The Most Astonishing Use Of Foraged Ingredients On Chefs Vs. Wild - Exclusive

This article contains spoilers for the first season of "Chefs vs. Wild."

Hulu's latest foray into culinary entertainment is not as cutthroat as something you might see Alton Brown helm. Yes, contestants on "Chefs vs. Wild" face time constraints — but while challenging, such limits never make or break meals in the same way they do for Gordon Ramsay's ill-fated red and blue teams. Neither do contestants on "Chefs vs. Wild" face the pressure that comes with competing against culinary legends (we're looking at you, Bobby Flay). Instead, they face a colossally different, and electrifyingly indifferent challenger: nature. 

This is not a show where you'll feast your eyes on "Top Chef"-style fully stocked kitchens or "Guy's Grocery Games"-style supermarkets. Did a storm hit the West Coast, knocking out power from Seattle to Vancouver? (Yes, that actually happened. See: "Chefs vs. Wild," Episode 1.) Sleep is off the table. No trout took your bait? There's no fish for dinner. That's kind of the point of the whole kit and caboodle, "Chefs vs. Wild" host Kiran Jethwa told Tasting Table in an exclusive interview. "You're not prepared for the reality that food isn't just at the end of a phone, and you have to work for it."

As it turns out, "working for it" made for both exciting television and spectacularly improvised dishes — ones that awaken culinary senses in ways that not even Jethwa was prepared for. 

The next time you're cooking with sea urchin, why not try it in sweeter dishes the way that Chef Jade Berg did in Episode 3 (you know, after his partner, Matt, shows signs of hypothermia and has to sit out a part of the competition)? "I was very skeptical about [that], and it really did work," Kiran Jethwa told Tasting Table. "He pulled that off. He struggled a little bit in his main course, but he brought himself back with that."

And the next time you're looking for something to spruce up a salad, try using ... actual spruce. "In Episode 5, Chef Katie Coss took spruce tips and roasted them in a dry pan," Jethwa remembered. "The result was like a spruce tip popcorn crouton that she put on a foraged forest salad — delicious and very effective."

Finally, if custard's on your mind — why not mix in a bit of crab? "In Episode 7, Chef Luca Ballard made a crab custard for his dessert," Jethwa said. "His execution was not very good — he couldn't control the heat for the baked custard — but the flavor worked, and it was a bold use of an ingredient."

Catch Kiran Jethwa on "Chefs vs. Wild," which is streaming now on Hulu.