Minibar’s new favorite customer. (MGM Pictures)

Washington’s super-chef, José Andrés, has a new gig lined up: He’s been enlisted by a new television series for which he’ll advise producers on how to prepare that most dangerous game—humans.

Andrés will be helping out on NBC’s Hannibal, a series debuting in January 2013 that follows the adventures of a young psychiatrist named Hannibal Lecter, a gifted therapist with an interesting hobby. And as the show will deal with Lecter before he matured into the stately creep portrayed by Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs and its disappointing sequels and spin-offs, it will need an explanation of just how Lecter learned how to cook a man’s liver with a side of fava beans and a nice chianti. (Insert slurping sound here.)

The Post’s Tom Sietsema reports that Andrés, who acknowledges that early human remains in his native Spain showed evidence of people eating other people, was a natural fit for this savory consulting role:

Andres says he was tapped by producer and screenwriter Bryan Fuller to flesh out the character, so to speak, by showing what a culinary sophisticate the cannibalistic psychiatrist was, pre-incarceration. There will be references to French chef Auguste Escoffier and fine wines, says the chef, and a scene featuring loin—but not pork or beef loin—with roasted apples and Cumberland sauce. Eventually, “every single body part” will factor into the show, says Andres, who adds that his research included eating “a lot of lung dishes this summer.” (Lung, from animals, is popular in Italy and Spain.)

Putting in a plug for his native Spain, he says human bones found in the ancient Atapuerca caves in the north of the country show evidence of man eating man, perhaps in the belief that the consumer might absorb the conquered party’s power — but possibly also just because he could.)

Mmm, tasty.