How the 'Big Sky Kitchen' chef's brush with death brought him to an Emmy nomination

Magnolia Network's "Big Sky Kitchen with Eduardo Garcia" is nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award. 

“Being nominated as an outstanding culinary host by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, it's kind of an encouraging nudge to continue to educate in the field of storytelling for me as a chef,” he said.

The popular cooking show follows Chef  Garcia's journey in developing Montana Mex, his food celebration company, in the Big Sky country of Montana, home of the James Beard Award-winning chef. The show also demonstrates the relationships Garcia has with the producers, ingredients and tools for his cooking adventures.

Garcia had to learn to cook again after a life-changing experience that left him with a prosthetic hook. In 2011, Garcia encountered tragedy on a hunting trip. While trying to move a dead bear cub with his knife, a live power line under the carcass made contact and severely burned Garcia’s left side. After a delirious three-mile hike to seek help, Eduardo entered a 48-day stay in the ICU, where saving his life would come at the cost of his left hand.

Eduardo has since adapted and moved forward. With specialized prosthetics for cooking, cycling and hunting, Eduardo still pursues his passions and lives to not only share them with others but to prove that anyone can accomplish anything.

The process of relearning how to cook after the loss of his hand wasn't an easy task. It was one of the hardest life challenges he ever experienced. “The process was pretty messy. I dropped a lot of things. I had to be really forgiving to myself and not take it too seriously. And that's hard for a chef by nature,” Garcia said.

The trauma punctuated his existing belief in food as a transformative and powerful part of our human spirit and psychology. This reset forced a refocus on his passion to nurture others through food and his belief that a “shared meal is the ultimate building block of community and an evergreen recipe for creating connection to oneself, each other and the planet.” This is one of many quotes Garcia strongly believes in and uses on his show to convey that message to viewers.

The show is non-scripted, and Garcia often asks the cameras to step behind the lens and just show how meals are built from scratch. While his production team is very professional and they know how to set themselves up to succeed, he often also requests that the show remain as accessible as he is. “There is no behind the scenes. It's all in the scene. I do, and I feel like that's probably the most abundant way, just by bringing the camera directly into all parts of the process, from where the food is grown, the materials and resources that bring the meal together,” Garcia said.

Another important key component to creating a successful show is Garcia and his editing team condensing days of work into a 26-minute show without losing any of its potency. “Hopefully, that's how it feels when folks watch the show. It should feel as close as possible as being with me, as your private chef, your guide and your friend. And of course, you know, your host. That's what I hope people feel,” he said. “Food is my passion. I want to bring people into the kitchen with me. The joy of nurturing those around me with food has been my north star, and I celebrate that every day.”

Garcia told CALÓ News that his cooking philosophy is inspired by curiosity and creative thinking, regardless of where he is in the world. “For me, it's what’s in my pantry or what I have to work with, and curiosity is my entry point,” he said. “Those are my number one and number two flavors. If I’m your chef, I’m going to start to care for you, which means I'm going to ask a lot of questions so I can get as close to what you're looking for.”

He also added that the creativity in his cooking philosophy is about the professional chef in him, who strategizes, researches and designs what he is working with so that he can commit to the process and the purpose of his craft.

“I'm really pleased when the end product, which is the dish, is as close as possible to my vision. However, it never quite reaches there, and it kind of keeps me hungry for more because I plan to try it again or I remember what I could have changed. So the next day, I try again and I change it,” he said.

Many people in the media know Garcia as the Bionic Chef. “The Bionic Chef is a name that the media and the world brought to me, and I don't know who coined it, but I didn't do it,” he said. “You know, I love any attention only when it's what I love. So I'll take it. I always say, ‘You can call me anything you like, just call me.’”

Garcia’s body of work, philanthropy and current work in regenerative agriculture also serves as a community hub for his global impact and development. Follow Chef Garcia's inspiring story and his Hungry Life live cooking series and movement here.

As Chef Garcia has faced many challenges in life, his advice for those going through a challenging time is to first assess and recognize, and that's a lesson he learned on the day of the accident while being on the forest floor while he was dying and his heart was still beating. 

He said that a beating heart is the meaning of a second shot at life, no matter what’s next. “Lesson number one is assess your own inventory, take ownership of what you do have, and then communicate,” Garia said. “Tell everybody, ‘I'm here, but I'm hurting.’ So communication is so integral to living a life out loud, and living in a big way is by communicating and letting that out into the world. When you've shared that with the world, the world is in communion  with you, that's a community call to unity. And the third final act is to put it all into work. And that's where the ego gets to sidestep out of the way and let the experience take over and inside that experience. That's where the magic always happens. So those are my three steps, and that's kind of my recipe for living a big life that I like to share with others.”

All episodes of Magnolia Network’s "Big Sky Kitchen with Eduardo Garcia" can be streamed on Discovery+ and Max.