In the past three years, Nikki Dinki has gone from a home chef with a YouTube channel, to a reality TV star, to the host of her own show, to, as of last month, a cookbook author. In May, St. Martin’s Press signed Dinki up for a cookbook called Meat on the Side, which offers recipes that put “meat in the passenger seat.” The book is set to hit shelves in March 2016.
“[This] feels like a dream come true, an absolute dream come true,” said Dinki. “There were so many years of putting my recipes on the internet just hoping someone would read them. I hoped but never knew if all those seeds I was planting were ever going to grow.”
Dinki launched her YouTube channel, NikkiDinkiCooking, roughly five years ago. After a slow start, she began to gain subscribers (she now has 15,000), and soon, even wider attention. She joined the ninth season of Food Network’s popular series, Food Network Star, in June 2013, finishing fifth. But, defeat was short lived. That fall, Dinki auditioned for a co-hosting gig, alongside Bobby Deen (son of Paula Deen), on Cooking Channel’s Junk Food Flip, and landed the job. Around the time the pilot was picked up, the publishers came calling.
“I really loved the concept and thought that Nikki was clearly speaking to how people are rethinking the way they eat,” said SMP senior editor BJ Berti, who acquired the title. “She was also very appealing on TV and after meeting her, I liked her even more. We all thought she had one of those sparkling personalities that really can make a book and a TV show work.”
An added element of the show is that Dinki and Deen, in their search for the most decadent comfort food across the U.S., challenge the chefs behind the original dishes to see if their healthier, revamped versions can be just as, if not more, crowd pleasing. “The Cooking Channel and Food Network audience is the same audience that is going to buy my book, so [the show] was great practice for the book by being on a show like Junk Food Flip that was making me constantly think about what those people want,” said Dinki.
In addition to finding new ingredient combinations to elevate vegetables, in the book, Dinki mimics “meaty flavors by using things like caramelized onions, roasted garlic or smoked paprika.”
“I can make a little meat go a long way buy using small amounts of sausage or bacon, which really perfumes the dish,” she continued. “All of these things really allow the vegetable to be special enough to take center stage and be the star of the plate.”
