‘Pitmasters’ Host Andrew Zimmern Breaks Down Food Network’s Wild BBQ Competition Series

The grilling summer season is in full swing, which makes it the perfect time for Food Network to serve up its latest competition show Pitmasters. The BBQ series sees teams fully immersed in the wilderness as they put their best open-fire culinary skills to the test from sun up to sun down. 

Nobody was more excited about this concept than host Andrew Zimmern, who joins fellow business titans Jess Pryles, Moe Cason, and Ernest Servantes as panelists deciding who goes home and who leaves with $50,000 in the end. The four-time James Beard Award winner has been a popular fixture from the iconic Bizarre Foods to his recent outdoor cooking series Wild Game Kitchen. 

These pitmasters won’t make the judging easy as they bring their best, pulling from varying walks of life and bringing diverse cultural roots to the table. However, they’ll need  to adapt and stay on their toes to survive. Along with the overall “Big Burn” challenges to narrow the field, there will also be “Flash Burn” twists to turn up the heat. Here Zimmern breaks the meat and potatoes of the competition. The 65-year-old also opens up about maintaining strong family ties while also building a successful career. 

Contestants with Host Andrew Zimmern with Judges Moe Casen, Ernest Servantes and Jess Pryles as seen on ‘Pitmasters’ Season 1. (Food Network)

What was your initial opinion on the new  show concept? 

Andrew Zimmern: I’ve gotten a lot of requests over the years to front a competition show, but I never found one I thought was different enough, something I was really super eager to do…When I found out my friends at Alfred Street Industries and Food Network were putting together Pitmasters, I thought it was incredible. I literally was in almost immediately. There is nothing quite like a competition show where you have incredible participants in this case the pitmasters who are legitimate and best in class competing in a format that really hasn’t been seen before. I think audiences are absolutely going to love this, and I wanted to be a part of it. 

Tell me about what makes it stand out to you most. 

You have nine teams competing for a giant cash prize, plus the bragging rights of being the Pitmasters winner. The idea of building a small town on the side of a mountain in Utah in April where it’s 90 degrees and sunny during the day, and we had snow and hail on two different mornings, and also where the temperature dipped so low. The weather swings become a factor when you’re doing outdoor cooking where you have the pitmasters actuary building their own kitchens. There is what I called the hardware store. We had a building on set that is its own legitimate character where the pitmasters can go for pig iron and metal slabs and chains and hooks and shovels, the equipment they need, bricks and cinder blocks too, to build these incredible outdoor kitchens. 

The teams that survive more episodes all get an opportunity to create. It’s fascinating to me to see what kind of kitchens they come up with whether it’s earth ovens, offset smokers, live fire setups. It was amazing. To have a competition where the fire never goes out. In other words you have eight days of competition where the teams have to live, eat, and sleep in the places they are doing the cooking. To me, that was a real true test of the art. A lot of BBQ shows I’ve seen over the course of my lifetime are more live fire shows. In our show, Pitmasters, you have 24-hour cooks that are interrupted. You have “Big Burns” that are interrupted by these “Little Burns.” It’s a challenge within a challenge. That was incredibly attractive when you give real pitmasters an opportunity to actually do some whole animal cookery, stuff that takes 18-20 hours. I thought it was a real test of their art and craft.  

What were you looking for when judging this competition? 

I’ve been doing BBQ with live fire cookery my entire life. This is my 51st year cooking for a paycheck in my other work. I started when I was 14. I’m looking for excellence and creativity. I’m looking for things I haven’t seen before. At the end of the day, it’s all about the flavor, the texture, and the uniqueness of the product that comes out of the kitchen. With pitmasters coming from the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Canada, and Texas and Argentina, you get to see a lot of different techniques. All those different cultures have much different takes on BBQ. Texas pitmasters are much different from pitmasters from Arizona, or North Carolina. There are different cultural styles. Judging an apple to an orange that way is something that requires a lot of nuance. It’s an excellent question because when it comes to nuance and discerning quality when you have to have judges that are best in class. Beyond does it taste good, they understand the work, nuance, what it takes to create something that is truly special. 

How did you feel about your fellow panelists? 

Over the course of the weeks we were preparing to get into pre-production on this show, where we added three incredible panelists. They all bring something unique to the table. They are also incredible experts when it comes to barbecue and live fire cooking. Moe and Ernest have won 300, 400, barbecue competition between the two of them. Moe is considered a legend in the traditional world of competition BBQ. Many people think he is the best BBQ pitmaster in America, but he is working in a much more modern style of barbeque and has gone away from the most traditional formats, even though he is an expert in that. Jess  is an accredited meat scientist. She understands the science of cookery as much as anyone out there. We have three really smart, really engaged judges. I think that is a great thing for the competitors. They want to make sure the people tasting their food truly understand what goes into the craft of what they’re making. I was delighted to be a part of that. I can’t wait for the rest of the world to see what these incredible competitors made over the eight days we were in Utah. I

What can you tease about the challenges? I think the environment opens up for a lot of unpredictability? 

