Netflix's 'Salt Fat Acid Heat' Isn't a Typical Food and Travel Show

[Auggie]

Samin Nosrat grew up in San Diego in an Iranian family before cooking at Berkeley’s famed Chez Panisse, the birthplace of the local food movement. All of those elements, combined with her natural ability for teaching cooking, influenced her award-winning book “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking,” which has become a four-part Netflix series that premieres Thursday.

It’s Nosrat’s first show, although she previously appeared on “Cooked,” from food activist Michael Pollan. “Salt Fat Acid Head” director Caroline Suh also directed an episode of “Cooked,” and both were produced by Alex Gibney’s Jigsaw Productions.

“Salt Fat Acid Heat” is neither an instructional cooking show or a travel show, but a sort of organic ratatouille of the two. Nosrat travels to Italy, where she studied cooking, to talk about the importance of fat in making food delicious. To illustrate the crucial role salt plays in balancing a dish, she observes miso making and kelp harvesting in Japan. Highlighting how the right proportion of acid can amp up flavors, she cooks with sour oranges on Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula, and to demonstrate heat, she returns home to Berkeley to cook a bountiful meal for friends and consider the wood fire at Chez Panisse.

MORE: https://variety.com/2018/tv/news/salt-fat-acid-heat-netflix-food-travel-show-samin-nosrat-1202975929/

Given the past few weeks of news, I’ve found very little to calm my stretched-thin feminist nerves.

In the past, I would turn to cooking shows and food travelogues to provide a respite during stressful times. However, Bourdain aside — whose death is still too painful for “Parts Unknown” to provide anything close to soothing relief — I have little patience right now for watching another male-led series.

Enter Samin Nosrat and her exuberant new Netflix series, “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat.”

This is the show that I didn’t realize how much I — and I think many others might — need right now.

MORE: https://datebook.sfchronicle.com/movies-tv/salt-fat-acid-heat-samin-nosrats-new-netflix-series-is-the-show-we-need-right-now

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[CurtEastPoint]

1. I just this AM watched the trailer for it and added it to my watchlist. Sounds great!

[Thyla]

2. This one almost looks as if Netflix are learning...

...how a cooking/travel show should be made.

I love cooking shows but Netflix really cannot make them well, the best cooking content is stuff made elsewhere like bbc and such.
This one however looks like it is worth watching, hopefully a thumbsup from me(wish they would bring star rating back).

[Auggie]

3. Netflix distributes the show. It's produced by another company ...

and produced (and directed) exceedingly well IMO -- Jigsaw Productions.

The cinematography is gorgeous. Samin Nosrat is a delight -- her passion for discovery is akin to Anthony Bordain's.

Don't expect recipes. This is all about concept.

[mitch96]

4. This book changed the way I cook

and more importantly how I taste food. I never "got" how to balance food and now I can taste a dish that's cooking and figure out what it needs.... Salt? Fat? Acid?
I like to cook and this book just pulled it all together in the kitchen... YMMV, it works for me!
m

[woofless]

5. I enjoyed it.

[Canoe52]

6. Thanks to your suggestion, my wife and I watched two episodes last night.

It was most delightful! The camera shots and Samin are a treat!

[TexasBushwhacker]

7. I heard her on NPR when her book came out

Might have to check this out.