Zimmern at home on the range in ‘Bizarre Foods in the Kitchen’

Through more than a decade of traveling for “Bizarre Foods” and other shows, host Andrew Zimmern has gotten to sample the exotic dishes of here and abroad. Now, he gets to demonstrate how to make some of them in a new companion web series on TravelChannel.com.

In “Bizarre Foods in the Kitchen,” Zimmern takes to the stove in his Minneapolis studios to give brief and simple 2-3 minute how-tos on preparing dishes he’s had during his travels, ranging from Thai coconut salmon soup and Brunswick stew to chicken fried steak and a whitefish shore lunch.

“When the network wanted to do some collateral material on TravelChannel.com,” Zimmern explains, “I asked if we could do something where we cook recipes either inspired by or actually taken from the road during my trips because a lot of fans see the food and say, ‘Well, where can I eat that?’ And oftentimes I’m not eating in restaurants so I have to find a forum to show people how to make the food that is unavailable unless you’re going to the country of origin or can bump into a chuckwagon on the cowboy trail.”

One of the more interesting dishes is the Thai coconut salmon soup that he brought back from Portland, Ore., which is made from the head and collar of a whole salmon, coconut milk, galangal (a rhizome similar to ginger), kaffir lime leaves and fish sauce. Ingredients such as these may not be familiar to most viewers, but Zimmern wants to be loyal to the original recipe and he says they can be found in the Asian food section of many markets.