Seafood has been at the heart of renowned Twin Cities chef Andrew Zimmern’s recipes since he first stepped into a kitchen as a teenager.
“It’s a big part of the food I like to make,” Zimmern said in a recent interview.
He wants to keep it that way for decades to come, but to do so, the four-time James Beard Award winner says the food and fishing industries need to embrace new food technologies and adopt creative solutions to meet growing demand for seafood, while also protecting overfished oceans threatened by pollution and climate change.
Emmy Award winner Zimmern and his production company, Intuitive Content, are producing “Hope in the Water,” a new three-part PBS documentary that tells the stories of innovators, fisheries professionals and aquaculture farmers working to create a sustainable future for the planet. Episode 1 premieres Wednesday at 8 p.m.
“We can’t continue doing things the same way,” Zimmern said. “We can’t survive without the ocean.”
To create “Hope in the Water,” Zimmern teamed up with storytelling visionary David E. Kelley, whose work includes “Love & Death,” “Lincoln Lawyer” and “Big Little Lies,” to assemble a star-studded team of writers, actors, chefs and environmental activists, including Shailene Woodley, Martha Stewart, Jose Andres and Baratunde Thurston.
The four hosts spent three years traveling the world, visiting five continents looking for success stories. They found one in Blomkest, Minnesota, a small town about 95 miles from Minneapolis and 1,300 miles from the nearest ocean, where Paul Damhoff did the unthinkable: transform his family’s dairy farm into a shrimp farm.
“Who would want to farm saltwater shrimp in Minnesota?” Damhoff jokes in the second episode, titled “Cultivating Saltwater Shrimp,” which airs June 26. Another shrimp farmer, Barb Frank, has teamed up with Damhoff to form Simply Shrimp.
The pair tried to learn the business without a guidebook and had some difficult times. They persevered and received support from Tran Huu Loc, a scientist from Ho Chi Minh City who had built shrimp farms in Vietnam. Loc shared his expertise to help Damhoff and Frank overcome a major obstacle: keeping the water clean.
This breakthrough has helped Simply Shrimp survive and thrive, and Damhoff plans to expand the facility by next year, according to a post on the company’s Facebook page.
“Let me prove this concept. This is something that can be replicated across the United States and around the world,” Damhoff said on the show. “That’s what excites me.”
For Zimmern, it was an exciting time.
“I’m happy the Minnesota shrimp story is being told on our show,” he said by phone. “We can have good jobs raising fish (and shellfish) indoors. The science is there. It’s a vital part of economic development.”
Zimmern has more TV in the works, including a new show promoting outdoor cooking over open flames, “Fields of Fire,” due to premiere this fall. He and Intuitive Content have several other projects in the works, but Zimmern said he can’t talk about them yet. He also hopes to produce more documentaries like “Hope in the Water.”
“I can’t imagine not doing that,” Zimmern said. “These are important stories that need to be told, and we’re excited to tell them.”
