It's been a long time coming: Alison Roman will soon be on your TV screen.
A new partnership with Tastemade will bring Roman’s beloved digital series “Home Videos” to television. The series, which has only been available on YouTube, debuts on the Tastemade streaming channel on Oct. 2. (This comes several years after Roman had filmed multiple episodes for a CNN+ show, which didn’t end up airing amid the streaming platform’s dissolution in 2022).
Roman, who is well known for a wide variety of viral recipes like “The Stew” and “The Cookies,” is one of the foremost voices in modern cooking discourse, and is personally one of my absolute favorites within the entire, wide-ranging landscape.
Roman's energy, which comes across equally in both written and video form, is loose, convivial, casual — the perfect pal to have in the kitchen to help calmly, kindly walk you through a recipe, no matter if immensely simple or outrageously challenging.
For me, this energy is perfectly encapsulated in her Thanksgiving 2019 YouTube video, which was equal parts entertaining, funny and genuinely informative. Not to mention, packed with stellar recipes and top-tier tips.
(Another early exposure to Roman was her “Lemons” book within the Short Stack collection, which is one of my favorite single-ingredient focused cooking series of all time. Roman’s book was just perfect, distilling every aspect of the lemon and then guiding the reader through the bevy of ways the citrus can be used, both in savory and sweet applications.)
Yet in recent years, Roman has expanded beyond written recipes and fun videos with a unique newsletter, an advice podcast and also a store in upstate Bloomville, New York, fittingly called First Bloom. Recently, she announced the store would begin shipping some items, as well as the first volume of the First Bloom Zine, which includes recipes “to help you cook from what you might find inside the shop.”
Roman spoke with Salon Food about the transition from YouTube to television, what inspired First Bloom and her current three favorite ingredients (other than anchovies, dill and lemon).
The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Hi! How does it feel to know that videos that were once intended for a YouTube-only audience are now making their way to television via Tastemade? What's that transition like?
It’s a total dream to have something that you self-produce, self-make and put your money and spirit behind get the seal of approval from a company and a brand that has a huge reach and is focused on food. It's really nice and it was totally unexpected and super welcome. I'm looking forward to seeing how the audience expands and how they respond. It's great for people to be able to watch the show on TV.
I love the idea of First Bloom. What initially led you to conceptualize that? Can you speak a bit to what it's been like operating the store?
For me, it was important that the store feel like a grocery store that belongs to the place that it's in. I didn't want to just make a Brooklyn store and put it in the Catskills. I want it to be focused on upstate New York’s ingredients, makers and farmers and to make it feel like a celebration of all of the wonderful things that are happening up there.
It also serves as a nice meeting place for people in the community, if they're visiting or live up there. I also want it to be a nice experience. I don't think grocery stores need to always have fluorescent lights and weird music. I think it should be warm and inviting and you should want to spend time in there and feel excited to go to the store.
Of course, your affinity for ingredients like anchovies, dill and lemons is clear, but I was curious what other ingredients you've been feeling especially fond of lately? Would you be able to name a top three?
I've been eating a lot of roasted seaweed, dark toasted pretzels and a lot of kimchi.
What stands out for you as a formative moment that got you into cooking or food at large?
I don't know if it was a formative moment. It was a very immersive process and I feel like I kind of fell in love with cooking over time and became clear that this is what I'm going to do. I would also say, a formative moment was my first job because that was really what solidified that this is where I should be.
What’s your biggest tip for cutting down on food waste?
Don't buy too many ingredients at once, especially perishables. Buy as many pantry items as you want, because those will never go bad. Make sure to use all of any ingredients you buy. If you are slicing fennel for salad, save the stem and put it in your salad too, or save it for stock or broth.
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I adore "Nothing Fancy" and "Dining In" (I'm not a big dessert guy, so I haven't cooked from "Sweet Enough" nearly as much, to be fair). What's on the agenda for a potential fourth book?
I'm working on it right now, so I can't say too much about it. It'll come out next year and I can tell you all about it then!
Congrats on beginning shipping First Bloom products, which was just announced. I'm also super intrigued by the Zine. What can readers anticipate discovering in those?
Those are like mini cookbooks focused on the ingredients that we sell at the store. We get such a wide variety of customers and not everybody who comes into our store is familiar with cooking, or even me as a person, so they're like, why would I need preserved lemon? Or how do I use it? So the zine explains how to use it and offers a recipe for it. Or, if you only shop in our store and you're deciding what to make for dinner, you can use a recipe from the zine and get all the ingredients from our shop.
That felt like the most helpful way to encourage people to cook and to bring these ingredients home and turn them into something. I think that especially in the colder months, it can get repetitive, so it’s a little book of inspiration.
I also realized that it's not always easy for people to get to the store. So if you live in Arizona, you could still kind of get a sense of the place. And I think that's nice to share.
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