Nick DiGiovanni's 31st Birthday Countdown

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About Nick DiGiovanni

A Harvard graduate and MasterChef finalist, DiGiovanni built an enormous audience with polished, playful cooking videos, from giant food builds to Guinness World Record attempts in the kitchen.

Harvard's first food degree

DiGiovanni learned to cook watching his grandmother and great-grandmother in Rhode Island, then talked Harvard into letting him design his own concentration, 'Food and Climate,' the first undergraduate food degree in the university's history. Weeks after graduating in 2019 he appeared on MasterChef season 10, where the 22-year-old became the youngest finalist the show had ever had, finishing third. Instead of the restaurant grind, he bet on short, joyful cooking videos, and tens of millions subscribed.

A 46-pound chicken nugget and a bestseller

With his beloved collaborator Lynja, DiGiovanni turned record-chasing into a genre: a 97-pound cake pop in 2021, then the world's largest chicken nugget in 2022, a 46.2-pound slab officially certified by Guinness World Records. He has broken multiple food records since. In 2023 he published Knife Drop: Creative Recipes Anyone Can Cook, with a foreword by Gordon Ramsay; it became a New York Times bestseller, complete with QR codes linking recipes to videos.

Twenty million pounds of produce

DiGiovanni is lead ambassador for The Farmlink Project, a nonprofit that moves surplus produce from farms to food banks instead of landfills. In winter 2022 he fronted a Chipotle campaign built around a 20-million-pound produce-donation goal, with the chain's cult-favorite honey vinaigrette recipe revealed as the reward when donors delivered. He also joined #TeamSeas, the creator-led fundraiser that raised over $30 million to pull 30 million pounds of trash from the world's oceans.

Quick facts

• Born May 19, 1996, in Providence, Rhode Island
• Youngest-ever finalist on MasterChef, placing third in season 10
• Graduated from Harvard in 2019 with its first-ever food degree, a self-designed 'Food and Climate' concentration
• Set Guinness World Records with Lynja for the largest chicken nugget (46.2 lb) and largest cake pop
• His 2023 cookbook Knife Drop is a New York Times bestseller
• Founded the salt-and-seasonings brand Osmo in 2021

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