Andrew Zimmern on Serving Up ‘Wild Game Kitchen’ Season 2 & How Food Saved Him

Andrew Zimmern is becoming one with nature while cooking up game, seafood and vegetables as part of his new FYI Network series Wild Game Kitchen. Premiering May 3, Season 2 hosted by the Emmy and four-time James Beard Award-winning TV personality and chef as he creates another round of delicious dishes that could be made at home. For Zimmern, known for Bizarre Foods, it’s combining two passions together. 

During the season premiere he’ll work through the Minnesota summer rain to cook up red snapper. First it’s fried snapper fingers with a spicy chili-orange mayonnaise dipping sauce. And then Zimmern will roast a whole fish over an open fire, serving up family style accompanied by herb salad and charred miso sweet potatoes. The second of the back-to-back episodes centers on antelope. The leg is served up Greek- style with rich lemony avgolemono sauce and roasted potatoes He’ll then demonstrate an antelope tenderloin carpaccio with roasted tomatoes and parmesan. 

Here Zimmern reflects on shooting the 20-episode season as part of the Home.Made.Nation lineup. 

Andrew Zimmern (FYI)

What’s new for Season 2? 

Andrew Zimmern: In television, whether it’s scripted or unscripted, you sort of make the first three seasons in your head. There were things we wanted to cook in the first season that there wasn’t space for, which we do when we get into another season. So, as we keep making more and more episodes of this show. It keeps getting more and more popular and successful everywhere it’s been. The idea has been to do more of what’s working and less of what isn’t. We’re doing more side dishes and more varieties of each individual dish. We’re kicking off back-to-back with snapper and antelope. We’re going to be doing multiple recipes with each one. 

That’s very important to us, which is a little switch-up. I think the key thing here is making sure that we’re making food that anyone can access. What I mean by that is, the recipes for the snapper, if you only have salmon from the supermarket, by all means use it. If you just have trout because you happen to fish trout, you can use the same recipe. You just have to cook it for a different amount of time. We go through that. If you don’t have antelope and have a big chuck roast, you can do the exact same thing. I think the challenge for me has always been making sure we can do things that are accessible for all people, regardless if they are into cooking this way or not.

I think the timing is right for this show because there has been this renewed scrutiny about food. People are questioning more where their food comes from and how it’s prepared.

I think there has always been an attraction that’s never gone away. It’s why the weekend barbeque enthusiast boom started in the 1950s has never gone away and keeps going. Food plus fire equals awesome. It’s the convenience maestros who decided we should have a bigger refrigerator and easy indoor equipment and a microwave and all this stuff. I’m not poo pooing that. I’m just saying it’s fun to cook outside and with live fire because it’s challenging. Windy day, 20-degree outdoor temperatures, size of what you’re cooking. All of those variables matter when you’re cooking outdoors. They don’t matter when you’re inside. I think the other thing you hit on, which I think is very smart, is this is food designed for our times. Twenty years ago I said if we could take one meal a week in the wild and skip one meal a week, by the way I’m talking about most people. Not the older folks or anyone who has to eat for medical purposes, but we can skip a meal. Have a bigger breakfast, don’t eat lunch. If you have lunch, go to bed without dinner. It won’t kill you. If we did those things, we would reduce the pressure on our food system by a seventh. 

As you start to think about the impact of not going to the grocery store so to speak and doing the same old, I think it’s very impactful. Layer on to that, there is the idea of the meal from the wild you know where your food came from. You’ll feel better after you eat it, especially in the red meat department. I’m lucky. I spend a lot of time outdoors as do my friends. I have friends who come from the Pacific Northwest and Canada and have a lot of elk meat. We can eat off that for a couple of days. I shoot a lot of ducks here and fish a lot and trade that. When you’re eating that wild food and it’s a regular part of your diet, you’re healthier. You’re eating cleaner. The meat is also better for you. 

FYI

You’ve been open about your past battles with drug and alcohol abuse. You’ve also opened  up about also being homeless in the past. All these things, but you made it through the other side and persevered. How would you say food has helped get you through dark times? 

