealer and a water bath. They’re really, really cheap. And it’s a game changer in terms of prepping food.
“You simply fry your chicken breast, for example, skin side down. Take off the heat and cool it down, add it to a vacuum pack bag, seal it so there’s no air in it and then cook it at 65 degrees for about two and a half to three hours. “You can then chill that in ice water and freeze it for three months and you can do as many as you want at a time.
I used to batch cook 14 chicken breasts every single Sunday and I was then done for my main meals that week.” He added: “And the second tip would be to just cook your own food. Try to steer away from processed stuff, like chicken tenders, and just cook your own food and that I guarantee you’ll lose weight or put on the muscle that you want.
” He explained that footballers’ diets are centred around high protein and a generous amount of vegetables and carbohydrates. Shedding light on his clients’ favourite dishes, Marsh revealed: “Aaron’s favourite is a chicken masala curry – he has it all the time. And he has steak, mash and peppercorn sauce a lot too.
“Rasmus, he loves a teriyaki steak. The very first dish I ever cooked for Rasmus was a whole chicken, pasta Alfredo and an orange and fennel salad. He said to me that he loves meat, and always wants to double meat, so I just sort of went a little bit overboard, and decided to cook him a whole chicken and see what he eats.
He ate it all!”.
