Meet Brian Lagerstrom
Hi, I’m Brian. I started cooking professionally in Chicago in 2008, working my way from line cook to sous chef and eventually chef. After a few years running restaurants, I moved on to open a bread bakery and café. I baked bread in the morning, ran a lunch counter during the day, and made pizzas at night.
After 12 years in professional kitchens, I was ready for a different kind of work…
In 2020, I transitioned to being a full-time recipe developer and the creator behind the Brian Lagerstrom YouTube channel (along with my wife Lauren). At first, the channel was just a way to stay connected with people and burn off some creative energy, but pretty quickly my recipes found an audience of devoted home cooks.
In early 2021 our video 1 Dough 3 Loaves took off, became our first video to hit 1 million views, and the channel was named YouTube Creator on the Rise. That was the point where we realized this might actually be more than a side project; It could be a real way to help a lot of people cook better food at home.
Since then, the Brian Lagerstrom YouTube channel has grown to more than 1.7 million subscribers, 227 million views, and over 1.14 billion minutes watched. Thinking back to where this all started, those numbers still feel pretty wild. But even before the views, the point of this whole thing has always been to just share what I know to help people cook better food at home. The years I spent in kitchens still shape the way I think about food today, especially when I’m developing recipes for home cooks. I spend a lot of time testing, tasting, and pulling apart the details to figure out what actually makes a recipe work; which techniques matter, which small details make the dish feel right, and which steps can be simplified without compromising the final result.
I’m here to give you the best possible version of a dish I can, while keeping the process realistic and repeatable in a home kitchen.
Recipes That Work
I care a lot about making good recipes that actual home cooks will use. That means testing, retesting, & simplifying. I want you to know what matters, what doesn’t, and how to adjust when your kitchen, ingredients, oven, pan, or schedule are different from mine. I take the time to clearly explain the process so you feel confident enough to cook something good for yourself and the people around you.
My recipes come from my very detail-oriented chef brain and 12 years of professional cooking experience, but they’re always designed for home cooks. Sometimes that means using restaurant technique. Sometimes it means ignoring restaurant technique and doing something that the old chef-version of me would have never done because it just doesn’t make sense at home.
The point isn’t to make cooking fancy. The point is to make it better, more reliable, and more worth your time. This is a results focused enterprise.
What You’ll Find Here
This site is where my recipes live in a way that is easy to search, cook from, and come back to.
You’ll find weeknight dinners, bread, pizza, pasta, comfort food, restaurant-style recipes, kitchen technique, and the kind of cooking projects that are worth spending a little extra time on.
Every recipe is written with the same basic premise: I deeply researched it, I tested it multiple times, and I thought through all the details. That hopefully means, the first time you make it, you have a great result.
We’re a small team, not a giant test kitchen, so we care a lot about being clear, careful, and responsive. If something ever seems off, confusing, or could be improved, we want to know. The goal is always to make sure these recipes as useful and reliable as possible for real home cooks.
Beyond The Recipes…
Lagerstrom Home Goods
In 2024 after years of testing kitchen equipment as a professional chef and recipe developer, I started a small kitchen tools company called Lagerstrom Home Goods. I’ve used just about every kind of kitchen gear out there – from really expensive tools to really cheep. I’ve learned that, first of all, the price doesn’t tell you much. Great tools can be expensive or affordable, and bad ones can be too. What I couldn’t find was a brand that takes the best ideas from restaurant kitchens and adopts them for home cooks. Lagerstrom Home Goods is my attempt to build exactly that brand.
My first product was an 8-inch chef’s knife. I worked closely with a knife manufacturer to take everything I loved about my favorite expensive professional knives and make something less fussy, more affordable, and easier for home cooks to use every day. It’s sharp, durable, comfortable, and built to be a true daily workhorse.
That’s the philosophy behind every tool I make. Just like my recipes, I take what I learned in professional kitchens and adapt it for real home cooking. I want to make kitchen gear that feels great to use, solves real problems, and is built to last.
So far, that includes the chef’s knife and a garlic press, with more tools on the way. You can shop the collection here.