Food and food people saved me. I had a place to go. I had a skillset when I cleaned up 33 plus years ago. I think the importance of food and community. The idea of putting a cup of soup in someone’s hand is a metaphorical form of service work I can always go back to. I think that is very important. I think that is why sobriety resonated with me when I was ready for sobriety because I had grown up in the food world. As far as what I keep learning, service work is the most important aspect of my sobriety. I say that in that your medicine could be to meditate, go to meetings, talk to other alcoholics and drug addicts. Those 12 steps of a 12-step program are crucial. 

That’s where it starts, but what allows you to live a life that is content and happy is by doing things for other people. Service work takes me out of my own head. I’m not worried about my own problems. I’m so lucky to be in the food world because if I was an accountant in an office, I’d probably have to work a lot harder to do things for other people. Since I live in the food space and my work is in the food space, doing work in hunger relief. Getting involved in all the nonprofits I’m involved in, sitting on boards, making an intentional effort to help solve some of the issues in the world. At the same time, doing my job and doing an entertaining show like Wild Game Kitchen is a very important part of why I have peace of mind today. 

Are there any chefs that in your mind are emerging or that you like to follow? 

Oh my gosh. How much time do you have? I was actually thinking about this yesterday looking at this one gentleman’s video. He has millions of followers. I happen to love his food style and his consistency with his posting. I can’t even tell you his name, but posts always start with him throwing some food down on a cutting board and popping a body of wine, it’s the same sideway shot. He makes something pretty chef-y but also simple at the same time. He is able to do this really effortlessly with some beautiful editing. It’s an overseas account I follow on Instagram. I should really write down the 25 or 30 people I follow who are doing cool stuff. 

I find the vast majority of influencers and folks doing recipes on TV really awful. Like any mass-marketed thing, the vast majority is misleading and frivolous and repetitive and unoriginal, but boy do I get excited when I see someone who has a point-of-view and does really cool stuff. There are “influencers” in the food space. I think they would be insulted at that term, but there are people who take cooking food seriously. Jake Cohen is someone who I absolutely love. Olivia Tiedemann is someone I adore. There are so many people out there doing really great stuff. “Jack’s Dining Room” is more of the review type thing where he is always sharing new experiences. Mark Wiens who has a YouTube channel “Migrationology” that is fantastic. These are people I have the utmost respect for. I think they are doing a really cool show. 

 I know you’ve filmed in Minnesota here, but are there other locations we can expect you to go? 

We shot in Texas before, but it’s difficult to make this show on the road. It’s so easy to do it in our backyard. Our production company is in Minnesota. I’m in Minnesota. There doesn’t seem to be benefits to traveling around. My hope is that the networks want to invest more in this show as it becomes more successful and allows us to go out in the field and show us how we harvest food before we get to the kitchen. Have that piece of travel in there, I think that would be a very important consideration. 

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The first episode this season you endure rain and have to go inside before you can finish the dish until the storm passes. How has it been working with the elements? 

I decided 26 years ago when I started making television that I would just be me. We don’t lie, cover stuff up. We don’t make statements that aren’t true. We don’t hold up an animal, and say, I just shot this two weeks ago if I didn’t. We tell the truth, and that extends to the weather. We had some really harsh weather in the season coming up. We worked through it in some cases and in others like you reference, it was time to shut down and come back when it passed. I think people can relate to that. Why wouldn’t we show it? Why would we start and stop and not address it? I think that’s bad TV making. 

What do you want to say about the episodes to come? 

I cooked an entire wild California halibut under a salt crust. It was wrapped in seaweed, and I did it over open fire. It was an incredible challenge, but really cool. I got to work again with pigeon squab, which I’m shocked people don’t work with more. I think it’s the ability to show people new ways of eating. I hope people just cook more and share it with people they love. 

Any talk of Bizarre Foods coming back? Any interest in that? 

We keep pushing it. I think we actually have some interested big streamers. I don’t think it’s out of the question. 

Wild Game Kitchen Season 2 premiere, May 3, 9/8c, FYI