Salt Fat Acid Heat: Why the Netflix series is a breath of fresh air in the world of cooking shows

Chef Samin Nosrat has travelled the world, and no matter which country she is in she says one is always consistent: great food needs just four elements — salt, fat, acid and heat.

Salt Fat Acid Heat is also the name of her popular Netflix series that documents her travels to Italy, Japan, the Yucatán region of Mexico and her hometown of Berkeley, Calif., where she explores those four elements.

Hannah Giorgis, a writer for The Atlantic, says the show stands out because although the food Nosrat creates is sublime on the screen, viewers are left with the sense that it's not outside of their reach. It's food they can also create.

"When you're watching a show where a host is traveling all over the country and they're going to Michelin-star restaurants ... it can be intimidating," Giorgis told Day 6.

"Watching that isn't the thing that's going to inspire me to get up and cook."

The show offers a way of thinking about a luxurious food experience that doesn't have to be about high-ticket ingredients, Giorgis says.

When Giorgis interviewed the chef, Nosrat asked herself, "Why is the beautiful stuff not for everybody?"

She has this energy that is very much like someone you've either known for all your life ... or someone who wants you to feel that way around them.- Hannah Giorgis, culture writer for The Atlantic

In the first episode Nosrat travels to Italy, where she says people are experts at using fat to make food "absolutely, fantastically, almost impossibly delicious."

There, she makes pesto with an older Italian woman named Lidia. Giorgis says the show makes a purposeful decision of deferring to older women for their culinary expertise.

"It validates so much of the kind of informal culinary expertise that women, and especially older women, don't often get credit for," Giorgis said.

In the Yucatán region of Mexico, Nosrat meets with a group of women who keep bees that make acidic honey, which is unique to their region.

That scene seems ordinary, says Giorgis, but it stood out to her.

"In American culinary spaces, Mexican food is seen as something that is one, one note, and not regional at all," she said.

Warm, really generous

What also stands out for Giorgis is that throughout the show, Salt Fat Acid Heat "treats people of colour as the experts of their own food traditions."

"That seems really rare, even on shows that might focus on ... Japanese food or ... Mexican food or whatever it is. This one feels really homegrown in that way."

A big part of Salt Fat Acid and Heat's success is Nosrat's genuine enthusiasm for food and her warm personality, Giorgis says.  

"She has this energy that is very much like someone you've either known for all your life ... or someone who wants you to feel that way around them."

"[She's] really warm, really generous with her time and her knowledge."

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