00:00I'm Nick DiGiovanni, and this is the Wired Autocomplete Interview.
00:04♪♪
00:07The last thing I Googled...
00:09Ah, I was trying to make a French omelet for the first time.
00:12♪♪
00:16Okay, first board.
00:17Where is Nick DiGiovanni from?
00:20I am from Rhode Island.
00:21Specifically, I was born in Providence.
00:23Rhode Island, you might know, is the smallest state,
00:25and it's also the ocean state, so it's surrounded by a lot of water.
00:28And I think that's where my love for seafood comes from.
00:31Where did Nick DiGiovanni go to college?
00:34I don't know still why they let me in, but I went to Harvard.
00:37I studied environmental science there,
00:39but I also got to take a lot of classes that had something to do with food.
00:43So I basically took every single possible class that I could take
00:46related to food in some way.
00:48And they actually had a lot of different classes that were about food.
00:52I spent a whole semester just learning everything there is to know about chocolate.
00:55Where does Nick DiGiovanni get his knives?
00:58That's a great question, too.
00:59The tough part is I use a lot of different types of knives,
01:02but my favorite type of knife in general would be an 8-inch chef's knife.
01:05And I usually get them from two different places.
01:08One comes from this company, a really old company,
01:10that's been making knives for a long time called Zwilling.
01:13And then the other, more custom knives that I use
01:15come from a knife maker who lives in New Hampshire named Zach Jonas.
01:19He just finds different trees, cuts out, you know, different handles from the trees,
01:24and then basically makes all these different knives by hand.
01:27And I can customize exactly what I want that really cool steel Damascus pattern
01:32on each blade to look like.
01:34I probably have about 150 knives.
01:36I love knives. It's kind of scary.
01:38Where did Nick DiGiovanni go to culinary school?
01:42I didn't go to culinary school.
01:43I did do a two-week-long boot camp at the CIA.
01:47Not like a special agent by any means.
01:49It's the Culinary Institute of America.
01:51And their main campus is in New York.
01:53That's one of the best or the best culinary school in the country.
01:56But I didn't actually go there.
02:01When?
02:02When did Nick DiGiovanni start YouTube?
02:06I think my first video I posted was probably in 2019 when I finished MasterChef.
02:11And then I didn't actually start making videos consistently until I think late 2020.
02:17So it took me a little bit of time to figure out a good formula
02:21and catch the YouTube bug where I just wanted to wake up and think about it every single day.
02:25We're definitely going to pass 1,000 videos pretty soon.
02:27When did Nick DiGiovanni win MasterChef?
02:30That's a trick question in a way because I didn't win MasterChef.
02:32I got third.
02:33I was on season 10 and I got to the finale.
02:36But then, yeah, I didn't win.
02:37Nice that people think that I did.
02:39When did Nick DiGiovanni start cooking?
02:41I forget the exact age to be honest with you.
02:44But I know it was between seven and eight years old.
02:46I saw my grandmother.
02:47I saw my great-grandparents cooking.
02:49I loved watching.
02:50I loved being in the kitchen.
02:51I liked the smells, the sounds.
02:53Just the warmth near the stove and just being with family and having fun with some food.
02:58I was just running around the kitchen just grabbing different things off the counter
03:02when somebody else was cooking and just trying to eat it.
03:04Helping, but probably not actually helping if you know what I mean.
03:07Right away, food was what I loved.
03:10When did Nick DiGiovanni get famous?
03:12That's a crazy question.
03:14What does famous even mean though, you know?
03:16I don't have an answer for that.
03:19What is Nick DiGiovanni's favorite food?
03:23Rotisserie chicken.
03:24It's the best.
03:25I love rotisserie chicken.
03:28I oftentimes go to the market.
03:30I get one.
03:31I eat the whole thing by myself.
03:33Then I take all the bones and I make a chicken stock
03:35just with maybe some onion, some carrots, some celery, butter, olive oil,
03:39and a few different seasonings and then just throw all the chicken bones in there
03:42and just slowly let it go for a while, all covered in water.
03:46You just make this delicious, comforting broth
03:49that I'll just take a cup all day and I'll slowly drink it until it's all gone.
03:54Then I'll top it off with more water and kind of make it again.
03:57It lasts forever.
