Sam Zien

Biography

Sam the Cooking Guy

Sam Zien quit his biotech job in July of 2001 to start a travel show, with him as the host. The fact that he had zero travel or television experience didn`t seem to matter. Sam felt that he could be at least as good as the lousy people on TV - and possibly even better. But a month before a trip to shoot demo footage in Tokyo and Hong Kong, September 11th hit -- and that changed everything. Sam decided to stick with TV, but switched from travel to cooking. OK, still no experience but did it really matter at this point? Sam shot a demo and a couple months later ended up with a twice-weekly 2-minute cooking segment on a local morning news program.

The segments caught on and grew into a 30-minute show appropriately named Sam the Cooking Guy -- an irreverent mix of humor and easy-to-replicate recipes that have now won 12 Emmy awards. Discovery Health came along in 2007 and Sam ended up producing Just Cook This! which featured his same offbeat style with more easy-to-prepare, great-tasting recipes that also happen to be healthy. He is still known for his `big in taste and small in effort` philosophy, and has proven that as a frequent guest on The Today Show. In fact one Today show appearance with Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb (where Sam asked them to stop talking) has now been watched almost 700,000 times on YouTube.

Sam`s first cookbook, Just a Bunch of Recipes was released in March of 2008 by John Wiley & Sons. Book two, Awesome Recipe & Kitchen Shortcuts followed in April of 2010, and the 3rd, Just Grill This came out in February of 2011.

Sam lives in San Diego, CA with his wife, three sons, and their dogs.