Samin Nosrat facts for kids

Samin Nosrat is an Iranian-American chef, TV host, food writer, and podcaster. She was born on November 7, 1979.

Samin is famous for her cookbook Salt Fat Acid Heat. This book won a James Beard Foundation Award and became a New York Times bestseller. She also hosted a Netflix show with the same name. From 2017 to 2021, she wrote a food column for The New York Times Magazine. Samin also co-hosted a podcast called Home Cooking.

Samin's Early Life and School

Samin Nosrat was born in San Diego, California. She grew up in University City, San Diego and went to La Jolla High School. Her parents moved to the United States from Iran in 1976. They were escaping unfair treatment of Baháʼís in Iran.

Samin mostly ate Iranian cuisine when she was young. She learned to cook when she was older. But she says food was always a very important part of her childhood.

She studied English at the University of California, Berkeley.

Samin's Cooking Career

How Samin Started Cooking

In 2000, when Samin was in college, she ate dinner at a famous restaurant called Chez Panisse. She loved it so much that she applied to work there right away. She started as a busser, helping clear tables.

Samin then worked her way up to the kitchen. She became a cook and worked with Alice Waters, a very famous chef. Alice Waters called Samin "America's next great cooking teacher."

After working at Chez Panisse, Samin cooked in Italy. She also worked in other restaurants near Berkeley. She was a sous-chef, which is a head assistant cook. She also took on catering jobs. In 2007, she started teaching private cooking classes. She realized that a TV show would be a great way to teach more people.

Later, Samin worked with Michael Pollan, a well-known food writer. She was featured in his book and a 2016 Netflix TV show called Cooked. She was known as "the chef who taught Michael Pollan how to cook."

Salt Fat Acid Heat Book

Samin Nosrat's cookbook, Salt Fat Acid Heat, came out in 2017. It has fun drawings by Wendy MacNaughton. The book teaches the main ideas of good cooking. Samin explains these ideas using the four words in the title: Salt, Fat, Acid, and Heat.

Instead of just giving recipes, each part of the title has its own chapter. Samin shares stories and wisdom from her years as a chef. The book helps readers understand how to cook well from the ground up. It's more like a textbook than just a recipe book. The goal is for readers to improve their everyday cooking. They can learn to improvise instead of always following recipes. The book has been a bestseller for many years.

The Times of London named it "Food Book of the Year." It also won the 2018 James Beard Award for Best General Cookbook. The International Association of Culinary Professionals named it Cookbook of the Year. In 2019, The New Yorker magazine called it one of the "Best Cookbooks of the Century So Far."

Salt Fat Acid Heat TV Show

A Netflix show based on the cookbook also came out. It's called Salt Fat Acid Heat and was released on October 11, 2018. It's a travel show with four episodes. Each episode focuses on one of the four cooking elements.

• In episode 1, Samin travels to Italy to talk about using fat in cooking.
• In episode 2, she goes to Japan to learn about salt.
• In episode 3, she visits Mexico for acid.
• In episode 4, she returns to the United States. She cooks at Chez Panisse and with her own mother to discuss heat.

The Washington Post said the show was "unlike any other food show on TV." It helped Samin become a very well-known name.

Home Cooking Podcast

In March 2020, Samin and her friend Hrishikesh Hirway started a podcast called Home Cooking. They wanted to help people cook during the COVID-19 pandemic. It was first planned as a short series. But the podcast continued to release episodes during the pandemic. In April 2025, Samin announced plans for a new eight-episode season. This season was released later in 2025.

The show is like a cooking advice program. Samin answers questions from listeners about cooking. It started by helping people use ingredients they already had. This was important when people were buying a lot of certain foods. Later, it grew to cover more cooking questions.

The show won the 2021 iHeartRadio award for Best Food Show. It was also named one of the best podcasts of 2020 by Time, Rolling Stone, Vulture, The Economist, and The Atlantic.

Other Projects

From 2017 to 2021, Samin Nosrat wrote a regular column for The New York Times Magazine. It was called "Eat."

In March 2019, Samin announced a second cookbook. She worked with Wendy MacNaughton again. The book was first called What to Cook. It was planned to have 120 recipes. Like her first book, this one aims to help home cooks. It teaches them to think more like professional chefs. This book will cover four elements for making cooking decisions: time, ingredients, resources, and preferences. Samin called these the "invisible rules you face every time you cook." In March 2025, Samin announced a new title and idea for the cookbook. It is now called Good Things and is set to come out in September 2025.

In 2019, Samin was included on Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential people in the world.

In 2021, Samin Nosrat appeared on Michelle Obama's children's cooking show. The show is called Waffles + Mochi and is on Netflix.

Samin's Personal Life

Samin Nosrat lives in Oakland, California. She lives there with her dog, Fava.

See also

In Spanish: Samin Nosrat para niños