03:58One other nice thing is that if you save the rind of your Parmesan cheese,
04:01throw that rind in there.
04:02It gives a really nice kind of cheesy umami flavor to your stock or your broth.
04:06That's my favorite food because A, it's delicious.
04:09It's fall apart tender and chicken is so good,
04:12but B, because I can find this really great second use for it
04:15where I can have this really flavor-packed broth that I can drink for so long.
04:19What is Nick DiGiovanni's signature dish?
04:22I would have to say my signature dish would be a fresh handmade pasta
04:27with some kind of seafood.
04:28It could really be any kind of seafood, but because I grew up in Rhode Island
04:31and there was lots of fresh seafood around and now I live in Boston,
04:34I love a good fresh pasta with whatever seafood I can get my hands on.
04:37Oh, this is a two-part.
04:38What camera does Nick DiGiovanni use?
04:43We use all Sonys, but sometimes I also just pull out my iPhone
04:47and I get shots that way now too.
04:49We've learned that people are much more comfortable
04:52if there's just an iPhone filming versus a bigger camera.
04:55And so there are certain places and certain times
04:57where it just makes sense to pull out a phone
04:59and it's so much easier that way and it's so much more comfortable for people that way.
05:03There's something about a camera and a lens
05:05that just scares a lot of people for some reason,
05:07whereas they're just fine with a cell phone.
05:09What oil does Nick DiGiovanni use?
05:16What is that?
05:20Oh.
05:23Just set off the fire alarm and I wasn't even cooking.
05:26How crazy is that?
05:27What oil does Nick DiGiovanni use?
05:29I mean, I have a bunch of different types of oil.
05:31It just depends on the situation.
05:32It actually took me a little while cooking to learn what types of oils to use when.
05:37I just feel like you can really separate it into two categories.
05:39You have your low smoke point oils
05:41and then you have your oils that have a high smoke point.
05:43It's actually really easy to look up.
05:44You can just look online, find the smoke point of any oil,
05:47and if it's over 450, you can use that for a super high heat steak
05:52or chicken or whatever you're doing.
05:55If it's got a lower smoke point, that's often not so good for high heat cooking
05:58and maybe a little bit better to finish off a dish,
06:00like a nice olive oil on top of a salad.
06:04Last one. Thank you.
06:07Now, finally, we have the hows.
06:09How to pronounce Nick DiGiovanni.
06:12Oh, we've been practicing that one the whole video.
06:14This is funny because it's also something that I feel like it even took me a long time in my life to figure out
06:19because everybody kind of pronounces things slightly different.
06:22If you split my last name into two different ways, it's DiGiovanni,
06:26so that makes it easier to think about DiGiovanni if you put it all together.
06:30Okay. Nick DiGiovanni, anyone can cook.
06:33Yeah, I sometimes use that little tagline that I kind of stole from Ratatouille
06:37because it's my favorite movie ever, but I do believe it.
06:41I feel like it's true. I feel like anyone can cook.
06:44You just need to learn some of those basics, and then after that, you can make anything.
06:48And the coolest part about it is that there's so many different ingredients,
06:51so many different types of food all around the world,
06:53so if different people in different places learn those basic rules and then start experimenting,
06:58you can come up with some really crazy things.
07:00Nick DiGiovanni, food hacks.
07:02Trying to think of a really good food hack.
07:04I will say most pizza that I've ever had from takeout is actually better the next day
07:10if I've put it in a pan with a bit of moisture in there and a lid on
07:15and just let it kind of steam and crisp up on the bottom.
07:18The bottom gets way more crispy than it was the day before,
07:21and then the top is nice and melty and cheesy, and that extra bit of crunch and crisp,
07:26I think it's better than it was when it was fresh.
07:29Last one. Nick DiGiovanni, Dino Nuggets recipe.
07:32Great, great, great question here.
07:35The key to a really nice, juicy Dino Nugget is to make sure
07:38that you're putting some milk-soaked bread in the filling.
07:41That bread holds some of that moisture, that milk,
07:44and when it cooks, it retains all that moisture so that when you finish the whole thing,
07:49it's got a really juicy bite to it.
07:51But the full recipe for my favorite Dino Nuggets is actually in my cookbook,
07:55so if you want to try to find that, it's all there.
07:58Toss it.
08:01All right, those are all the questions. Thanks so much for watching.
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