‘Cutthroat Kitchen’ goes to camp

Imagine cooking on a gas grill perched precariously on a canoe in the middle of a lake. Or cooking while hanging from a very high wall. Or in high winds.

These are but some of the challenges facing contestants in the Food Network competition series “Camp Cutthroat,” a five-episode summer series premiering Wednesday.

Hosted by Alton Brown, the series brings 12 memorable contestants from his “Cutthroat Kitchen” to a remote camp location set up in the mountains near Malibu, Calif., to vie in a series of outdoor-themed culinary challenges and sabotages. The winners of each of the first four episodes advance to the Sept. 9 finale, with a prize of up to $75,000 at stake.

“He who had McGyver DNA did best,” Brown says of the contestants’ ingenuity. “But we didn’t want to just pick people and force them to have been an Eagle Scout or an Airborne Ranger or something like that. But yes, those skills would definitely come in mighty handy. … And physical dexterity and physical fortitude were required. It was a far more physical competition than we’ve done before.”

The spartan conditions of Camp Cutthroat pushed contestants to think outside the box and that resulted in cuisine that ranged, as Brown describes it, “from the hideous to the sublime.”

“You know, the outdoors always makes things taste better,” he says, “and in some cases, that was certainly true. And in fact, it was really funny that competitors that we had had chosen to come on board even though they’d never been camping in their lives, which was the case with some of them, and made some of the best-tasting food.

“And then of course, some of it … you’d look for a nice bush to spit out behind. But there were some things where I’m not actually required to taste the food and there were days when I was very, very happy about that.”

Q&A

What book are you currently reading?

“I finally decided to settle down and read ‘Infinite Jest,’ which I probably should have read years ago. … It’s one of those books that you have to read with a dictionary, so I’m actually (laughs) reading it and Webster’s Ninth at the same time.”

What did you have for dinner last night?

“I had two shrimp tacos for dinner last night out of a small food truck in Oahu.”

What is your next project?

“I’m working on a new book right now that will be out next year. … I’m on ‘Cutthroat Kitchen’ right now until mid-August … and then I will go back to Atlanta and finish up a book manuscript that has a lot of moving parts to it, a very different kind of project from anything I’ve done before. That’s going to take me most of the rest of the year.”

When was the last vacation you took, where and why?

“I snuck off to Paris last year for a few days but it was more of a working trip. I took a baking class in Paris last year, so I don’t know if you’d call that a vacation but it kind of felt like it part of the time. I don’t vacation real well to be honest (laughs). Yeah, I’m a worker bee.”