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OUR RATING
3/5 Stars
WHAT IT'S ABOUT:
Chef and food writer Samin Nosrat travels the world to explore four basic keys to wonderful cooking, serving up feasts and helpful tips along the way.
WHAT WE THOUGHT:
Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking is an incredible book about food by Samin Nosrat, so it makes total sense that Netflix would scoop it up to serve to viewers in four delicious episodes. The original series - which is available to be streamed now - is simply called Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat.
Each episode takes Nosrat to a different part of the world where she explores one of the four elements with exemplary local products.
What makes this food show different than almost everything out there is that instead of showing you recipes to try at home it teaches you basic cooking concepts like: choosing the right fat or adding salt at the correct time.
What blew my mind about it, was that it taught me there’s no such thing as a dish being too salty or too fatty, instead there are only dishes that don’t have the right balance. So for instance if you’re having a fatty piece of pork make sure to salt it in the right amounts, but don’t forget the acid and get your oven or grill to the right temperature.
What also kept me watching and what I found refreshing about Nosrat as the host is that she wasn’t afraid to learn from the masters of each element in each location, from grandmothers, to butchers, to even her own mother. There is something so humble and open about her that it’s easy to forget that she is a James Beard award-winning writer and chef whose book is a bestseller and who has worked in some of the finest kitchens in the world.
Her bubbly character and manner of explaining concepts, without being condescending to the audience, is so different than her male counterparts with their many, many cooking shows that only seem to push the sameness of homogeneous western ideals.
I would say if you’re looking to get in the kitchen and cook something tasty but don’t know where to start, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat
is the first thing you should watch. It’s short, sweet and will give you some easy to grasp ideas that will help balance your ordinary dishes and take them to the next level.
If you’re into reading I would recommend reading the book first (or listening to the audiobook like I did) so that you can have a bigger bite of this brilliant chef’s mind.
WATCH THE TRAILER HERE:
