I'm Nick DiGiovanni,

and this is the WIRED Autocomplete Interview.

[upbeat music]

The last thing I Googled.

Ah, I was trying to make a French omelet

for the first time.

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Okay, first board.

Where is Nick DiGiovanni from?

I am from Rhode Island,

specifically, I was born in Providence.

Rhode Island, you might know, is the smallest state,

and it's also the ocean state.

So it's surrounded by a lot of water.

And I think that's where my love

for seafood comes from.

Where did Nick DiGiovanni go to college?

I don't know, still, why they let me in,

but I went to Harvard.

I studied environmental science there,

but I also got to take a lot of classes

that had something to do with food.

So I basically took every single possible class

that I could take related to food in some way,

and they actually had a lot of different classes

that were about food.

I spent a whole semester just learning everything

there is to know about chocolate.

Where does Nick DiGiovanni get his knives?

Great question, too.

The tough part is I use a lot of different types of knives,

but my favorite type of knife, in general,

will be an 8-inch chef's knife,

and I usually get them from two different places.

One comes from this company, a really old company

that's been making knives for a long time, called ZWILLING,

and then the other more custom knives

that I use come from a knife maker

who lives in New Hampshire named Zach Jonas.

He just finds different trees, cuts out,

you know, different handles from the trees,

and then basically makes all these different knives

by hand and I can customize exactly what I want.

That really cool steel Damascus pattern

on each blade to look like.

I probably have about 150 knives.

I love knives.

It's kind of scary.

Where did Nick DiGiovanni go to culinary school?

I didn't go to culinary school.

I did do a two week long bootcamp at the CIA,

not like a special agent by any means.

It's the Culinary Institute of America

and their main campus is in New York.

That's one of the best

or the best culinary school in the country.

But I didn't actually go there.

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When.

When did Nick DiGiovanni start YouTube?

I think my first video I posted

was probably in 2019 when I finished MasterChef

and then I didn't actually start making videos

consistently until I think late 2020,

so it took me a little bit of time

to figure out a good formula

and catch the YouTube bug where I just wanted

to wake up and think about it every single day.

We're definitely gonna pass 1,000 videos pretty soon.

When did Nick DiGiovanni win MasterChef?

That's a trick question in a way,

because I didn't win MasterChef.

I got third.

I was on season 10 and I got to the finale,

but then, yeah, I didn't win.

Nice that people think that I did.

When did Nick DiGiovanni start cooking?

I forget the exact age, to be honest with you,

but I know it was between seven and eight years old.

I saw my grandmother, I saw my great grandparents cooking.

I loved watching, I loved being in the kitchen.

I liked the smells, the sounds,

just the warmth near the stove

and just being with family and having fun with some food.

I was just running around the kitchen,

just grabbing different things off

the counter when somebody else was cooking

and just trying to eat it, helping,

but probably not actually helping,

if you know what I mean.

Right away, food was what I loved.

When did Nick DiGiovanni get famous?

That's a crazy question.

What does famous even mean though?

You know?

I don't have an answer for that.

[board clanking]

Thank you.

What is Nick DiGiovanni favorite food?

Rotisserie chicken.

It's the best.

I love rotisserie chicken.

I oftentimes go to the market, I get one,

I eat the whole thing by myself,

then I take all the bones and I make a chicken stock,

just with maybe some onion,

some carrots, some celery, butter, olive oil,

and a few different seasonings,

and then just throw all the chicken bones in there

and just slowly let it go for a while.

All covered in water.

You just make this delicious comforting broth

that I'll just take a cup all day

and I'll slowly drink it until it's all gone

and then I'll top it off with more water

and kind of make it again, it lasts forever.

One other nice thing is that if you save the rind

of your Parmesan cheese, throw that rind in there.

It gives a really nice kind of cheesy umami flavor

to your stock or your broth.

That's my favorite food, because A, it's delicious.

It's fall apart tender and chicken is so good, but B,

because I can find this really great second use for it

where I can have this really flavor-packed broth

that I can drink for so long.

What is Nick DiGiovanni signature dish?

I would have to say my signature dish

would be a fresh handmade pasta

with some kind of seafood.

It could really be any kind of seafood,

but because I grew up in Rhode Island

and there was lots of fresh seafood around,

and now I live in Boston, I love a good fresh pasta

with whatever seafood I can get my hands on.

Oh, this is a two part.

What camera does Nick DiGiovanni use?

Okay, we use all Sony's,

but sometimes I also just pull out my iphoness

and I get shots that way now too.

We've learned that it,

people are much more comfortable

if there's just an iphoness filming

versus a bigger camera.

And so there are certain places

and certain times where it just makes sense

to pull out a phones and it's so much easier that way

and it's so much more comfortable for people that way.

There's something about a camera

and a lens that just scares a lot

of people for some reason,

whereas they're just fine with a cell phones.

What oil does Nick DiGiovanni use?

[siren blaring]

What is that?

[siren blaring]

[Speaker] That's a fire alarm.

Oh.

[clapperboard clacking]

Just set off the fire alarm and I wasn't even cooking.

How crazy is that?

What oil does Nick DiGiovanni use?

I mean, I have a bunch of different types of oil.

It just depends on the situation.

It actually took me a little while,

cooking to learn what types of oils to use when.

I just feel like you can really separate it

into two categories.

You have your low smoke point oils

and then you have your oils

that have a high smoke point.

It's actually really easy to look up.

You can just look online.

Find the smoke point of any oil,

and if it's over 450, you can use that

for a super high heat steak

or chicken or whatever you're doing.

If it's got a lower smoke point,

that's often not so for high heat cooking

and maybe a little bit better

to finish off a dish like a nice olive oil

on top of a salad.

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Last one.

Thank you.

Now finally we have the how's.

How to pronounce Nick DiGiovanni?

Oh, we've been practicing that one the whole video.

This is funny because it's also something

that I feel like it even took me a long time

in my life to figure out,

because everybody kind of pronounces things

slightly different.

If you split my last name into two different ways,

it's Di-Giovanni, so that makes it easier

to think about DiGiovanni if you put it all together.

Okay, Nick DiGiovanni, anyone can cook.

Yeah, I sometimes use that little tagline

that I kind of stole from Ratatouille,

because it's my favorite movie ever.

But I do believe it.

I feel like it's true.

I feel like anyone can cook.

You just need to learn some of those basics

and then after that you can make anything.

And the coolest part about it is that

there's so many different ingredients,

so many different types

of food all around the world.

So if different people in different places

learn those basic rules and then start experimenting,

you can come up with some really crazy things.

Nick DiGiovanni food hacks.

I'm trying to think of a really good food hack.

I will say, most pizza that I've ever had from takeout

is actually better the next day

if I've put it in a pan with a bit of moisture

in there and a lid on and just let it kind

of steam and crisp up on the bottom.

The bottom gets way more crispy

than it was the day before.

And then the top is nice and melty and cheesy

and that extra bit of crunch and crisp,

I think it's better than it was when it was fresh.

Last one.

Nick DiGiovanni Dino Nuggets recipe.

Great, great, great question here.

The key to a really nice juicy Dino Nugget

is to make sure that you're putting

some milk-soaked bread in the filling.

That bread holds some of that moisture, that milk,

and when it cooks, it retains all of that moisture

so that when you finish the whole thing,

it's got a really juicy bite to it.

But the full recipe for my favorite

Dino Nuggets is actually my cookbook,

so if you wanna try to find that,

it's all there.

Toss it.

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Alright, those are all the questions.

Thanks so much for watching.

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