Hello there sizzlers! Welcome to YumSizzle a place to learn about and explore what makes food delicious. We publish recipes, reviews, and deep dives into the science (and pseudo science) behind our favorite topic… FOOD!

For my 8th birthday I had one request, I wanted to be on Emeril Live. While other kids were asking for game boys, computer games, baseball gloves, and laser tag…. I was asking for access to my cooking idol. I wanted to kick it up a notch in person, and my dream came true… and then it came crashing down. 

You see, it turns out that reality ‘live’ T.V. might not actually be the factual experience you thought it was. I was expecting Emeril to be cooking non-stop, basting, sauteéing, flipping, and seasoning like a madman between commercial breaks. And boy oh boy was I disappointed to learn that there was a team of chefs and assistants on the sidelines doing most of the cooking. It was at this moment that my relationship with food changed. All of a sudden there was a desire to learn, consume, and question what made the things on my plate delicious. To explore what was on the sidelines of my favorite foods.

Luckily for me this was also the golden era for the food network. I still watched Emeril religiously, but now Giada, Mario, Alton, and Sarah became my friends. Every night I would put on the food network and learn about searing, chopping, baking, frying, dicing, carmelizing… you name it, there was someone talking about it. 

Using this newfound zeal for the gastro world, I applied all of the concepts to the food I was eating. Was this a real ceasar salad if it didn’t have anchovies? Does the pasta need to be fresh? Is there anything really wrong with MSG? Over time this helped refine my taste, but it didn’t really make me a great cook. Sure, there were a couple of things I took pride in making. Grilled cheese, mac and cheese, grilling, easy pasta dishes, but it wasn’t until college when I really started exploring food.

Much to my chagrin, all this eating wasn’t doing my waistline any good. The silver lining of losing weight (and doing it the right way) is that you’re forced to learn about nutrition. What really makes a well rounded meal? Do you need to cut out carbs to lose weight? How much fat and protein do I need in a day? I dove deep into these questions and started cooking most of my meals to meet my specific dietary needs. But, this wasn’t quite for me, all of those techniques and ingredients I learned about on the food network didn’t apply to my new healthier lifestyle. 

All of a sudden everything I was reading and learning went from amazing looking plates to simple dishes with plain ingredients. For me, that wasn’t going to work. It was in this culinary minefield of health food that my resolve developed. The more I understood about what I was cooking, and the ingredients and processes that created it, the better I would be able to make food taste. 

Luckily these days, my waistline hovers around a comfortable looking “that guy enjoys food” which allows me to explore all of the techniques and ingredients my childhood icons were using. The purpose of YumSizzle is to explore the why of food. As Albert Einstein said, “Any fool can know, the point is to understand.”

Thanks for reading!