You are cooking something for 24 hours. We have whole animal cooks, different challenges that require people to understand butchery, texture, and temperature where selection of meat products plays a huge role in that. Not all whole pigs are equal. They all take varying amounts of time and temperature variance and react differently to smoke. The temperature outside requires a ton of expertise in terms of the cooking temperature within the vessel that these incredible pitmasters built to cook these whole animals or big pieces of meat. The meats themselves are also shaped differently. The more variability you throw out to the competitors the better the competition. You’re clued in to more decision-making….It is legitimately one of the most engaging competition series I’ve ever seen. It is something that we are going to present to people that they have not seen before. 

We have contestants doing everything from making their own sausage to baking pastries in earth ovens and everything in between. That’s an incredible variation when you’re doing that in literally a town built on the side of the mountain when you don’t have a formal kitchen. I think it’s absolutely fascinating. There are contestants baking pastries. That is absolutely something that has never been seen before in BBQ or television of any kind. I think the other thing is really cool about this is we had a refrigerator filled with everything these competitors could possibly want. We don’ t just have wild mushrooms. We have five types of wild mushrooms. We don’t have one kind of pork. We have 15 different cuts and whole animals. You have competitors being able to pick from an incredible refrigerator or pantry. 

Travel Channel

It has been 20 years since your run with Bizarre Foods really started. How do you look back on that journey? This really started to take off when your son Noah was just born. I’d imagine it was hard to juggle both. 

Two of the most incredible things I’ve done in my entire life is raising a young man who is now 21, and what I’ve done in my life to create a body of work that is something I’m incredibly proud of. I consider myself to be an insanely lucky individual. I came up with an idea that was unique in the marketplace in 2004, 2005. Travel Channel bought the show. We did two pilots in 2006. One that became Bizarre Foods and the other one called World’s Best Ballpark Foods. The network liked me and wanted to see which of the two show ideas that I had would work best.  World’s Best Ballpark Foods you can still watch on YouTube. It’s still hysterical to watch. I thought that was going to be the show I was going to make for the rest of my life. Marrying two things I love in ports and food. Travel around the world, go to sporting events and show different food and different cultures through the lens of food and sport. Bizarre Foods was just a few percentage points more popular. 

Then for the next 12 or 13 years making hundreds of episodes of Delicious Destinations that spun off from it. In the years since, there were eight or nine shows. That is like eight or nine careers for people in television. It shocks me that here I am creating one show that has been called by a lot of people that do what you do as one of those great legacy shows that will be remembered for a long time after I’m gone in Bizarre Foods. One that has influenced almost two generations of young culinarians…When young people come up to you and say, “You changed the way I look at food and helped me decide what I wanted to do with my life.” It brings tears to your eyes. 

 

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A post shared by Andrew Zimmern (@chefaz)

That’s a pretty powerful connection. 

Now I go home at night and make dinner for my family, and I listen to my son talk about food. He has become quite a food expert in his own right. He doesn’t want to do anything with it professionally so far, but when I see how it influences him, it’s the greatest joy you can have as a father. More importantly Bizarre Foods was not about a fat white guy going around the world eating bugs. Although for those that chose to see it that way and saw it that type of entertainment, fantastic. It was really about teaching people to practice patience, tolerance, and understanding with other human beings…Worlds seem to constantly be defined by our differences. I wanted to show our common humanity and what brought us together. I thought food would do that. It takes time, decades, to look back to see if you were right or wrong. 

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Did the show achieve that? It did. That is something I see in my son, who understands and has a respect for cultures and people that I’m so proud of as a dad. That my child has the ability to truly be empathetic and understanding about other people in other parts of the world. That we have way more in common than we do that differentiate us. To me, it’ makes it a life well lived. I’m at that age where people are calling me up and giving lifetime achievement awards. I go to the office every day. We have a production company in the Twin Cities. For myself, it feels like I’m just getting started. That I finally figured out what I’m doing. That’s an incredibly complex set of feelings. Here with Pitmasters, once again I’m involved in something that is going to teach people something. When people can be inspired to be curious and teachable, that is the legacy I’m proudest of. I’m insatiable, curious, and teachable. If only a little bit has rubbed off on my family and friends, my son most importantly, and fans all over the world. That is something when I leave that legacy behind me, that will be what I’m most proud of. 

Pitmasters, series premiere, July 13, 9/8c, Food Network