Samin Nosrat facts for kids

Samin Nosrat (born November 7, 1979) is an Iranian-American chef, TV host, food writer, and podcaster. She is famous for teaching people how to cook in a fun and easy way.

Samin wrote the best-selling cookbook Salt Fat Acid Heat. This book won a special award called the James Beard Award. She also hosts a Netflix TV 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 popular podcast called Home Cooking.

Early Life and Learning

Growing Up in California

Samin Nosrat was born in San Diego, California. She grew up in a part of San Diego called University City, San Diego and went to La Jolla High School. Her parents moved to the United States from Iran in 1976. They came to America to find a safe place to live.

Samin mostly ate delicious Iranian cuisine when she was a child. Even though she didn't learn to cook until she was an adult, food was always a very important part of her family life.

College Days

Samin went to the University of California, Berkeley. She studied English there, which helped her become a great writer later on.

Samin's Cooking Journey

Starting Out in the Kitchen

In 2000, when Samin was in college, she had dinner at a famous restaurant called Chez Panisse. She loved it so much that she immediately applied to work there. She started by clearing tables, but soon she was working in the kitchen as a cook. She learned a lot from the restaurant's owner, Alice Waters, who called Samin "America's next great cooking teacher."

After working at Chez Panisse, Samin traveled to Italy to learn more about food. She also worked in other restaurants near Berkeley. She became a sous-chef (a head cook) and took on catering jobs. In 2007, she started teaching private cooking classes. She realized that a TV show would be a much better way to teach many people at once, but it took many years for that dream to come true.

Later, Samin worked with a famous writer named Michael Pollan. She was even featured in his book and a 2016 Netflix documentary TV series called Cooked. In the show, she was called "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 beautiful drawings by Wendy MacNaughton. The book teaches you the four main things you need for good cooking: salt, fat, acid, and heat.

Instead of just giving recipes, Samin explains how each of these four elements works. She shares stories and wisdom from her many years as a chef and teacher. The book helps you understand why things work in cooking, not just how to follow a recipe. It's like a textbook for cooking! The goal is to help you become a better cook every day, so you can make up your own dishes instead of always needing a recipe. The book has been a best-seller for a long time.

The book won many awards, including:

• "Food Book of the Year" by The Times newspaper in London.
• A New York Times best-seller.
• The 2018 James Beard Award for Best General Cookbook.
• Cookbook of the Year by the International Association of Culinary Professionals.
• The 2018 IACP Julia Child First Book Award.

In 2019, The New Yorker magazine called it one of the ten "Best Cookbooks of the Century So Far."

Salt Fat Acid Heat TV Show

A Netflix TV show based on the cookbook, also called Salt Fat Acid Heat, was released on October 11, 2018. It's a travel show with four episodes, each about 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 to explore 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 newspaper said the show was "unlike any other food show on TV." It helped Samin become a 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 for themselves during the COVID-19 pandemic. It was first planned as a short series, but it became very popular and continued for a while.

The show is like a cooking advice show. Samin answers questions from listeners about cooking. At first, it helped people use ingredients they already had in their pantries. Later, it grew to cover all kinds of 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 many magazines, including Time, Rolling Stone, Vulture, The Economist, and The Atlantic.

Other Exciting Projects

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

In March 2019, Samin announced she was working on a second cookbook. It will also have drawings by Wendy MacNaughton and be called What to Cook. This new book will have 120 recipes. It will help home cooks think more like professional chefs. What to Cook will cover four new elements for making cooking decisions: time, ingredients, resources, and preferences. Samin calls these the "invisible set of constraints you face every time you set out to cook."

Also in 2019, Samin was included on Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential people in the world. This is a very big honor!

In 2021, Samin appeared as a guest on Michelle Obama's children's cooking show called Waffles + Mochi on Netflix.

Samin's Personal Life

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

See also

In Spanish: Samin Nosrat para niños