The show is set to debut 8 p.m. Monday, May 26.
Viars said cooking is one of his loves.
“If you don’t eat, you die. You might as well make it taste good,” he said.
Viars, a regional sales manager for a hunting company, said he respected and loved working for Ramsay, the seemingly gruff English restaurateur at the show’s center.
Ramsay and restaurateurs Joe Bastianich and Graham Elliot judge so-called home cooks on the show entering its fifth season.
Viars won a spot on the show after auditioning in Columbus with homemade coleslaw and pork butt he cooked for 21 hours. It was accompanied by his North Carolina-style and Cleveland-style barbecue sauces.
“They loved my food and they liked my personality,” he said.
The eldest son of Brenda and Todd Viars, Tyler Viars said he completed on the show to represent small, knocked-down towns like Wilmington.
“My goal is to bring a positive light to Ohio,” the 2004 graduate of Wilmington High School said. He is an alumni of Auburn University in Alabama.
Viars dreams of merging the hunting and cooking industries and considers himself a “rooter to the tooter” chef.
He's posted more than 100 of his dishes to his account on Instagram.com under the user name viarstm.
“I have cooked everything from pigs’ heads to a pigs’ tails. That’s who I am,” said the former cameraman for ESPN2 and the Outdoor Channel shows. “A, you hunt it. B, you kill it. C, you cook it. I see my meat’s face. I know it is heathy and I know what its last meal was.”
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