Interview: ‘Worst Cooks In America’ Star Nick Slater

Food Network is once again on the quest to shape up the Worst Cooks in America!

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Among this season’s final four is 28-year-old construction worker Nick Slater from California. Hidden Remote conducted a phone interview with Nick to find out what it’s like being on the show and if he really believes it’s making him better in the kitchen.

“I got nominated by my fiancée,” he told us. “I can’t cook and someone found out there was a show for people like me, so my fiancée capped me decided she wanted to put me up for that. I took it because I know I can’t cook!”

“Cooking, is more like a fuel thing for me. Food is just fuel,” Nick explained as to why he’s not that great in the kitchen. “I didn’t really think too much about it; I just used to eat really quick to satisfy my hunger and that was it. I never knew or took the time or had any interest in cooking. I just wanted to eat, so it wasn’t my thing.”

You’d think he’d feel a little bit better about his skill set (or lack thereof) once he was on the Worst Cooks in America kitchen alongside people who were also struggling, but he told us it was the exact opposite.

“I was more paranoid when I got there because I saw all these people with stuff in their hands that I knew were bad,” he laughed. “Now I’ve not only got to worry about me and my food and my well-being, I’ve got to worry about if someone else was going to cut me up or something. It was a new experience, I’ll tell you that.”

What’s the craziest thing he saw in the kitchen?

“[Ginny] was putting salad dressing in a burning skillet,” he recalled. “I hate salad dressing, I hate condiments, all that stuff, so I saw her pour Caesar dressing or something like that into a burning hot skillet and you could just smell it. It was just the worst smell ever and she was looking at it and she was proud of it.”

But ultimately, Nick and his fellow recruits were on the show with one goal: to become better cooks. So how did that go for him? “It was definitely a process,” he told us. “I wanted to be pretty quiet and focus. I just kind of wanted to put my head down and work and learn it. That’s how I am, if I don’t know it and I don’t master it and it’s foreign to me? I have to just do my homework and feel uncomfortable. Then I start to loosen up a little bit.”

He told us that his biggest accomplishment has been “Learning how to use some utensils, because I have some in my kitchen that I just redid and I got stuff that I didn’t know what to do with, they just kind of looked cool. Ever since I got on the show and cooked all kinds of stuff, now I know how to use the utensils that I bought and I know what they’re for. Now they have a purpose.”

Of course, being on the show means openly declaring yourself as one of the worst cooks in America, and Nick said that’s also come with some rather interesting social media feedback.

“People will say stuff that I’ve never even thought of,” he laughed. “People talk about my jailhouse burrito [signature dish] and say oh, he’s definitely an inmate. He was definitely in prison. And I’m like what? I’m considered one of the nicest guys and I don’t do anything like that.

“It’s funny that people are thinking I was a inmate because I made this jailhouse burrito. I actually learned it from my uncle who went to jail; I loved Top Ramen so he showed me a new interesting way to eat it. I haven’t been to jail!”

On the contrary, “I live close to LA so there’s a lot of opportunity down here,” Nick continued. “I’ve just kind of been exploring it, just going on auditions and stuff. I like being different characters, so I like acting a lot. I’m actually in an upcoming movie that’s going to be cool. That’s going to start mid-February. I’m excited; it’s my first movie so we’ll see how it goes.”

Worst Cooks in America airs Sundays at 10/9c on Food Network.