Salt. Fat. Acid. Heat
Samin Nosrat’s Four Essential Elements for Good Cooking
Chef, writer, food visionary and Chez Panisse alum Samin Nosrat tells readers upfront in her New York Times bestseller, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking (Simon and Schuster, 2017): “As you can probably tell, this isn’t your typical cookbook.” And she’s right. With a foreword by Michael Pollan, 150 charming illustrations (no photographs), 100 recipes with variations, and personal stories, Nosrat explains how to master the four basic elements for good cooking: salt enhances flavor; fat delivers flavor and texture; acid balances flavor; and heat determines food texture. Get these things right, and whatever you cook can be delicious.
At over 450 pages, the detailed book is filled with recipes to put her instructions into practice and prepare dressings, roasted vegetables, braised meats and light, flaky pastry doughs. Nosrat weaves together her cooking education and philosophy with her personal history: family outings, overseas travels and work in the Chez Panisse kitchen. In a new four-part Netflix series based on her cookbook, Nosrat visits home kitchens around the world to explore the four elements, adding an absorbing visual and explanatory dimension to the book. The series begins with “Fat” in Italy, where Nosrat explores olive oil, pork and cheese to explain why fat is so critical to flavor. For “Salt,” she’s in Japan, immersing herself in salts and seaweed, and marinating soft-boiled eggs in miso to delicious effect. In the Yucatan in Mexico, she slow-cooks turkey in sour oranges to explain the transformative power of “Acid.” Then she’s home to California for “Heat.”
The series isn’t a how-to; there’s the cookbook for that. Nosrat is lighthearted, ebullient, authentic in her love of good food, easy to relate to, hard to stop watching and perhaps most compelling in her message that whole-food cooking can be accomplished easily at home.
To watch the trailer for “Salt Fat Acid Heat,” visit Netflix.com/saltfatacidheat. For more background on Samin and the series, visit SaltFatAcidHeat.com and follow her on Instagram @ciaosamin.
