Because food connects us all, Yahoo Life is serving up a heaping plateful of table talk with people who are passionate about what’s on their menu in Deglazed, a series about food.
Taylor Lautner has played everything from a shape-shifting teen in the Twilight franchise to hunky Dr. Cassidy Cascade in the horror series Scream Queens, but when he isn’t working, one of the 30-year-old actor’s favorite roles is that of home cook.
“I have a mean chicken thigh marinade,” says Lautner. “I do a great steak as well. I make a great cauliflower puree, and [my fiancée and I] love mushrooms and onions so we’ll do sautéed mushrooms and caramelized onions with pretty much any and every meal.”
“My fiancée says everything I make is good,” he adds, “but she’s just buttering me up.”
Lautner’s fiancée, registered nurse Taylor Dome, is Greek, something Lautner says he hopes comes into play as they’re planning menus for their wedding. “We’re definitely just starting the process,” he says, ” but I would love to incorporate some sort of Mediterranean food just to make her family proud.”
Another favorite cuisine the couple shares is sushi, although Lautner has strong feelings about other types of fish. “We’re pretty adventurous foodies, but here’s the one weird thing about me,” he admits, “it’s that I love sushi — all sushi — but I’m weird with cooked fish. A cooked salmon for some reason tastes fishier to me and it gets in my head, but I’m fine with sushi.”
Lautner says he also dislikes beets. And, while scallops used to be on his no-no list, he’s recently “become a fan.” But if you’re making dessert for the Home Team actor, be careful what you’re baking.
“I don’t like fruit in anything,” he says. “I’m fine with fruit by itself but I don’t like fruit in a salad. I don’t like most fruity desserts. I don’t like fruit in my other food.”
Lautner grew up near Grand Rapids, Mich., and says one of the foods he misses from his years in the Midwest is Hudsonville Ice Cream. “To this day, Hudsonville Ice Cream is still the best ice cream I have ever had,” he says. “It’s definitely the thing I miss the most from Michigan. When we first moved [to California], I used to ship it on dry ice from Michigan so I could still have it.”
Foods he does not miss, however, are the ones he used to prepare for his role as Jacob in the Twilight film series. “For this little role that I did starting when I was 16, I was 140 pounds and I had to put on 35 pounds of muscle to keep my role,” he shares. “That was an absolute nightmare in the diet compartment — raw sweet potatoes and turkey patties and protein shakes that were essentially just mud.”
“That was rough,” he admits. “I had to consume at least 5,000 calories a day to maintain the weight that I was at.”
Lautner spoke with Yahoo Life as part of his work promoting Hill’s Pet Nutrition’s Clear the Shelters campaign, through which he and Taylor Dome hope to encourage people to adopt from their local shelters. The two Taylors currently own two rescue dogs, Lily and Remi.
“Because of our two rescue babies, we’ve always just been passionate about adopting,” he says, “so this was a no-brainer for me to team up with Hill’s Pet Nutrition. We’re just encouraging anybody that’s ready to be a pet parent to go to any of their local shelters and rescue because now more than ever, more animals are going into shelters than leaving them. It’s a passion thing for me and Tay.”
Lautner says when he met Dome in 2018, she already owned Lily, a dog she’d rescued about a year before they met. “I kind of took Lily in as my first little dog daughter and then after a few years, finally Tay convinced me to get Lily a friend,” he says. “The last year has been amazing — [adopting Remi] was one of the best decisions we ever made.”
Wellness, parenting, body image and more: Get to know the who behind the hoo with Yahoo Life’s newsletter. Sign up here.
